When I was shopping around for my first portable media player I was only considering two brands. The obvious one was Apple because the iPod brought status symbol coolness with its device (and who wouldn’t want to get a status symbol in these image-conscious times?). The other choice was an iRiver media player because of the great reviews it was getting regarding its far superior audio quality compared to the iPod. I eventually settled for an iPod because iRivers were quite hard to find at that time but the iRiver quality is something I’ve never forgotten to this day. [Read more…]