I need your help buying an mp3 player!

As far as lossless goes, iPod has Apple Lossless (m4a), and Zune has WMA Lossless. A lot of players support FLAC as well, but I don't believe those two do. I rip all my music in Apple Lossless as soon as I get it for archival's sake.

As for the headphones, big audiophile headphones like the Sennheiser HD series need some real power to run at their best quality. I use a portable headphone amp powered by 2 9V batteries if I'm using my hd-580s, but with portable ones, there should be enough power in the player.

My real recommendation for those, however, is a nice set of in ear monitors, as they are very portable, but have excellent sound quality, and don't need a lot of power. I use the Westone UM-1 earphones, and am looking to upgrade to the 2 or 3s, but those are way out of my price range now... The UM-1s are about $110 and worth every penny, but if you're not looking to spend that much, you can usually find Ultimate Ears Super.Fi 3 Studio earphones for around $60-70. At this price range, they are basically unmatched, though many people do like the Etymotic Er6i Isolators. The Ety's are a bit lacking in low end in my opinion, and very uncomfortable if you have small ears.

I'm an audio engineer by trade, btw, so if you have any audio related questions, I've more than likely run into it before. I'm always glad to help!

EDIT: Kundalini, while Creative has very good players, I avoid all of their products on principle now... It took them well over a year to get fully featured drivers out for Vista, which is completely ridiculous for such a major company. In the mean time, an amateur coder who goes by "Daniel_K" modified the gimped Vista and full XP drivers to make it work flawlessly. Did Creative thank him, hire him, get their act together? Nope! They publicly told him to stop, and sent their lawyers after him.
 
What I need:
- superior audio quality (I find the ipod's below average)
- minimum of 40GB
- ability to use the player's hard drive to store files (i.e., photos)
- good battery life (from one charge to the next, but mainly before if needs replacement)
- affordable cost to replace battery (a new battery for my 2-year old ipod would cost about $65... Really? That's 25% of the cost of a brand spankin' new mp3 player!)

Here ya go: Newegg.com - SONY VAIO FW Series VGN-FW373J/B NoteBook Intel Core 2 Duo P8600(2.40GHz) 16.4" 4GB Memory 320GB HDD 7200rpm BD-ROM ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3650 - Laptops / Notebooks

It has a few more features than you asked for, but it's got a lot less compatibility issues than an iPod.
 
:lol:

Thanks kundakini for the feedback, and HVR and clarinetJWD (again) for the help and the time spent typing your detailed posts. I now have all the information that I need, and then some. I thought there would be a clear-cut market leader in terms of audio quality, but apparently there is not. If the parity is such, maybe sticking with my ipod would not be that bad an idea. The thought of being held hostage by Apple to have the batteries replaced every two years makes me cringe, though.

As an aside, when are these companies going to develop a longer-lasting type of battery (in terms of how long it takes before it needs replacement)? The environment might benefit a bit the day that happens, but Apple's benefits would go down accordingly.
 
or an ipod.....lol you can find those batter pretty cheap else where...65 dollar is actually pretty expensive....i paid 20 for mine on ebay
 

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