ipod and dac?

just another way to look at this, a $300 15GB ipod will give you access to 300 cd's, thats easily a $4500 investment. So for anyone who likes to listen to their music when they are away from home, traveling, commuting, at the gym, beach, etc. it is easily worth another $1 per cd to have that music available to you anywhere in the palm of your hand.

I have a 2 year old original 5GB version, no hard drive or battery problems. I also use it at least 5x times more than my home stereo as I travel a lot for work and use it every day at the gym.

I use an iPod with my collection and have been very happy with its performance. For critical listening sessions, I go vinyl only, so I primarily use the iPod when I have get-togethers or want background ambience.

Emster, I too have wondered about the possibility of using an outboard DAC with the iPod. Would love to know if anyone has and what results they got. This topic needs to get away from "is the iPod worth $400" and "hard drives fail". Like any device, it can fail. However, I have two friends that have generation one iPods and they are going strong.

That´s also my case, Troutki, I have a 24 months old 10 Gb Fist Gen. iPod and it works absolutely fine (Daily using)
And I subscribe your opinion about the topic.

The iPod is an excellent means of accessing music when on the go. Unfortunately, it's not really an audiophile product because it doesn't offer a digital output and the built in D/A is adequate, but no better. Despite that it's still an excellent product well worth the $300-500 dollars they sell for. I use a 30Gb model and after experimenting with uncompressed AIFF files I eventually settled upon AAC 192kbps mono files as my preferred file format. It works wonderfully in the car with no sense of compromise in such an audio-adverse environment.

I believe some of the iRiver products have digital I/O.

If price is an issue, there are other companies, like CREATIVE, that have hard drive players like the i-pod that cost less. As far as Hard Drives failing, I have had a lot of lap-top computers and have been working with external hard drives over the last few years. I travel around quite a bit and always take a lap-top with me. I've never had a hard drive fail.
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The Holy grail will be when you can get a digital out from your i-pod and/or your computer. Are you listening, Apple?