A recommendation, oh Masters (and Mistresses)?

[locke456]

I'm hoping someone can help me out here, based on the general amount of experience with listening to live shows. I'm looking to get a new CD player, as I accidently sold my car with the last one inside. My main issue with (portable) CD players is that I've never been able to find one that doesn't generally make live shows sound like they're coming from inside a large tin can. So, I was wondering, if people listen to live shows on a portable CD player and are satisfied, what combination player/headphones do you use? I'm not really able to spend 200 bucks, so I guess I'm just looking for something reasaonbly priced. Maybe this belongs more on a tech forum, but having personal experience with both being a tech guy and a music guy, I tend to trust music fans more. :p

[kees]

as I accidently sold my car with the last one inside........

Sorry, can't really help you there. But you lost your lost cd-player because you left it in the car you just sold? I feel for you, but that's funny... I lost my last car because I forgot to get my cd player that I just sold out of it....

[Factory Boy]

I too am sorry Locke456 but found that quite funny.
I'm just wondering if you play guitar or bass at all because when I use a little portable player, I plug a lead from the headphone socket into an amp & it sounds great! Virtually any player will sound good through an amp.
Hope this is of some use.

[Chris CO]

I'm looking to get a new CD player, as I accidently sold my car with the last one inside.

Did you accidentally sell the car to someone who thought they were just buying a CD player.....or was the car really small and inside the CD player?

Maybe you could try buying a car that has a good CD player in it or just buy any car at random to see if it has one inside....maybe your old one might turn up.

Sorry I've been drinking.

If I were you and not technologically defective like me I would buy a Sony Walkman (equivalent to Ipod) and then convert all the music to their lossless format.

The reason I would do that is A) they have a longer battery life than ipods, B) you can have all your albums lossless quality on the go and C) most importantly it is one of the very few of these players that is gapless...which is important for live gigs.

This is if I were you, I would rather shoot myself than be faced with any more music conversion than I already have and in fact would buy a tin can and shout Ryan lyrics into it rather than do any more of this Ohhhhhh I hope that helps if it doesn't you can burn my soul.

[locke456]

Chris, thanks for the suggestion about the sony walkman. I'll think about that...but I have to admit, the last sony CD I bought had that nasty XCD software on it and wrecked my computer for about three days. Afterwards, I did a lot of swearing and promising never to buy sony products again...but we'll see how that holds up.
For clarification, as much as I wish I had sold the CD player with a car inside, it was actually the other way around, and yes, it was extremely funny, esp. after just driving 4,000 miles in 10 days, dropping it the pavement countless times, etc...I sorta felt like a traitor after all we had been through together.
Factory, that's a freaking fantastic idea. I'm sure if you would have put me in a room with an amp, a CD player, and a cord and nothing else I would have figured it out in a few hours...although I'm still going to have to get a set of headphones to take to the office; I don't think they'd be too happy if I had an amp on my desk...although the image is funny enough I might try it once just to see the reaction.
Anyway, thanks, guys. And if anyone has any more suggestions, I'm not buying for another week or so...

[Chris CO]

The sony proprietry software is shit awkward to use but on the plus side the hard drives turn out to be very large given their lossless compression (30 gig ends up more like 6o gig ipod) and like I said the battery life and gapless nature is something lacking on ipods....plus the sound quality is possibly better.

[autumnstars]

I have yet to find a car stereo where live shows don't sound crappy. I think it's more a question of the speakers, and in a car, those are never super excellent.
That said, I've given up on the CD player for the car (my car kept getting broken into to steal the stereo, even with no face-plate) and when to the iPod + radio transmitter option. Certainly the sound isn't anything impressive, but nothing worse than I was getting anyway 'cause of the speakers...