Any FLAC compatible portable audio player suggestions?

[benjamin]

I've been looking around and found a couple of players that are advertised as having FLAC codecs - example include the Rio Karma 20G, and the Cowon iAudio X5 and M3.

A couple other companies supposedly can handle Firmware upgrades from places like RockBox to make them FLAC playback compatible (Archos and iRiver)

I'm leaning toward getting a Rio Karma - but saw a few reviews about hard disc problems and poor customer srevice.

Anyway - any of you smart folks have input or opinions about portable audio players?

Thanks!

[AAR.oner]

here's a couple threads...
http://www.thetradersden.org/forums/faq.php?faq=hardware
http://www.thetradersden.org/forums/showthread.php?t=8277
http://www.thetradersden.org/forums/showthread.php?t=3759&highlight=portable+player

[Five]

I heard the Rio Karma is real good. I don't own one myself, tho.

[benjamin]

Thanks...and I see that I'm not the first to have asked....

I'll prolly go with the Rio Karma - you can still find them out there....

[AAR.oner]

supposedly they were working on flac support for the JB3 [don't know if that ever happened or not]...if it did, i'd go with the JB3 simply because it opens the possibility for you to record shows as well ;) i don't own a portable though, so i'm not much help really

[farmstar]

I've had a Karma for a while now. I use it almost daily without any of the problems i had read about. Great features, battery life and sound. It is great to just move flac files onto the karma and listen to new music, and i keep a bunch of my favorites on there too.
There seem to be great deals out there on them as well.

[4candles]

A couple other companies supposedly can handle Firmware upgrades from places like RockBox to make them FLAC playback compatible (Archos and iRiver)


That's mis-information from the FLAC website. Rockbox can only play FLAC on the iRiver H120/H140. The Archos players have a very slow CPU and the only access to the audio hardware is via a hardware MP3 decoder - so FLAC isn't technically possible.

But FLAC works well (and gaplessly) on the H120/H140s with Rockbox.

Dave