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Yes, I have...it SOUNDS like you and I are on the same NOTE...from what I have heard, these mp3 little toys just don't have the quality...I'm sure there are some machines that do. But I haven't heard them,you know what? I still prefer the sound of a record album played on my turntable,{Dual,with Moving Coil cartridge stylus} to cds! The digital age is awesome, but somethings are still better in analog.For live,bootleg recording, you can't beat the DAT recorders...I'm not impressed with the"compressed" high volume music files, I'm old school, GIVE ME QUALITY OR GIVE ME DEATH!...s-dog

I too am a stickler for high fidelity audio. That's probably why I prefer aural entertainment to visual ones, since almost always audio quality is sacrificed when video is involved. That's probably why I am paranoid about not buying any audio system that can also handle video, since I feel a part of the audio processing capabilities are diverted for video processing.

Anyway, since you mentioned vinyl records, you'll love to know about this. But needs a lot of 'em monies for one of these:

http://www.elpj.com/

ELP Laser Turntable: No Contact, No Wear!! Laser stylus reads record grooves using light, not a needle No groove contact, no record wear Pure analog playback Easy to use Accurate and musical Starting list price: $15,000 US The all-analog ELP Laser Turntable plays records by using nothing more than a laser beam of light. The result is lightning fast transients, life-like harmonics, and a musical honesty that cannot be achieved with a diamond stylus. Play your favorite vinyl or old 78 RPM records as many times as you like, because you will never again worry about record wear. Perfect for record collectors, archivists, or vinyl enthusiasts.

I'm really with you .... as I said, to me these toys, and that probably is a good word for them, are good for what they do, which is let you take several hours of reasonable quality music on the go without having to drag a CD player around. They serve that one purpose well. They're not designed to produce audophile quality sound. Although they're getting better. As I said, when I encode an MP3, I am very persnickety about it and do it just so, and I think I do OK as far as the quality. Although at a 128 to 192 variable bit rate, which is what I use, you can certainly tell that it's not CD audio.

People are working on it, though. I mentioned the compression codec called Ogg Vorbis which a lot of folks are excited about, supposedly you can get the fidelity of 192, 224, 256 bit rate MP3s at much lower bit rates (i.e., smaller files) with Ogg. The problem is, only a few machines support it right now because it takes more battery power to run it, and a selling point with a lot of folks who buy digital audio players is how long the battery will hold a charge.

Also, I've heard some rumblings through the grapevine, take it for what it's worth, that on official release CDs, the record companies are (a.) already compressing the files a lot more than they used to and (b.) are planning at some point down the road to outright go to MP3s.