Best portible audio player (iPod)?

Best player for music, you gotta go with the Hifiman stuff.

Loyal following on Headfi!

Best player for music, you gotta go with the Hifiman stuff.

Loyal following on Headfi!

I am very happy with my Cowon J3.

I regularly go to bed a couple of hours later than planned because I just wanted to listen to a couple of tracks first . . . .

i had a clip and a clip + that were both obscenely cheap they are still the best s q mp3 players ive ever heard and pack a fair amount of power too they never had trouble powering my hd202s or when i put them through my amp  plus the expandable memory is handy. just be carefull with them the clip was fine i put it through the washing machine and it was fine and then shut it in a car twice and the only thing that broke after the door was the screen. the clip + hower broke the day i got it and had to be sent back and i never quite trusted it after that.

I've been thinking the same thing. I was going to buy a Fiio E7 to hook up to my IPod Classic.

With a Fiio E7 would it matter what what was your MP3 player .. I don't know?

I have a J3, and wholeheartedly recommend it. Although the software isn't as intuitive as other products, the variety of formats you can play on it counteracts this in my opinion.

Unfortunately it does have a problem whereby ampersands are not recognised in artist names (it will cause the song to be moved to an Unknown artist), and AAC files will not have their bitrates read correctly (they will play fine, but the bitrate information will say 0kbps).

Sound quality is excellent though. I will however say that the output power isn't the best, so whilst it does get loud, unless you have noise isolating headphones, being outside may cause you to have a dimished listening experience.

I'll vote for my iPhone 4. (Although I haven't ever used anything else but iTunes, iPods and iPhones so wouldn't have a clue what the rest sound like and can't be bothered to find out.)

I don't really have the inclination to faff around converting everything or changing from what I already know, works well for me and sounds good to me.

I'd go with Cowon stuff. It comes with nice features, and the SQ is awesome. 

Although I am currently a Sony user my next player (when I save some cash) will be a Cowon.  And as far as Apple is concerned, if sound quality is your priority then avoid them like the plague!!!

I've listened to the Clip+ and it's a superb little player!  If size is an issue you wont find anything better.

Whatever you buy I would recommend adding an amp to your setup, it will run your RS1's far far better than any player by itself could and it will also allow you to get the best out of any IEM's you choose to buy for travelling.

In response to sedish chef - it depends on the output.  If you use the normal headphone output to connect to any portable amp, not just the E7, then if your player doesnt have particularly good sound the amp will struggle to improve it or even make it sound worse. 

I have tried my PA2V2 with several Apple players as you can probably gather from the start of this post I was not impressed!  In fact I felt they were just as poor with the amp as without, the only difference I found was it went louder with the amp and that simply doesnt cut the mustard for me.

Currently I use Panamp iPhone app. It has basic iOS music player features, and it is outstanding by it's ability to make dynamic queues: quick mix of selected tracks and power search that quickly and efficiently find the artict, album and tracks. Most compatible with iTunes collection. See it here.  Feature that I like most - lock screen control

I prefer to use my (i)phone and just add a portable amp - recommend Pico Slim for IEMs, headstage arrow or rsa shadow or sr71b or probably the new Corda for full size