MP3 Player, what kind? please help!

[talnlnky]

I've had mp3 capable decks since 2001. mp3 cd's are cool in the sense that you can back up literally 10CD's on one cd... or if you do a giant mix... you can get A LOT of good songs on one disc... talking in the range of 150-200 on average depending on song length and encoding process.

The problem I had with them is...
Usually decks will only do random play within a folder. So if organize the songs by type (ie. rap, rock, techno) then if you put it on random and are in the rock folder you will ONLY hear rock... sometimes I want to hear it all. And if you don't organzie the songs into folders somehow you end up with 200 or so songs all in the same directory and its a pain in the butt to find that one song you want to hear (unless you know which track it is.... and have a remote to enter in the 3 digit number.

Also...mp3 discs take longer to load and start playing... they are slightly delayed. An mp3 player shouldn't have any delay, turn on, push aux button... push play and you have sound.

Something I once started to do was actually backup all my cd's in mp3 format and then burn them to cd's so my car wouldn't have any of the CD's I paid for in it... that way if I got broken into... only my mp3 backup copies would be stolen.

The main downside to an external player such as an ipod is that they run on battery power... and if you hook them up to the cig lighter to charge you will most likely get a ground loop noise.