Glad to see this thread, because I'm looking for new ideas, and
hadn't really thought about MP3 players. I agree with Mac that
MP3 quality will be fine.

Years ago used a Win98 laptop, but found it to require too much
attention between songs and broke up my flow, and I was
afraid of reliability issues.

Now I use a Walkman-type CD player that I bought at Walgreens
for $10. I opened it up and soldered a pigtail external footswitch
jack to the pause switch. This works out as long as I remember to
pause after each tune ends. But I'm surprised that someone hasn't
come up with an inexpensive CD or MP3 player that lets you stop/
start/shuttle via footswitches (or at least via switches that aren't
microscopic).

Er, someone please tell me that the premise of my last sentence is
incorrect.

Nate