school juke box project

Hi everybody,
I'm new to this forum and i 've got a project for school (professional bachelor in electronics, 1st year,2nd semester) this year, we were able to choose anything as long as it included a microcontroller.
Me and 4 friends have to decided to make a jukebox, i've already got some basic idea's:

1)we want it to have lots of memory so all my friends can put their music on it
2)lcd interface + some knobs/pots
3)artist,genre,album, playlists,things like that
4)erase song options

but i'm stuck on a few things:

1) In the first semester we learned the basics of a 8051 8bit controller, but i can't imagine 8 bit is enough for audio processing, so my first question: any recommendations on what controller to use? I dont care which one but i've heared of some controllers capable if decoding mp3 files standard, that would be nice
The language i learned with the 8051 was assembler, i found it fun and also wish to make this project in assembler (unless anyone here convinces me of a better language, i m glad to learn)


2) Is it possible (for a first year student like me) to get information (music) from the ipod via the ipod dock? Or is this to difficult.
cause the nicest feature (for me personally) would be that anyone could plug in their ipod, upload some music, and plug out (while the tunes keep playing )

3) any more tips, tricks are welcome

Greetings and many thanks from belgium,

Wannes

Hi,
sounds like an ambitious project for beginners. I would say 8-bit is not going to be enough and assembler is out of the question for a project of this size. Take a look at the Eval Kit

http://www.atmel.com/tools/EVK1104.aspx

It does everything ( and more ) you talk about. Has full schematics. Is 32-bit. Just take the bits you need from it and build your new project. You'll need to know C though. If the 4 of you chipped in $45 each you could get it.

Good Luck...