Mobile audio MP3/iPod/RioRiot, etc.

I have and iPod and the sound isn't horrible. A lot of the sound quality depends on the file format and compression quality you use. A lower sampling rates MP3's can sound pretty bad. With th iPOD you can actually store and use uncompressed audio which sounds pretty good but takes up a lot of space on the hard drive (700-800 megs perCD). The other important thing is to tooss the headphones that come with the player and replace them with sometehing decent (I use the low-end Grado's).

I have the MP3 Jukebox 100. It's great. I use 192kbits/second as the compression rate. The standard is 128. Some of the better recordings I go up to 256. I use this with the "airhead" amp and etyomatic headphones. For travel, the convenience and quality is tough to beat. I have found this player to actually sound better than most portable CD players. It does have a lousy amp section though--you need to get one of headroom's amps to go with this.
http://www.mp3factorydirect.net

Chanifin and Abstract7:

I was ready to rush out and buy and iPod today but think this subject is a bit trickier than I realized --

In the highest quality format (umcompressed??) how many hours of music will fit on a 20G ipod?

Do you still recommend the iPod or would a nomad jukebox be a better idea?

I will be taking frequent plane trips to UK and Asia from NYC and would like good battery life and maximum fidelity to go with my Grado Headphone Amplifier and Etymotics earphones.

Thanks very much.

CD's contain roughly 650MB of data so a 20GB disk will hold about 30 CD's uncompressed. MP3 compression at 128 kbs will allow you to put more than 4000 of your favorite songs on the ipod which is really nice. I have a 5GB version with 1250 songs on it. My Etymotics sound just fine without additional amplification and the battery life has actually been around 12 hours as advertised by Apple. If you go to CompUSA or the Apple store in NY with your headphones you can check it out for yourself. This is a life altering device if you want to listen to music outside of your house and can work a computer.

CD's contain roughly 650MB of data so a 20GB disk will hold about 30 CD's uncompressed. MP3 compression at 128 kbs will allow you to put more than 4000 of your favorite songs on the ipod which is really nice. I have a 5GB version with 1250 songs on it. My Etymotics sound just fine without additional amplification and the battery life has actually been around 12 hours as advertised by Apple. If you go to CompUSA or the Apple store in NY with your headphones you can check it out for yourself. This is a life altering device if you want to listen to music outside of your house and can work a computer.