this all depends on what your needs are: - if you want to store a whole bunch of music, then you should go with a hard-drive based player like the Archos Jukebox or the Apple ipod. I have the Archos and it's awesome for me as I travel alot and I can store 30-40 full live sets on it (6GB, you can get it up to 40GB). The one problem is that there is a 2MB hard drive cache that sometimes freezes for a few seconds while updating the cache - which would defeat your purposes described above. cost: approx. $250-500, depending on make and memory size. - if you just want to store singles and/or maybe 1-2 sets, go with a flash/smartmedia-based player, of which there are many to choose from. usually 64-128 MB, these do not have a cache, and the stream is more reliable. cost: $75-200, depending on several factors... as for eliminating the time gap between tracks, i do not know much about this from the hardware-side as i listen mostly to sets - i think most players have a setting that allows you to do this. Also, perhaps mp3 converter/joining software can help you with this? hope this helps...