Got iPod, how to hook up?

1) rip something as an AIFF file..that is the same as a compact disc..no compression. Yes it takes up a lot of room, and yes it's harder on batteries, but at least you are starting with the best quality.
2) Use the base station and a mini to rca adapter from RatShack or similar. Do NOT keep the iPod plugged into your computer while it's plugged into your hi-fi...lot's of noise there.
3) Listen. It's not the greatest, but it's really not that bad at all..as said above it's great for parties or background tunes while you make dinner.
Enjoy, it's a cool toy.
Steve

I think bwhite may have hit it--you may have a bunch of bad mp3s. I'm a windows user, so I rip with EAC and LAME using -alt preset extreme for making "portable size" mp3s. You might try just ripping to a WAV and seeing how that sounds. If the WAV still sounds bad, I don't think you will get any better results using better software, since that (I thought) WAV is the native CD format. If the WAVs sound OK, but your mp3s sound better, try varying the ripping program.

The data on CD's is in CDA format - whatever that is. :) CDA gets translated into other formats (WAV,AIFF,MP3,etc.)when "ripped" from CD and then re-encoded back to CDA when put back on a CD.