Help with Top End Player

[kryten123]

I am looking for some advice on a top end mp3\mp4 player and money is not a great consideration. My current player is an Archos AV500 with Shure SE530 phones. I am looking to upgrade my player and earphones to achieve the best sound possible. To this end I am having some ACS T1 earphones made and need a player to go with it. On the face of it, the new Archos 5 internet tablet would have been the perfect upgrade except for the poor resistive interface and not so good sound reproduction.
Nice to haves would be: Touchscreen, support for lossless formats,large hard disk and video support, although I am open to suggestions based on best sound as the main criteria.

Does such a player exist or will I have to make do until someone gets around to creating what I am looking for?
Thanks

[CrowdAds]

[DragonBottles]

Samsung P3 is my personal recommendation. Or the Cowon S9. They're both great players, you can't go wrong with either.

[no9]

By large hard disk do you mean more than 32 or 64gb?

[kryten123]

Ideally at least the same as my AV500 ie 100GB, as FLACs take up a lot of space and I'm not particularly keen on constantly changing the music on my player...but would consider it, if the sound was worth it. I am hoping this coming year will see some new players on par with Archos 5 but with Cowon sound reproduction.

[no9]

Until the 128gb + memory comes down in price, it's doubtful that you'll see anything other than archos with that high of capacity. When I got rid of my 60gb Creative ZVM I ended up with a 16gb Cowon D2 with a 32gb sd card so I understand your pain. Multible players and use of an amp could also help your capacity issue and SQ problem. The D2 with multiple sd cards might also be an option but the video conversion always left me wanting a better video player.

[The DarkSide]

BTW, no matter what player you get, it will be an upgrade from the Archos SQ - as it's quite lacking compared to Cowon or Samsung for FLAC playback.

Even w/LAME 192kbps and up you'll notice an amazing difference in SQ between the Archos and other brands (a Sony for example, as the A, S, and X series all are quite amazing - even the E series).

Also, don't overlook the Sansa Fuze or clip/clip+, both will blow you away w/their SQ - especially the clip & Fuze, if you can get a V.1 to put RockBox on them.

[kryten123]

Well I think I have narrowed it down to the Cowon S9 and the Samsung P3 - do either of them have expansion slots for expansion cards - I cant seem to find any definitive answers?
Which do you think I should go for?

[blcistheking]

Originally Posted by kryten123

Well I think I have narrowed it down to the Cowon S9 and the Samsung P3 - do either of them have expansion slots for expansion cards - I cant seem to find any definitive answers?
Which do you think I should go for?

Neither have expansion slots and I would pick the Cowon S9 over the P3. The P3 isnt bad but the S9 is just better over with touch screen + hard buttons, BBE, changeable UI, etc.

[kryten123]

Thanks everyone.
I went for an S9 in the end. I've only been using it for a few days and its instantly obvious how much better the SQ is over the Archos. After getting used to 100GB of space, I'm having to be more selective as to the music I put on it. I suppose it's not a bad thing, as I'm sure I had lots of albums on my Archos which I never listened to.

[mookee]

HES RIGHT; THE PLAYER needs just CAPACY LARGE ENOUGH TO PLAY FLAC...(so quit collecting mp3 s , start ripping with eac)...and to play that format use rockbox with zb. ipod

headphones : the shure reference inear . about 300 euros. yep