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You can compress something without losing data!

Consider a page full of a hundred thousand zeros. I can and just have compressed that from 100k to a short sentence (around 100bytes?) and you can recover the original from the compressed version in full without any data loss.

Trivial example but it can be done for music too, google FLAC

Yeah, but the point of my thread was that this is NOT an argument that MP3 players such as iPods are shit.

1) is a valid argument for many. Personally I don't feel the need to have my collection at 320bps - 128 does it for me and 192 does it for most others. 256 is probably good enough almost everyone and VBR allows for them to be much smaller when they are simple and easily compressed.

2) You don't need very expensive computer equipment, but yet again, if it's impractical for you personally then that's fair enough. It doesn't mean the iPod/iRiver/Zen is shit. I wouldn't start a thread claiming "Cars are all shit because it's really expensive for me to drive to and from work" - it would be utterly ridiculous.

3) No, you're right there. Some days you might have to just accept the CDs you have on the player.

Let's just point out, however, the largest player is 60GB and my mate has (at 192+ bit rates) his entire CD collection on computer, it's not a small one. This fits into 60GB so he's waiting for 80GB so he never needs to change. That chances of you genuinely having more than about 60GB of music you would ever WANT to listen to on the go is minimal, I assure you. If you're in that magic 0.01% that do have more than that, you are unusual and yet again, this isn't an argument that said item is shit - only that it doesn't suit you.

Optical cable with a digital amp may give slightly better sound quality though as there's no risk of interference in the cable between the ipod and the amp affecting the sound