I had an old iPod in drawer with a dead battery, I looked up some of the audio measurements, and it's not too bad, even compared to modern devices. A new battery and an install of Rockbox has brought it back to life. Using the Rockbox firmware it's a USB device so you no longer need iTunes to manage anything...You can even replace the HDD with a microSD card adapter and expand the memory, also reducing the weight...I figured I play with it as it is for a bit before dropping $40 into it...
www.rockbox.org