Music player recommendations?

Lots of good advice here...thanks

Another suggestion for Cowan. Been using an XL5 for quite a while. Excellent sound. Only drawbacks that I don't like is the adapter used for both recharge and line out. Finicky, fragile adapter. But I limit use only to headphone out, and just put up with the recharging.

If more current Cowan models don't have the adapter issue, to me the ideal. Direct transfer from flac archive on my computer for storage and playing on the unit.

And indeed, if just compressed mp3, just pick the easiest to use.

Whatever you get, get some decent 'phones. I use Grados' iGrado and listen to them all day while working and really enjoy them. They stay on when you bend over (or run away from attack dogs!), unlike the portable Sennheisers I had (they sounded good too though).