ok, here is a write up on how to get as many songs as possible onto your mp4 player.
keep in mind this is about quantity, not quality. the process I am about to go through will give you good sound quality for an mp4 player, but if you hook you player up to your car audio or home audio system, you can still do this process, but choose better quality options...
so here goes....
first you need to download a audio convertor, i like "CDex" that i downloaded from sourceforge.com,
http://sourceforge.net/projects/cdexos
it does more than what i am using it for, but what i am using it for, it works perfect and it is very quick doing it to.
first, download the file to your desktop and then run the file (you may need a zip extractor). once you install the software, you will have a screen like this...
once you get to this point, you will need to change a few of the settings from default.
you will need to click "options" at the top. when it opens, you need to change the setting to "min-96kbs" and "max-96kbs" and then save it or click ok.
if you leave the default file location alone, once you encode the music, it will be located in your "documents>music>mp3" folder i believe. if you want it to save it to another folder, you can change that setting in the "options" as well.
once your done with that, this program supports "drag and drop". so open up the folder you have your music in. I personally have all of my mp4 players music in one folder, all 500+ songs. i then highlight all 500+ songs, or ctrl+a, and then drag them to the CDex screen and drop them in.
when you do that, a new window will pop up, just click the "encode" button and it will begin.
each song will take 15-20 seconds to encode to the new settings on a good computer, longer times should be expected for slower computers and less memory.
just an FYI, this is a simple how to, you can obviously select many different options with this program, just be carefull on what you choose. and if you do anything different that what I have suggested, just make sure you try a couple songs first before you do all of them to make sure they sound ok to you, because i noticed if you go lower than 96kbs, the songs sound very "tinny" like they are played in a metal box. not good.
with the settings i gave, you can get ~700 songs on a 2gb device.
hope some of you find this useful