Scientific List of Audiophile MP3 Players

Sound quality is to a certain extent a subjective matter. One listener's awesome, thundering bass is another listener's muddy, low-end nightmare. CNET lab guy Eric Franklin put a number of portable music players through a battery of audio tests using an Audio Precision ATS-2 Audio Analyzer to determine which players, based on frequency response deviation, total harmonic distortion and noise (THD+N), signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), maximum power output, and crosstalk.
I'm not surprised that the Creative Zen came out on top, "with a frequency response deviation average under 1.47 dB, a -82.2 dB THD+N average, and a -83.6 dB SNR average."