No no it's not man territory, it's nerd territory. Honestly, I'm an iPod guy, but I only play music. They just have the largest hard drive I've seen so I can store all my songs. As long as you aren't going to be storing tons of music, mp3 players aren't bad.

As for a good source for music, iTunes may be risky for mp3 players since the purchased songs are in an aac file, which I'm not sure if mp3 players play that format.

As for the stereo being "iPod ready", see if it only has a USB port for it or if there is a port/hole in it that says "AUX IN". If it has AUX IN, you should be good, but if you only have a USB port for the iPod, it may not work.

Hi i just thought id throw a "how to" on ripping your existing CDs into MP3 format. Its pretty easy and obviously free.

How to turn a CD into MP3s - Music Center - CNET.com

I think iTunes downloads as AAC by default but there's a setting somewhere that will allow you to download MP3s instead.

iTunes also has an option in one of its menus to "convert to MP3" any audio file in your iTunes Library.

I'd be careful converting a lossy file, if you you'll lose quality and maybe introduce artifacts.

i love my sony mp3 player. im a windows user so its fun to transfer my mp3s to the device. i was never a fan of apple files and the whole itunes system. i used to have an ipod and it was funky. i remember back in the day my main jam device was the minidisc..and that was alot of fun but hell was it annoying to record discs and forward or rewind to get to the track you like.

I have tons of MP3s always use an MP3 player. Ipods work well but I hate Itunes, although I have to use it to load my wifes Apple devices.

I dont use a player anymore, I only listen in my car these days, but I have several stored away. I used a tiny little Sansa when we were going to the gym. Also got a Fuse for my wife, but she liked Ipod better. So after she discarded it I put Rockbox on it, that really made it great for me, it allows you to tweak many settings, change themes, create playlists on the device, adds lots of EQ and audio settings, and as a bonus it puts a bunch of games and apps on it. I wonder if it still works I havent used it for years.