Quality portable audio player

[csuzor]

I hesitate to put quality and portable in the same phrase, but I am looking for a quality portable audio player for travelling. I know I have to avoid high compression rates, I currently use a laptop with WMA lossless, and good AKG headphones, but the laptop is not very pratical.

Does anyone have experience (good and bad) with portable players? Any recommendations?
Thanks
Christophe

[soundhound]

I use an RCA Lyra (RD1080B) on my Honda Shadow. I found a company (god bless the internet) that makes an amplified speaker array (which you obviously wouldn't need), but the Lyra is a slick little device. It has 128 meg of internal memory, an FM tuner (reception sucks) and a smartcard slot which I use a 256 meg card full of tunes in. I wouldn't look for it to give you the same sound as you're system @ home, but, for the road it's been a great little device.

[Rolex]

It really depends on how you are going to use the system, and how much gear you want to carry. You could go with an ipod. Really any model, and run that through a headphone amplifier with a nice set of headphones. I'm running the ipod direct right now with a pair of Shure E2c ear buds and am very happy. For on-the-go sound, it works great. With the advances apple has made with ipod, they can fit almost anyone's needs. With the 40 gig model, you could hold quite a few songs without any compression. You are really doing the same thing with your laptop, but the ipod would be more convienent to carry around..

[junior77blue]

Can you really tell the difference with compressed audio on pc speakers?

Are you willing to carry around a dedicated headphone amp?

The iPod is good, but it's not going to drive a pair of high quality, high impedance headphones, therefore the need for an external amp to tell the difference between lossless and compressed music.

So, sound quality from a portable really is a dream. They will all be about the same. It then just comes down to features, interface and storage capacity. iPod can't be touched!

Especially when linked with iTunes, not necessarily the music store but just the software interface.

[PewterTA]

Well with the Apple iPod, it supports the Apple Lossless codec right?! So you could put a lossless format onto the iPod and play it. The only limitations then is the DAC of the iPod.

[csuzor]

I guess I am concerned that the DAC on these portable devices just isn't high quality, and the amp is barely sufficient to drive some good headphones... The headphone amplifier may be a good idea, but I doubt it runs on batteries, so it would be for the hotel room only.
I just need high sound quality for good headphones, and a long battery life (or exchangeable batteries) for overseas airplane trips... Will the i-pod do the trick?

[Rolex]

The new ipod shuffle, which I use, only holds 120 songs. Yes, it's tiny, but the battery life on it is 12 hours on a full charge. That's a long time. The second thing is, apple makes a AA battery pack that connects to the ipod shuffle. So when the internal battery dies, you throw on the pack and swap out AA's as needed. I would question the DAC myself. But there isn't much you can do about it until apple puts a digital output on the ipod. If you're looking for incredible sound that you can carry with you and that is rugged, you might be limited. But, for the hotel room, there's no reason you couldn't go with a headphone amp and a nice set of headphones. You can find headphone amps that run on batteries. That would probably be ideal for plane trips.

[junior77blue]

I've seen 'kits' that allow you to build a headphone amp that runs on batteries. A bit bulky for me for casual traveling.

There are some players that do have digital output. Too bad iPod doesn't have one. So, in theory a headphone amp will only allow you to use higher quality headphones. Will it improve the sound, probably as well. Keep us upto date with whatever you decide.

Here at work I just plug decent sony headphones into the headphone jack. I would have to buy an extremly good pair of headphones to justify purchasing a headphone amp.

[ekkoville]

What players have digital outs, I am curious?

[junior77blue]

I thought some of the iRiver's do...

http://gear.ign.com/articles/457/457818p1.html

Out of date, so not sure if any of the new ones have this feature.

[csuzor]

Thanks for all the guidance, but the choice is not clear...
I am beginning to wonder, if the better choice is not simply the CD walkman!
I can listen to CD is original quality, or make mp3 or ATTRAC (Sony) or WMA(some others) disks, the autonomy is huge (more than 50 hours, and I can change the AA battery), the size is not that much bigger than hard drive models (I will only use it while sitting), some models even have digital amps, and I can listen to purchased CD immediately (like the dozen sacd I picked up this week in san francisco for half the price they are in europe).
The only question remains, will the audio quality be OK? It should at least be on a par with the i-pod.
I'll go back to the store tomorrow, before heading back to france on friday... gotta decide tonight in my sleep...

update: I opted for a Sony cd player, with mp3 and attrac3plus capability. Output volume on the headphones is satisfactory, and the cd audio quality is good... better than with the laptop pc. 1 AA battery can supposedly last up to 40 hours... I am ready for those long plane trips.