lol i feel like i should of paid you for your help
, it does seem to be the pre set eq's that are the problem, I set it to the user one and added a little bass, sounds much better *phew* i was a bit worried there, it does seem that my creative zen micro had better sound quality tho, this is because i never had any problems with the sound quality, but of course it had way to many problems with syncing with napster to go, i suppose the trade was worth it tho, i went up from 5 gigs to 10 "which isn't enough either ><"
thx again
Tim
Tim,
I appologize for taking so long to respond, and in this fashion, but I am receiving internal software errors from Yahoo when I try to you via e-mail. The following is my response:
My issue with Napster is that somewhere under 5% of the music I've downloaded sounds like it has either been muffled or recorded from a speaker using a microphone. While that sounds similar to the issues you're having mine is on a much smaller scale, and since you have the same problem with music you ripped from CD, I'm inclined to say that your MP3 player is partly to blame.
As far as the Gigabeat f10 goes, the reviews I've read have been pretty good aside from continued complaints concerning it's bundled software. There was one review, however, from Laptop Magazine, that stated ''The Gigabeat sounded a bit thin through the included earbuds, and when you engage the EQ presets, it begins to distort fairly readily. We got better results after boosting the user-configurable EQ by two or three notches in the bass. Otherwise, the player sounds clear.'' I'm not sure if that will help increase the sound quality for you or not, but it may be worth a try. If that doesn't help, and you feel the quality disturbance is too pronounced/disturbing, I'd suggest taking it back (since it's still under warranty) and seeing if you can find one that does not have this problem. A MP3 player with low-quality sound output is not acceptable, especially when it's in the $300 price range.
Hope this helps,
John

Chowhound
Comic Vine
GameFAQs
GameSpot
Giant Bomb
TechRepublic