Better sound quality than the I-pod?

What's wrong with the sound of the ipod? People like to bash who ever is at the top of the mountain. The headphones that you buy (don't go with ths stock Apple ones) will have more to do with the sound than any differences in the players.
You might want to take another look at using uncompressed files. Because they are so large, your hard drive will be constantly spinning to fill the buffer..in the end your battery life will suffer dramatically. I use Apple Lossless with my ipod and at home to feed a usb dac. They sound fine and are bit for bit the same as AIFF files.
Do some reading before you buy..

Actually I've probably done too much reading. Negative comments I've read about the Ipod's sound seem to generalize that they're bass deficient and a bit bright/shrill.

I'm looking for an idea of relative sound quality between the best players where the supplied headphones aren't a factor. I'll be using seperate phones.

the I-river are far more musical sounding than the Apple products. Plus, if you find an IHP series from last year, you can play uncompressed WAV files, and they have an optical digital output so you can connect to an external dac, have a battery-powered hard disk as the source, and with a jitter clock, have what may be the best transport source available.

I have an Ipod, and find it easier to use, and the playlists are great. But the IRiver sounds better and the batterry charge lasts FAR longer.

The SHURE EC series headphones are great.