I've been upgrading my out and about listenings set-ups. My venerable Sony NW-HD5 is an old hard disc based player and I think it may be on it's last legs, so I did some 'research' (internet mooching) and got the folllowing :
Sansa Clip Plus (in purple !)
A tiny thing but very good. At first I thought it was a toy, due to it's diminutive proportions. Great sound and with a 32GB micro SD card, lots of space. I've 'rockboxed' it, (
http://www.rockbox.org/) but I'm still not convinced that that's such a great thing as it's made out to be.
Etymotic HF-5sPoor mans ER-4P, very detailed sound with 'lean' bass (as they say on audiophile forums), great isolation. Replaced my old Etymotic ER6i's.
Rocoo BADaft name but a great little player. No Eq or any other sound modifiers, really basic User Interface and no bells or whistles at all, just great sonic performance. Plays 24 Bit wavs - which is great for auditioning work-in-progress mixes and is almost completely hiss free ! My Shure E500s hiss with pretty much everything, but not this beastie.

So, I've now got some good gear to listen to music out and about, certainly not the last word in Hi-fidelity, but pretty good to these ears. Regarding those audiophiles on the Head-fi forums and the like, I was wondering do they really enjoy their music / lovely gear or are they constantly craving the 'even better' model(s) ? I really like the immediacy of in ear phones, but I find all earphones really uncomfortable after an hour or so. However, for that hour or so, listening to high quality playback is something thats important to me (as well as listening to less than brilliantly mastered favourite works as well).
Am curious to hear what gear are others listening to ? How are mobile phones / iThings these days for music listening ?