It appears the high-end audio community and manufacturers are
slow-to-market when it comes to bringing an "audiophile quality"
player. Most of the high-end literature I read is still hooked on
vinyl and 50 pound mono blocks, and thats fine, I like that too, but
its not portable.

My research into high-end audio players shows that the high-end
"audiophiles" are behind the curve in this area. And if lossless
formats do not become more widely "useable" in the new devices, the
high-end market will suffer due to no demand for audiophile lossless
formats. So I came to rec.audio.high-end to find out from the experts
what is available, and it appears there is little in a player that can
play multiple lossless formats. I've been avoiding iPods because they
only support the Apple lossless format. I may in the end have to go
with one of the portable windows media players which can apparently
play 5 or 6 different lossless codecs including apple, flac, and wma,
just like a computer. But they are larger and the op-amps and D/A
converters are really not high-end.

I need the lossless compressed formats for my dj and karaoke work as
lossy compression just does not cut it there, I'm after quality.

Ok, but understand that you're a very unusual customer. Most of us have
no need for more than one lossless format. (And besides, iPods and the
like really aren't designed for lossless formats--they use up too much
juice.) And if you hadn't ripped your CDs to a particular format before
getting a player, you wouldn't be having this problem now.

bob


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