Maybe audiophile quality sound when driving the high impedance input of an amplifier, but certainly not when driving headphones directly, IMO. The best portabl

Maybe audiophile quality sound when driving the high impedance input of an amplifier, but certainly not when driving headphones directly, IMO. The best portable music players I've listened to (in terms of headphone driving capabilities) were the portable CD players from back in the day. My experience from way back in the early iPod days was that it simply did not have the power to drive my headphones hard enough to provide good sounding bass, where as my old CD player (which could play MP3s on a CD), sounded much better. I always thought it was a result of some law which limited the power of headphone ports to prevent hearing loss in kids, but this could be all BS.