Apple Ipod

I bought a pair of E2's before I splurged on the E5's....for around a hundred bucks the E2's are terrific!
They come with a wide variety of earplugs...hard, soft, foamy in different sizes so you will be able to find some that can fit your comfortably over the long haul. The sound isolation is great as well. Well worth it, although I notice that apple has come up with a pair of "higher end" earplugs that look like the E3.

I am also a recent iPod convert but there is one nasty little of software jiggery pockery that you should be aware of. I bought the 40gb version so that I could get about 1,000 tracks UNCOMPRESSED into the little beauty, but be aware you CANNOT get them back off digitally. The itunes software cloaks all the sound files on the ipod so your computer can't "see" them. This means for example you cannot burn CD's directly from the ipod. I don't think the iRiver has this restriction so if I had to do it over I would probably go that route, although the iTunes software is excellent, totally intuitive and extremely functional. Apparently there is also some "resampling" going on when you load up using .wav files which might explain any "differences" in sound quality when compared to the original CD. I am glad I bought the unit though since I was almost ready to chuck my several thousand CD's since my "serious" listening is all vinyl. Getting on a plane and having a thousand of my favorites pumping through an Airhead and a pair of Shure E5's makes CD's tolerable. I hooked my ipod up to my ARC Ref1 using a pair of single ended to balanced convertors and a custom made mogami cable.
The sound is very good, helped along I think by the fact that the device is battery powered. I am so pleased with the convenience of the system I am thinking about loading my entire CD collection uncompressed on a LaCie terabyte external drive, hooking it up to an ibook and running the digi output through my ARC DAC3. itunes does really nice crossfades and the playlists you can create are endless.

I have a cable that gives me a line-out feed from the connector on the bottom of the ipod which is hooked up to the Airhead...there is lots of gain so I usually turn the amp about half way and then adjust the gain on the E5's to suit. I also bought a little wireless remote that sits on top of the ipod when it is connected to my main system. It allows me to skip through the tracks and pause.