Comments on: Five ways to make digital music sing

Crave checks in with an audiophile about the best options for a high-quality listening experience in the Digital Age.

[CryHavoc]

I like a mix of storage and sound quality.

I rip to 320 kbps mp3 files.

I have a pair of Ultrasone HFI-780 headphones -- geared for rock and acoustic music.

I have a Ray Samuels Audio Tomahawk headphone amp. This is hooked to an iPod Touch with a digital line-out dock -- using the dock on the iPod to produce sound rather than the headphone jack.

There are many weak links in today's music scene.

The first link is the headphones. Those $2 iBuds everyone wears produce sickeningly horrible sound, even with the best audio gear around it.

Secondly, an ipod's headphone jack is awful. That's why you hear a hiss when you plug it in. The LOD has almost no hiss associated with it. Some mp3 players have terrific sound out of the box without a need for amping, though, such as the iRivers, the Cowons, and the new line of Sony players.

Lastly, of course, is the music files used to play. You will NOT notice a difference between 320 kbps mp3 and .wav file formats unless you have a high quality audio rig, and even then in noisy environments, it's going to dampen the SQ enough to erase any differences.

Portable audio bliss is not cheap, but it's a lot cheaper than buying a set of reference quality speakers -- and you can take it anywhere with you.


If you want to learn way more than you thought even existed about REAL portable hi-fi, check out the folks at head-fi.org

They are some of the most knowledgeable, helpful people on the net.

[CryHavoc]

Oh and for the record....

$40 headphones are not considered "high" quality. Anything around $200 is considered the starting point of real, quality headphones, although some headphones are absolute bargains for certain types of music (such as Grado SR60-80s).

[NineVoltToys]

The debate continues....

This may never end. In the 70's, audio manufacturers battled it out to produce the "best" audio equipment they could only to find that most people don't set quality as a priority. It's not that people can't tell the difference (technical attributes), it's that they aren't engineer types who care to pay ungodly sums of cash to be able to tout their systems as being "accurate".

Music isn't a technical persuit for most people, it's an emotional one. The song evokes an emotion and will evoke that same emotion whether played on a $100,000 system or a table radio. If you think audio quality is the most important part of music, you're in the vast minority. There are a small cadre of comapnies who still cater to your perceptions and you can feel free to invest time and money to suit your priorities. In the meantime, it would be very difficult to say that people listneing to MP3 files are "enjoying" their music less....

In other words.....Move along, there's nothing to see here.