[Smirk]

I am being torn between some players, but being unable to test any of them on my own I'm asking YOU, head-fiers for a piece of advice

At first I leaned towards Cowon S9, which is crowned to sound the best, but later I discovered that Ipod Classic 160Gb (afaik 7th gen sucks as 6th? cause many ppl complained) and Zune HD can output quite a nice sound too. And there's obviously a ton of other worthy players I didn't dig into.

My cans are Audio Technica ATH-AD900 and my music of preference is metal, rock and Soundtracks of movies, games, etc.

I know this topic is typical, but maybe there actually is some kind of a common knowledge about portables for, for e.x., AT cans or metal and rock music. I'm not an expert in that

And my primary need is the quality of music above all other functions. Also, as far as I know AD900 are 35ohM and can be driven quite easily so there's no need for amp, right?

Forgot to mention - I'm not really a SQ person and I have little to no experience tweaking it.

Update: After browsing a bit I decided to purchase Ipod 7th Gen with FiiO E1. Supposedly I was very wrong claiming it sux, however I did mention I wasn't sure.