Experience with portable "mp3" devices

Thanks, I'll have a look for some good in ear earphones.

Perhaps to deal with the mp3 compression business, I'll narrow things down to something that may handle wav and/or aiff's.

May have to hold off on the Creative Zen Stone (no aiff or wav playback)

Srwooten - thanks great link.

Loomis- The Cowon players have a remarkable SNR andplay wav files, so may be the ticket, nice one. Also, have to say, loving the price tag on your headphone suggestions.

Some great headphones to be had, at a reasonable price.
Reminds me of my all time fav pair, what i thought were just cheapo $50 sonys, but brought every piece of music I owned to life. They turned out to be like the candy you had as a kid, but now being an adult all the new stuff just doesn't taste the same.

Purchased the Cowon iAUDIO 7 and Sony in ear MDR-EX51LP Not sure what I was expecting, to be fair I think I set my hopes too high.

I 'ripped' flac and wav files of David Byrne, Miles Davis, Dead Can Dance and Massive Attack to the device put the ear buds in to be greated with a lot of sound some of which I had never heard in these tracks before, like an otherwise quiet chime, bird chirps, and performers breathing, I love headphones...

Though may be one of the better or possibly bet units available and features are abundant, most of the sound enhancements created too much bad distortion for my taste. The units EQ had to be brought to even levels to be able to play at relatively high volume without sounding crunchy.

I was overall let down at high volume with the amount of distortion in the low end and the overall digital sound in spite of creating the wavs and flacs.

It will do the job, though, is what it is, a very small lightweight portable digital device though capable of gigabytes of music. I would guess, there is no such thing as truly audiophile grades of such devices, but if I had to guess if you were of discerning tastes, as far as 'mp3 players' go this one would be on the top ten list.