iPod help needed...

Think hard, and perhaps experiment, with your intended purpose. I've been a serious audiophile for several decades so I was real worried about getting an iPod mini and using digital at all, let alone compression! Then do I need to drop $300 on better headphones, do I need a headphone amp.... But hey it turns out I use my iPod mini 90% of the time on a cardio machine, where I want something with a BEAT that is DYNAMIC and portrays the EMOTIONAL content of the music. I find that the default Apple AAC format at default rate (128 I think) along with a cheap pair of headphones is fantastic! I tried a more expensive head phone (shall remain nameless) and it was better in every audiophile way (sweet extended highs, better bass, etc) but not nearly as much fun or inspiring as the cheap pair. So consider carefully your intended application!

I agree with Artmaltman... consider your needs.

If lossless is really important, than I'd suggest creating playlists, and managing your CD collection manually. Do you really need access to all 110 CDs at once? Put on as much as you can, and change it up as needed. iTunes is a great management tool for your digital music.

Also, can't remember where I saw it but the 128-bit AAC is actually supposed to sound superior to higher bit-rate AAC.

Thanks for all of the responses. I posted the questions just after I received the iPod... easier to ask than read the maual, eh? :) Anyhow, I didn't realize you can load many albums into iTunes and then "select" which artists, playlists, etc. to load onto the iPod. Very nice. Also, it seems even with lossless format I will be able to fit about 1,400 songs. That should be quite enough, knowing I can cycle through various artists from the iTunes database I have loaded onto the computer.

I am still trying to compare the AAC versus the Lossless format...

has anyone else tried Grado SR-325's on an iPod yet? *grin* you are in for a treat!

I have encoded most of my collection in AAC 320 kbps and play it through the dock to a Musical Fidelity X-Can v3 into Sennheiser 570 headphones. Good for listening at work!

Apple Lossless is a great way to keep file sizes down (I currently have about 160gb of AIFF raw on an external FW disk), but I would recommend AAC 320 as well. The DAC and op-amps in The iPod are QUITE good, but not so good that most would hear a dramatic difference.

I'm also using an X-CAN v3 with some grados and love it...

The way I see things is, you're dumbing it down to some kind of 1/8" plug to RCA, plus the line-out on the dock, so with those kind of limitations, going WAY overkill is silly - unless you are storing music at full AIFF or Apple Lossless, going out via a USB or FireWire cable to an external device with SPDIF to a DAC etc... which I have admittedly done, but that kinda defeats the purpose of having a PORTABLE music player, eh? :D