[RockysDad]

Newbie here... not knowing too much about all the portable players out there, here is what I am looking for. I would like to take all my CDs, rip and save them into somekind of portable rig then use that as my source for my home audio system. My question is which units would provide the best SQ, hold a fair amount of music, and what type of digital conversion should I be looking for here? SQ is obviously the driving force here followed by disk space. Price is of some concern also. I'd hate to pay more then what it would cost to get a quality home CD player. Any suggestions?

 

[rhymesgalore]

The portable which gets the most sound credits 'round here is the iMod, the modified 4G iPod from RedwineAudio.
But if you just wanna use it with your home stereo equipment, so that portability isn't a factor, i'd definetly take a look at the Slimdevices Squeezebox 3. It's a wireless streaming device, and has great sound quality as well.

 

[epaludo]

Probably the best talked brands in terms of sound quality are iRiver and iAudio/Cowon.
Talking of HD based players, currently iRiver is just producing the H10. Which is by far less interesting then the iAudio X5.
If you manage to get an iRiver H100 or H300 series you'll be getting an awesome player as well.
All the players that i mention have Rockbox support, which provides lots of lossless codecs support such as WAV, FLAC, WV, AIFF, and others. Not to mention the lossy codec support also, which supports OGG and others.
The iRiver H300 has a line-out which is good. The H100 has a line-out and a opc. out, that you can use with an external DAC.
On the other hand, the X5L has an awesome battery life.
Don't know which one to choose.
It's up to you ...

 

[MrFaust]

I personally would suggest the Archos 504 either the 80gb version for $400 or the 160gb version for $600. Yes that is alot of money, but the trade off is this, so long as you are pleased with lossy formats (mp3, ogg, etc) you will have tons of storage. If you want to watch movies, this thing will play xvid encoded movies with no problems at all. It's screen size is TWICE that of any ipod out there. It also works as a portable DVR and a USB ON-THE-GO harddrive so no drivers are needed for it to be used as portable storage. It does come with a remote control for and a docking station for when you have it hooked up to your tv to video playback or recording.

 

[epaludo]

Quote:

Originally Posted by MrFaust /img/forum/go_quote.gif I personally would suggest the Archos 504 either the 80gb version for $400 or the 160gb version for $600. Yes that is alot of money, but the trade off is this, so long as you are pleased with lossy formats (mp3, ogg, etc) you will have tons of storage. If you want to watch movies, this thing will play xvid encoded movies with no problems at all. It's screen size is TWICE that of any ipod out there. It also works as a portable DVR and a USB ON-THE-GO harddrive so no drivers are needed for it to be used as portable storage. It does come with a remote control for and a docking station for when you have it hooked up to your tv to video playback or recording.

Agree for the storage size.
It has a lot of good points, but let's point the disavantages of it:

-No lossless support;
-Poor battery life;
-Very expensive;
-Others that i don't remember right now.

If you want a PMP, I would suggest the Cowon A2. Less storage, but less price, more codec support - including audio (FLAC and OGG) and video (plays almost every video file that you put in it, no convertion needed), tremendous battery life (rated 10 hours for videos), better sound quality, no dock need for video recording, easy user interface and FM radio (including recording) - don't know if the 504 has FM radio tough.
The archos has the advantage of a removable battery.

EDIT: according to this link on the archos website, the 504 does not support OGG files playback. Only MP3, WMA and WAV.

 

[RockysDad]

Quick question... Are all lossless formats pretty much the same? Which ones are the most popular and supported by most players? Thanks again for all the feedback. Will start to analyze some of the players recommended so far...

 

[MrFaust]

there are a few lossless formats, APE, SHN, FLAC, ALAC Lossless, WMA Lossless, AAC Lossless, iirc. The most popular is FLAC. Now the nly DAPS that support it from the factory are the iAudio Cowon DAPs. However you can use a 3rd part replacement OS for several players called Rockbox (www.rockbox.org) for added support for ipods, several archos players and others. No the Archos 504 doesn't support the compressed lossless formats, but it does play wav. Battery life isn't terrible and there are triple copacity batterys avalible as well. Yeah they are expensive, but you have LOTS of options with them. It's all a matter of money you want to spend and options you want. I had the previous version, the Archos AV500 100gb model, listed in my sig. you can see a picture of it. I did talk to some of the people at Archos about adding FLAC support. They SAID they would have the enginners look into adding it as they had plenty of requests for it. But the main thing I liked about it was the amount of storage space it had. I could rip my own dvds to xvid with no trouble and it would play those rips with no issues as well. and the USB-OTG option was great as well. I much rather prefer to use windows explorer to manage the files on my DAP versus some propitory software like iTunes, Windows Media Player, etc... The only reason I don't have it anymore is because I really wanted a flac playing DAP and also one that had a built-in line-in to do recording. Plus it was a little bigger than I wanted for a carrying around. However since I have my iRiver iHP-120 to meet those purposes, I am thinking of getting the new 160gb version of the 504 in a few months from now.

 

[pds6]

Quote:

Price is of some concern also. I'd hate to pay more then what it would cost to get a quality home CD player.

My guess would be any popular dap would have the SQ to make your home stereo happy.

Quote:

I would like to take all my CDs, rip and save them into somekind of portable rig then use that as my source for my home audio system.

How many CD's?

WAV is around 3 albums per gb., FLAC around 4 albums per gb.; 320 MP3 cbr lame is 10 albums per gb.; 192 MP3 vbr lame is around 20 albums per gb. and 128 AAC is about 30 albums per gb.

I would go with a FLAC or a high MP3 rip.

A lot of good players, but iPod has ALL the connections and remotes the others do not. Go with the iPod and get a base with a remote clicker.

Good Luck