What is the best audiophile portable wav player ?

[irky999]

Hi,
I am considering purchasing a portable player to play my flac
files. Of course the obvious answer is the Rio Karma. But it
seems that it will be discontinued. In addition, since it takes only
a couple of minutes to uncompress a flac show directly to
a player's hard drive, I was contemplating buying a 40-60 Gbytes
player that can play wavs.
Can someone recommend such a player with audiophile sound
quality. I dont need something that can play videos or whatever:
just music. A recommendation for a suitable headphone would
also be appreciated.
Thanks a lot.
Irky

[brimstone]

I'd get a 60 gb ipod and run rockbox (http://www.rockbox.org) on it. I don't have one myself but it is supposed to play flac and have gapless playback. My local hifi magazine gave the ipod video very good revievs in terms of sound quality but it's your ears that is going to listen to it. They also recommended the AKG K 24 P headphones and a lot of people seem to like sennheiser's px 100 too.

[LastStarfighter]

depends on the type of headphones you like...
over ear
ear buds
in ear

I personally have and love the sony MDR-EX71 (http://www.sonystyle.ca/commerce/servlet/ProductDetailDisplay?storeId=10001&langId=-1&catalogId=10001&productId=165588&navigationPath=n32120n32260n100128n100133n100129) in ears, there are reviews saying that the cords suck, they did! but have now been fixed.
extended bass down to an incredible 6 Hz; low mass for extended high frequency response all the way out to 23,000 Hz


another brand getting great reviews are Shure (http://www.shurestore.com/)