Ipod/ Ripping music/ Itune questions, etc.

[Liquifire]

OK...I have two issues with digital music. 1) The music could be cleaner. I just bought a 160gb ipod and plan on using a lot of storage space if I have to per song. I don't have a huge amount of songs (3k and growing) but I don't know if using lossless is worth it to record. I think I will go with the variable bit rate and call it good enough.
2) Also, is there any way to make the output signals approximately the same volume? I believe that there is, but I wanted to be sure as I can't remember. It just pisses me off to constantly adjust the volume because it is too much or too little of an input signal to the stereo. I am far from an expert in the digital storage of audio and could use the help. I am trying to learn a little more about it and get a decent amount of good, clean music collected.
Any thoughts, comments, knowledge or directions/instructions are appreciated.

Thanks,
Mike

[J GTP]

MP3Gain for volume leveling.

As for the rest, I'm not picky. As long as it's CD quality or close to it, I don't care.

I use WMP and MP3Tag to organize my collection.

[Bio248]

a lot of the sound quality has to do with what quality youre ripping it at. i have a feeling youre ripping at 128kb, which is low.

[BlownBigBlock]

Also, depends on where you get the music from, if you buy it from Itunes it will be compressed, where if you take it from the original CD it will be of better quality. I have roughly a terabyte of music on an external drive... (45K songs).

I can't tell the difference between the two when listening...

[tazyboy28]

its a setting on the ipod that adjust every song volume to the same level. u just gotta find it.