Years ago when I bought an mp3 player, Creative, Cowen iAudio and iRiver were the recommended brands when it came to sound quality. It might be different now. Back than I bought an iAudio as it the price/quality were good and the specs suited my needs the most.
Buying a seperate headphone can make a lot of difference. Usually the headphones included are mediocre at best. I replaced mine with a Sennheiser model. It made a lot of difference as the sound was a lot clearer. The ones from iAudio had a very muffled sound.

It's not a matter of being away or not. That has nothing to do with it. I don't have to make a compromise in what I bring with me because it's all with me. And, if I get somewhere and change my mind on what I want to listen to, I'm not then screwed.

Touchscreens blow. Try beating Mega Man 2 on an iPad. I rest my case.

No offense, but that's an incredibly stupid argument in a discussion about mp3 players. Do touchscreens suck donkey balls as an interface for action games? Yes, of course they do. What does that have to do with anything?
Yeah, Sennheiser makes excellent headphones. I've had a couple of different ones of theirs, and I was very pleased with them all.

I asked the same thing. Read the rest of the thread for several replies with reasons why.

+1 for the Sennheiser headphones, i use earbuds (mp3) and hearphones (pc) from Sennheiser and you definitely notice the diference in quality.

As for why mp3 instead of phone, i prefer something smaller with buttons (i don't remove it from my pocket if i can change tracks with one button), besides, my phone already eats too much battery and even if it doesn't uses much for mp3 i rather have the "safety" of having battery on my phone and mp3, besides, it doesn't bother me carrying both of them.

i fail what that has got to do with the interface of an mp3 player

tactile controls are easier to use "blind" ie with out looking at a touch screen
but touchscreen controls still work perfectly fine for an mp3 player

Directly? Nothing. It's indicative of the error-prone imprecise nature of touch screens due to the lack of tactile feel.

More directly, most touch screen devices lock when the backlight goes off. This means I typically need to unlock it (or use some special combo) before I can interact with it; change the song from one I hate, pause because someone that I know just walked up to me, or any other interruption. These issues don't exist on non-touch-based devices because the ability to interact is always present. These issues are amplified (no pun intended) if you use noise-cancelling headphones, which take more effort to remove once fitted into your ear.

I personally own both an iPhone and 2 iPods (80GB and 160GB, both filled). The iPhone has gotten me into trouble when I've used it because of the need to act or respond immediately and not dick with the device to stop playback. To the point where it's almost caused me to drop the phone in some cases (an instant screen-breaker at *my* expense). If these points never ever represent an issue; people don't get irritated or any tangential problems arise from the lack of immediate response with you taking 3-7 seconds to respond because you have to stop the device from playing, you may be fine with a touch screen. Personally, I think they're for the birds. Especially for audio.

With the iPods, these things just don't happen *and* the device is great for audio playback *AND* I can take a formidable library of audio with me that puts the phone to shame. Not to mention, I'm not sharing the available space between apps *and* audio. For audio playback, there's simply no comparison. It's like comparing a RV to a Ferrari or a Swiss Army knife to an Applegate-Fairbairn.