What? No love for the old school ipod? I'd recommend the 7th gen classic(160gb). Plenty of storage, and plus now you can mod it fairly cheaply to 256gb using tarken's adapter and cf card. Even find a old beater one on ebay and mod for almost nothing. I paired mine with a JDS C5 amp and Vsonic VSD3 iems, sounds great.
I have a couple of these; The one pictured as you can see has been modified with 'absurdly large memory' (tm); With removable memory for easy transfer (i dislike having to carry the bulky ipod cable with me) however my experiences with this one are a bit mixed.. Battery life isn't as good as its CompactFlash brothers and i think that is caused by the microSD converter board but im not sure. But to answer a question you asked quite a bit earlier in the thred; Yes rockboxed ipods will generally speaking still work with docks. The dock-connector has a more-or-less direct connection to the DAC chip so no matter what software you stuff on the device; as long as it plays it will give a direct signal through the dock. If anyone ever wants to build one of these; Buy 2nd gen iPod mini, buy a new battery for it and buy a nice large compact-flash card as those will give the most reliable results. Hit a couple youtube vids on how to disassemble and you're good to go. You will end up with a very very robust little player with however much memory you want that also boosts great battery-life (24hrs+ continuous playtime on average output, about 20% less when playing FLAC given decent battery).
I can support OP's choice, I run a Rockboxed Clip+ myself. I can also recommend Rockboxing if OP is still undecided, I like the extra tweeks it allows, I believe it it's necessary for higher bitrate FLACs and it supposedly fixes a small timing error in the original firmware. I got the Fiio E6 amp to go with it but that got delegated to the car because I hear no difference with headphones and it just wasn't worth the hassle. To be honest, I do not really hear the difference between the high res files on the clip and the 128 kbps mp3's on my iPhone over headphones, although the difference is very noticable over my car speakers, the amp also improves things there. I do like carrying a dedicated device however, especially since it's so small and light and has great battery life. TL; DR: +2 for the Sansa clip as a dedicated device & Rockbox, IMO amp & high res files not worth the bother for headphones but noticably better over speakers
You need to get yourself some proper headphones.. just my opinion. The right 'phones or speakers make all the difference! Also, is your username a Lit album title reference?
My cans are not audiophile quality but should be decent enough, the AIAIAI TMA-1's... Would love to hear your suggestions but I've been quite happy with them so far. (EDIT: soundwise that is, I did have an issue with a cracked headband, it seems this is a common issue for older models) Didn't know there was an album and never heard of the band to be honest, although the phrase refers to dancing it also reminds me of photography so that's why I chose it EDIT: I guess I do remember a Lit song from MTV but the band name didn't stick
I've been loving my Audio Technica M50x's, got them recently after picking up my FiiO. The built-in amp in the X3 definitely helps, but the phones are great. It seems like if the difference is that noticeable over your speakers, then maybe the headphones are to blame for the missed differences ? Yep, Lit had an album before they had that MTV hit, same title as your username, reference to dancing! They kinda disappeared after that - I think another album or two, but they didn't stick. Nice avatar, btw!
