further thought marc,
Jeff (of Charlotte and jeff) had said that if you connected the ipod by the usb like data port instead of the headphone jack to the home sterio or car sterio that the sound would be much better, but I have seen no other refernece to this online ( and I searched) and the sales people at the source say that that is bunk there is no difference to music, and that that type of connection only benefits you by the fact it now doubles as a power recharge station . At apple they only seem to have the headphone adapter kits as well. In short to improve sound you are left with tweaking the encoding format (like I describe earlier) which helps a lot or using as encoding format that leaves the music files too big to be practical. You can also buy a sterio audio receiver (like the one i refer to earlier) which can store limitless cds in a onboard computer, but they are extremely expensive...I think that will change soon though.....