HELP ME PICK A SMALL PERSONAL PORTABLE SYSTEM

John,
As a development economist I am in the same position as you. I travel extensively both on short term assignments and longer term projects. In preparation for a new 4 year assignment I have recently supplemented my domestic system with a good portable system.
Much depends upon your budget, but for me, I would rather not spend too much on items that I travel with, often to less than secure locations. My advice is based on my experience and preferences.
My first peice of advice is ditch the cds. If you really want to, or need to carry cds then buy a cd walkman with a good digital optical ouput. This can be used with a good budget dac which will give a sound better than most high end cd players at a fraction of the price.
My preference both on grounds of portability and quality is to rip your cds and go for a purely digital solution. A Western Digital Passport 500gb can hold 1000 cds ripped in lossless format and will sound better than most high end cd payers when played back through a good dac. I am assuming that you travel with a pc so that you can find a dac with usb input so that you can use with something like Itunes or Media Monkey tp manage your files. There are many good compact dacs on the market. Try a google search to find what is available locally. Audiomagus.com is a good starting point.
As for amplification try looking for a Tripath amp. These are highly efficient and compact and are fantastic quality with high efficiency speakers. I have a couple that are the less than the size of a small paperback novel. Many Tripath amps will run off 12v dc so can still operate in areas where mains power is unreliable. Having visited over 70 countries, I value being able to listen to music on a quality system when the power has gone out along with the ac and lighting!
Speakers are very personal but Klipsch offer some very high efficiency models that are also very portable.  I have an old pair of metal cabinet KHL: speakers that sound fantastic. JBL Control 1's are very cheap but very robust for travelling if somewhat larger than the KHL models.
One other option is the Bose Computer Speakers. These are extremely compact but delvier a quality and volume that is quite remarkable for their size. I think they can be obtained for about $400 or £300 but if space and weight is an issue, they are the best solution I can think of.
Hope this helps.
Geoff

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 If weight and size are a real issue I have several options for you - put a bigger HD in your portable (you do travel with a portable computer?), use iTunes and lossless files, and get a High Resolution technologies MusicStreamer + and run that into a Soundmatters FoxL speaker system. The FoxL handles volume control.
 
Another option would be a 160 GB iPod with lossless files directly into the FoxL.
 
Here's a link to the FoxL - www.soundmatters.com.  
 
I reviewed the FoxL for Vintage Guitar Magazine about a year ago. I bought my review sample and travel with it always..

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