It would seem there is lots of money being spent on headphone amps and high quality headphones nowdays. In the age of MP3's and other portable storage systems the idea of $1000 phones fed by an iPod is generally absurd and at any rate not what I'm interested in. The portable CD has been forgotten, if it ever was thought of as a high quality portable source. Years ago Radio Shack sold a portable that was actually good enough to be used in high end home systems while no one else seems to have bothered. A quick comparison between any of my portable CD players and any of the home units I own says there is a substantial improvement to be made at the very source. Yet the best I can find is a Sony that is meant of the music lover because it plays all formats of discs and has immense programability along with "Digital Bass" and two level compression.
Makes my heart pump peanut butter.
With sealed packages there's no way to audition a player before spending the money which leaves me to choose blindly from a few dozen models from Sony, Philips and Panasonic as probably good but not great bets.
Every now and them Sam Tellig mentions a portable CD player worth the money - usually a Sony ever since the RS units went away - but his last recommendation no longer appears to be available and there certainly is no guarantee with Sony the replacement would sound like the original.
The question becomes, has anyone found a really good portable CD player with very good to excellent sound that can be used either with or at times without a headphone amp? I want to drive some 32 Ohm Grado phones.