by Mike Shea on 17 January 2003
I received a pair of Koss PortaPro headphones today. They are surprisingly small but sound really good even without an external headphone amp. They are lightweight, fold up nice and small, and sound excellent on my portable MP3/CD player.
I also got a jack for my Alpine car stereo that lets me hook up an external source. It was a week-long pain in the butt but it is finally installed and running. I actually had to cut, strip, and reconnect wires in the back of the head unit to get it hooked up right and I still have to have a pair of wires coming out from under the passenger side dash. Connecting these wires switches to the line-in. Disconnecting them switches to the in-dash CD player and radio. It was a pain in the ass, but only ran $40 for the connector and the RCA to phono 8' cable.
Between the new high quality portable headphones, the external jack in the car, the portable MP3 player, and three CDs with about 50 albums on them, I am finally beginning to achieve my goal of an MP3 world. I am keeping my eye out for a portable CD / MP3 / DVD player for movies and I have been raising an eyebrow at the ipod. $300 is a lot, but everyone who has ever owned one loves it. Now that you can use it with a PC, it is actually reachable.