Experience with portable "mp3" devices

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.

The SONY Walkman line is the best sounding to these (and my wife's ears). She auditioned everything player she could get hold of and the SONY won hands down. She bought the 8gb S version walkman and is very happy with it.

I had a 20 GB Creative Zen for many years and recently upgraded to the Zune 120gb. I think the Zune sounds pretty good - certainly better than the iPod.

In head a to head comparison the SONY beats the Zune, but not by much. If SONY had a high capacity model, I would have bought a SONY for myself.

Also, one other nice thing about the SONY - you do not need to install ANY software to manage the player.

WOW Ckoffend, that's extream... way too extream.
Having apple lossless format available, you benefit to have twice as much music you can fit on regular CD format simply because not every song needs the full 1141 bpm resolution.
My choice is straight on Creative Zen Xfi loaded with most of FLAC files that do not compromise to CD formats.