When Traveling, Best Way to Hear CDs...

I agree with the Ets for plane travel. They reduce the noise dramatically. I use them with a headroom airhead amp and a PBJ100 jukebox. This is an MP3 player with either a 6.4 or 20 gig hard disk. Even at low compression rates (which is what I use for better sound quality) it stores a huge amount of music (70 hours on the 6.4 gig version at 192 Kbits/sec). As for playing music in the hotel room I recently bought a pair of the NSX technology speakers on the MP3direct.com website. They were only $89 with the amp, so I figured, why not. How do they sound--like $89. No miracles here. For background music they are adequate. They are better than the speakers in my laptop. They can not play very load (background levels only). They have no response below about 200Hz. They are very compact (about the size of 2 CD cases). So if you just want some mellow background music while you read or work--this may be fine for you--but don't expect audiophile quality for the road with these.

You can store hundreds of CDs on your laptop. Use Windows Media Player to rip your CDs to WMA (sounds better than MP3). You can also listen to WMA on many of the better MP3 players (Creative Nomad, Diamond Rio, etc.) and PocketPC devcies (Compaq iPaq) when you don't wany to use a laptop.

I travel a lot and love the Ety's. I have used a radio shack 3400 until recently and went with the creative labs 64mb MP3 player. I can store 100 cd's and no need to carry software. The sound is quite good. This has been a great solution for me.

jeff, i agree, the senn hd600 are better phones but they make a lot of noise for people sitting next to you on a plane. i've heard that etymotics are suitable (comfortable) for something like 80% of the public. the rest need to get custom fitted earpieces which are super pricey. since there is the 30 refund policy it's worth trying i think. of course, this is all a bit off topic since mcrheist prefers a non-can system. for that i'm stumped. sorry.

I used to fly quite a bit and portability was king. I found my best solution was a set of Sony NC-20 noise reduction headphones and a Sony D-335 CD player (an old $300+ model). The noice cancellation could have been more powerful but at it allowed me to listen to music at comfortable levels while flying. For you flyers out there, the BEST earplugs are those translucent gummy ones - much more comfortable and effective than the foam plugs.

Kublakhan, I'd have to agree with you, sort of. Owned a pair of Ety's for a few weeks, but I suppose my ears are built somehow different, couldn't find a comfortable position to use them. I was suprised and impressed with they way they sounded, but couldn't use them for more than 30 minutes. Faced with the option of paying to have them custom fit for my ears, I chose to return them to Headroom in exchange for some Sennheiser HD600's. Comfy, sound terrific but aren't as easy to travel with. I throw my Panasonic CDP, Headroom amp, and cans in a backpack and I'm good to go. Buying from Headroom, you can exchange should you need to, good guys to deal with. Jeff

i know you prefer something w/o headphones but i cant help recommending the etymotics. they're small super high quality in-the-ear phones that are perfect for travel, especially on the plane since they block out all snoring, babies, insurance salesmen, etc. they sell them with a whole setup (small amp, bag, cd player, etc) at headroom.com or maybe it's headphone.com. 800-828-8184 w/ 30 day money back guarantee. i thought the etymotics w/o the amp were just fine and you dont have to remember to turn the amp off each time you're finished. if you haven't heard these things yet you should. they're true wonders.