Want recommendations for best sounding, hard drive-based Music Player

[ChunkyBustout]

Hello,

I have an iriver H10 20GB, iriver h320 and H340, Archos JBR 20 v1 and I have to say the iriver H10 was the best sounding of the lot. The Rockbox EQ is what really made the H10 shine. My issue now is that I've just broken the screen of my jbr and wanted to salvage the SSD for use in a newer, Rockbox-able player. I thought I'd come here and query other Rockbox users with more experience with devices than me.

I could go brand new and get a Fiio X3 or X5 but I wouldn't get to use my SSDs with them.
My needs are great sounding audio, MP3 and FLAC-supported, good (doesn't have to be great) battery life and SSD-upgradable. What do you guys recommend?

[Serenity]

I've always enjoyed the sound of my iRiver H320, and with the SSD it has new life. I also like the way the Toshiba Gigabeat F40 sounds. Both of them use a 1.8" IDE.

[[Saint]]

Best is wildly subjective.

If I assume that "best" here means "most accurately reproduced signal output", and taking availability into account (in some locales H3** or Gigabeat variants may as well be unicorn blood), the iPod Classic is pretty hard to beat.


[Saint]

[__builtin]

Best is wildly subjective.

If I assume that "best" here means "most accurately reproduced signal output", and taking availability into account (in some locales H3** or Gigabeat variants may as well be unicorn blood), the iPod Classic is pretty hard to beat.


[Saint]

It may be classified as "unusable", but trust me, it's 100% stable. Everything works, just the installation can be a bit difficult.

[Astrogoth]

X5 you say? Let me tell you. I bought one a few weeks ago off Amazon. In a small nutshell here's what I think. Don't buy one. Get a Clip Zip and a 32 Gig memory card and most importantly get a good set of headphones. The phones are the important part, not the player. The X5 sitting in front of me is clunky, heavy and the UI is a sad joke compared to Rockbox. The sound quality is 15% or so better than a Zip. The soundstage seems wider and some songs (only some songs) seem more alive..... but only by 15 or so %. It's NOT a big improvement like I thought it would be. Not at all. I thought how could a $17 player compete with a $350 one? I am here to tell you it does. Bigtime.

Now I'm saving up $175 for the best deal in earbuds, price .vs sound wise:
The T-PESO Altone 200
 

[[Saint]]

While I don't disagree with this entirely, I find it very hard to agree.

The source is vitally important.

What good is it having high end consumer grade headphones that will faithfully represent the gritty, dirty, roll-off laden output of most low end consumer audio devices?


[Saint]

[Astrogoth]

Oh-kay.

Since you can not find a cheaper DAP than the Clip Zip ($18 on Amazon at this moment.) and it does not sound bad at all I stand by what I said. Quality ear buds, headphones or IEM's are the most important part of a good listening setup. For most, unless you pick the beloved Monoprice $8 buds, they will be more expensive than the player and they WILL have more to do with what you hear than the player. You could say that only the quality of the recordings matter more, and you often have no control over that since you didn't record them yourself and the source may be elusive.

[schlieph]

Best is wildly subjective.

If I assume that "best" here means "most accurately reproduced signal output", and taking availability into account (in some locales H3** or Gigabeat variants may as well be unicorn blood), the iPod Classic is pretty hard to beat.

I'm curious to know what non-apple player might be pretty hard to beat (by other non-apple players, of course) ..

:. schlieph

[saratoga]

Newer Sandisk players mostly match the iPod classic.

[cholero]

I think your player is iPod classic/Video.
But there is a higher sound quality level available if you can live with buying a new uSD card. There are the Hifiman Players, the expensive HiFi e.t.'s and ihifi's, but there is also the one I would recommend with the best price/sq ratio: iBasso DX50 . The port of the iBasso is not yet official but you can download quite stable unofficial builds at head-fi.