~6 purchased from itunes store.
Sound quality of each one fair (barely listenable) through earbuds and poor through Shure E4C's, Sennheiser HD600's, or even through my home amplifier using itunes going through the analog outs of the m-audio audiophile card in my Powermac G5.
On my new 60GB iPod, i have:
~100 purchased CD's (mostly classical and jazz), encoded using Apple Lossless(mostly) and AAC 320
~20 purchased CD's from my girlfriend's collection
~a couple dozen albums transferred from my vinyl collection using a mid-high end VPI turntable and audio hijack
~some home-made performances
~200-300 Limewire mp3's (mostly ~192-256 kbs)
still have >10 podgigs available for photos and portable storage.
If only the itunes store offered 192-256 kbs AAC, I would DEFINiTELY BUY a dozen or more itunes songs each month. 128kbs is simply not enough for anything but the simplest "tune" and, even then, it's not enough to bring out anything more than the tune's tunefulness. I made my own "best of" U2 CD, picking a la carte from itunes, and it sounded HORRIBLE both before and after burning. Actually irritated my ears! I regard the ~$14.99 I spent as money down the drain and would much prefer to listen to the original cassette tapes on a walkman rather than buy another U2 song from itunes.
Go ahead, lynch me.