Portable cd player recommendations?

[Jerry]

Well the Panasonic portable cd player which I have been using in the office for a few years has got to the point where it can't track and skips. This seems to happen eventually on all these players. Several years ago I had a Sony which also did the same thing but I noticed it had much better audio than this panasonic. Any recommendations for a discman type player? I find that unless you have an amazingly good computer, playing discs at the same time you are working results in really annoying hesitations on the disc play, so I use a portable and Koss Sportapro headphones as my main listening equipment.

[chris]

I don't think the player is nearly as important as the headphones and-- if you really want good sound-- even an inexpensive little headphone amp....

[mmilovan]

I must say I am happy with my relatively new Grundig Squixx, but I have to change his original hdph w. Sennheiser MX300.

Like the drive, it has great skip protection.

But, I don't like method of changing the discs Noone ever thought about that! It was simple w. cassetes, but with CDs it is boring, painfull job - not to destroy discs.

[Chrome]

I guess it depends on how much desk space you have, but I brought in a small boombox and plug my headphones into that ... and then, when it's not too crowded here, I can unplug the 'phones to listen.

I'm with Chris about concentrating more on the headphones than the CD player itself when trying to listen at the office.

Edited January 13, 2004 by Chrome

[Jerry]

Well I plunked for a Sony walkman. D-NF610, which plays MP3 and ATRAC3 plus format, as well as CD. It also has a digital FM/AM/TV/Weather band digitally tuned radio, three bass settings and various fancy features such as track titles if available on the disc, jog dial, etc. It comes with a cd containing burning software to transfer cd and mp3 audio to ATRAC3 plus format discs. (oddly no ac adapter but I have a few of them). As you can tell I'm kind of a sucker for gadgets. So far I like it. The included headphones were junk, and I am continuing to use my Koss Sportapros (which cost about $25 and are very good for lighweight, open-ear, cheap phones). The sound is good, better than the panasonic I had been using. Radio performance is spotty: you have to arrange the headphone wire as an antenna and frequently it just doesn't work out. Overall the software is better than panasonic, for ex resume starts where you left off, not the beginning of the track again. The ATRAC3 burning software and format are not without problems. Even at the highest quality recording it still sounds rather like MP3's to me, not quite detailed enough. Good though if you're tight on space and you need to put lots of music on one or two discs, for ex while traveling or something. I'll let you know how the unit pans out after playing it for a while.

I got it at Amazon $84.84, free shipping.

Edited January 16, 2004 by Jerry

[WD45]

Well I plunked for a Sony walkman. D-NF610, which plays MP3 and ATRAC3 plus format, as well as CD. It also has a digital FM/AM/TV/Weather band digitally tuned radio, three bass settings and various fancy features such as track titles if available on the disc, jog dial, etc. It comes with a cd containing burning software to transfer cd and mp3 audio to ATRAC3 plus format discs. (oddly no ac adapter but I have a few of them). As you can tell I'm kind of a sucker for gadgets. So far I like it. The included headphones were junk, and I am continuing to use my Koss Sportapros (which cost about $25 and are very good for lighweight, open-ear, cheap phones). The sound is good, better than the panasonic I had been using. Radio performance is spotty: you have to arrange the headphone wire as an antenna and frequently it just doesn't work out. Overall the software is better than panasonic, for ex resume starts where you left off, not the beginning of the track again. The ATRAC3 burning software and format are not without problems. Even at the highest quality recording it still sounds rather like MP3's to me, not quite detailed enough. Good though if you're tight on space and you need to put lots of music on one or two discs, for ex while traveling or something. I'll let you know how the unit pans out after playing it for a while.

I got it at Amazon $84.84, free shipping.

I'm with Jerry on this one. I got one of these as a gift this holiday season after my old one all but crapped out.

It has all of the features I was looking for, including AM/FM, MP3, and CD. Love it.

[Brandon Burke]

This is what I have. I'm not typically a Sony man but this thing is virtually indestructable. The snap-on lid is secure. It's water-proof. And the skip protection is great. I'd pretty much have to go out of my way to make it skip. In fact, it even comes with a hand-strap for jogging, which tell you something right there.

Here's the Best Buy link.

[JSngry]

I use these things in my car (along with the car kit adapters), so there's going to be bumps and such involved. I've developed a (slight) preference for Aiwa over Sony in terms of reliability, durabiltiy, and sound quality.

But really, they're all about the same in their respective price brackets, and if you give one of them heavy use and it lasts over a year and a half or so, you've gotten about all out of it as it has to give.

[Jerry]

The panasonics all have that nice disc removal feature - push down on the central post and the disc pops out. The Sony models seem to have way better audio than panasonic. I did like an Aiwa I had several years ago. The sound was somehow different from Sony, more towards the bright, trebly?

Yeah they don't last too long. Don't you just hate it when they start skipping?

Edited January 17, 2004 by Jerry