I've been doing some research on this subject for the past week or so now, and realize I'm going to get a load of "search" replies, but that's okay. Really, I'm just looking for some opinions of people who have owned more than one of the above. Basically, I'm looking for something in the $150 pricerange. I've got a $50 giftcard to BB, so if I don't order online, I'll probably end up buying there. Primary concern is finding the best sound quality in my pricerange. I listen to mostly alt. rock with some other stuff thrown in there every now and then. My current cans are Audio Technica A500, which I will use with the portable unless I decide to buy something else down the road. I was set to go buy a new PCDP today. I had read some good things about the Sony D-NE line, and was about to go pick up a D-NE500, but I've read some complaints about newer PCDPs, that they're not powerful enough to drive decent cans, skip protection compresses the sound to crap(128kbit MP3 quality). So I've started looking around. I was originally wanting to spend $100 or less. Now I'm up to $150 or less. The Rio Karma is $200 retail, and I have a $50 gift card... BB also have a Hi-MD player that is the same price. I don't see a reason to go with Hi-MD though, if I could get a 20GB HD-based player for the same price and I don't have to worry about rewriting MDs, carrying around multiple discs, etc.

Mostly this player will be used for a weekly overnight shift I work every Monday night. When I'm not working with someone else, it gets pretty boring and I need something to make the time go by faster. I am constantly moving though not usually too quickly, but I can't have something that will skip. Ocassionally, I'll probably use it on a plane trip or something else as well. Obviously, the PCDP is the best buy, at half the cost of the other two. However, it has the least amount of storage, but the media is dirt cheap and I have tons laying around anyway. Hi-MD would give me a smaller physical size, probably sound better?, and would offer me more storage, but I would have to buy all new media. The Rio Karma comes with all the storage I would need, a smallish physical size, and good sound quality from what I've read.

The Karma looks to be the best option for me at the moment, but I really like the price of the D-NE series PCDP, and the sound quality seems to be rated higher than other recent ones. Any comments? Suggestions? Any advice is greatly appreciated.