I am in the market for a hardware MP3/media (multiple audio codec support such as AAC and MP3pro would be great, but isn't required) player (I am trying to stay away from the CD-R MP3 players). I was hoping for some suggestions as to what players people have had good experiences with and what features I should look for. Also, are all MP3 hardware decoders created equal?

Personally, I would look at an Ipod. They are hard drive based up to 20gigs and appear at least on paper to have a decent amount of power.

Everything I tested from the Rio line worked perfectly but was very under-powered.

I was using Koss KSC-35's which do not present an unusual load and could not get any kind of volume.

Ipod's are spec'd at 30mw output which is pretty damn good for a portable.

I would really love to see some Ipod owners say what they think here.

Definitely not.

I have a Toshiba DVD player in my living room that plays MP3's, but it sounds like total crap. Not sure if just my unit is hosed, or if it's the design of the decoder chip.

Audio CD's sound fine on it. I thought maybe it didn't like VBR, so I even tried CBR128. Still crap. Tried different encoders. Still crap. Ah well, lesson learned. DVD performance is great though.

Edit: Other issue besides sound quality is volume on portables. Some don't have enough power to drive any decent headphones.