Hi.
I'm looking into buying a portable MP3 player.
Are there players out there with a line-out?
Do I connect them to my aplifier through the headphones output?

I need a portable player to bring with me to work and I need to be able to connect it to an amplifier. Will any portable MP3 player work? What should I look for?

I have an Iriver H-120. It has line in / out & optical in / out capabilities.

Get yourself an iPod. In addition to the player you can buy a nifty little thing called "iTrip" which lets you transmit (short range) your music to the radio. Just tune it the radio to the transmitting frequency and there you go. Very cool and works like a charm.

The iTrip is illegal in some countries, so you better check that out first

The dock of the iPod has a line-out, you just put the player in its cradle and you are ready!

The iPod sound pretty nifty but the whole idea is a small easy to bring along thingie.
Radiwaves are cool but way over the top for me...
The dock defeats the purpouse. (still a good thing though)

What do you think about splitting the headphone output to RCA and just plugging it in... ?
If that works one can pretty much use any mp3 player available... much cheaper!
I use a cable like that for my soundcard already when I hook it up to the stereo.

There is no problem with using headphone-out for your amp/receiver. However the sound quality won't be as good as with true line-out. On some portables you don't even have any line-out, so there isn't any other way than using its headphone socket.

Get an iPod with a dock.

The dock has a true line out that by-passes the internal amplifier circuitry that powers the headphone jack. Connecting this line out to your amplifier will give you a higher quality signal than taking the somewhat distorted and amplified signal from the headphone jack.

Does the Rio Karma have line-out? You could get a 20gb Karma for $100 less than an iPod and I hear the battery last much longer.

The Rio Karma does have a (RCA) line-out from its dock.

I'd look at either a Rio Karma (RCA line-out in the dock) or an iRiver iHP/H-Series player (optical line-out). Unless you have a problem with the dock, or you can get an iRiver for a really good price, I'd lean towards the Karma.

You can get the iRiver iHP-120 for only $329.00 at http://www.newegg.com/ AFAIK no one else makes an MP3 player with optical input and output. I hook mine (optically) to my Sony receiver, and the sound is excellent.

nifty idea! however, does anyone know what is the frequency response of iTrip? i mean - do frequencies over 14/15 kHz get clipped because of the FM transmission?

I will choose Rio Karma.
The most important thing is that it can play flac...

My Archos Jukebox has optical in/out.

-- Rick

You might consider the Neuros (which has the FM radio transmitter built in, and can also record to lossless WAV format, and is also cheaper than the iPod). It has headphone out only, but the signal quality is very good, its SNR specs are better than line out on some devices.

Neuros Stereo Headphone Output
0-dB full-scale output voltage 1.0 VRMS
Maximum output power, RL = 32 30mW
Maximum output power, RL = 16 40mW
Signal-to-noise ratio, A-weighted 90dB (min) 97dB (typical)
Total harmonic distortion, 1kHz, PO = 10 mW, 0.1% (max)

http://neurosaudio.com/community/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=6