[TNT440]

heres the deal, i got a phillips portable that i run through a cassette adapter in my car, the cd player only has a headphone jack, thats where i hook the cassette adapter, well, it sounds like crap, so i am looking for anothet portable that is very cheap as i am on a tight budget right now, BUT the new one has to have a separate line out from headphones so it will sound better, so far, the only cheap ones ive found that indeed has a separate line out than the headphone jack is a GPX brand, now, even though thats not the best brand in the world, would it still sound much better than my phillips since i could use the line out on the GPX rather than the headphone jack on the phillips, through my cassette adapter in my car, or will that one sound just as bad, even though it has the line out, just because of the brand name?
thanks

 

[dinosauract]

I don't think that using the headphone jack is the problem. The cassette adapter is the weak link here. You're most likely never going to get sound as good as if you had a built-in CD player. I used the cassette adapters in a couple of my older cars. The best you're going to get is decent sound with some hiss or hum. It doesn't totally ruin the music, but you have to accept the limitations that this type of hook-up will have.

Perhaps the cassette adapter you're using isn't the best. If you want to try to improve things, I'd look at replacing the cassette before I'd look at a new CD player. About the best one I ever used was a Panasonic, but its hard to find. Sony also makes one that seems well-built and costs about $20, but I didn't have much luck with that one.

 

[TNT440]

well, there is no hum or anything like that, its just not really crisp like a cd should be, like i said, when i play a cassette in it, it sounds almost cd quality, i dont know what it is, it just doesnt have really crisp highs, like drum cymbals and stuff, and kinda noisy instead of the nice spaced out sound, i have 2 different cassette adapters, one is an RCA and the other is a sony. They both sound different, but the sony is a little better, the rca is really loud and obnoxious sounding.