[alyasa]

At 256kbps the difference between CDs and MP3s are mostly academic. Nanos have a bass quantization problem, look it up, they tend to distort basses very easily. The best iPods in term of headphone drivers and potential audio quality(also depends on your earphones) is the Shuffle and the iPod Video. The video at 60 GB has 64KB of onboard memory, is fast, is about as thick as 10 playing cards, and smaller. Carrying 10 CDs around is very irritating, I have been there and done that. I still have my MP3 CD portable player. For best results, buy an iPod video, get a set of in-ear modules(even cheap ones like Panasonic RP-HJE50s), rip at nothing less then 256Kbps. And also, no one uses the album art feature on iPods anyway, everyone knows it drains battery life immensely. Also, the 60GB iPod video has 4 hours of video life if you're so inclined. The 30GB has half of that.