Headphones
I consider myself to be a practical audiophile. That is to say, I like my music to sound as good as it can, but I accept that there's a level at which that becomes impractical. For example, cd does sound better than mp3, and vinyl does sound better than cd, but I like to take my music with me, into the car, and to work, and that sort of thing, and the needle keeps slipping off the record every time I go over a pothole, so it seems like an mp3 player is still the most practical thing to listen to music on.
So, within an mp3 player, how is the best possible sound achieved? There tends to be two factors to this. First, bitrate. You can judge for yourself the point at which you stop hearing a difference, but I find that good sound from an mp3 doesn't really start to happen until after 192kbps - so much gets lost in the downgrading that your computer does when it rips from a cd at 128 or even 64kbps. Most of us have enough harddrive space to store decent quality mp3s nowadays (and if you don't, an extra 500gb costs less than $100 and and well worth it), and if you're keeping the bitrate low to preserve space on your mp3 player, I'd question the logic there - slightly fewer, higher quality songs must be a better listening experience than 10 or 20 additional low bitrate tracks that have that digital artifact sound strangely reminiscent of someone farting in the bathtub.
But the second factor in the sound of your mp3 player, and the reason I wrote this thing to start with, is your headphones. The highest quality sound in the world, coming through those awful white iPod earbuds, is still going to sound you're listening to the band on the other side of a brick wall that you've covered in 7 layers of pillows. The cheapest way to get the best sound from headphones, of course, is to go with the big over the ear can style ones, but practicality rules that out for most of us - they're difficult to carry around, jogging is impossible, and you look like an escaped mental patient with them on. So what to do? Earbuds range from the ridiculously cheap (Wal-Mart sells some for $1.99/pair) to ridiculously expensive (you can get some that are are specially molded to the inside of your particular ears for around $1500), with many options in between. My favorite model that I've tried has to be these Sonys, but at $45 per pair they're not cheap, and unfortunately they're about as durable as a poorly constructed metaphor. If you plan to listen through them standing up straight, perfectly still, with no movement, and never take them out of your ears again, then they're a perfect pair. I went through 3 pairs in 2008, however, and spending $135/year on headphones just isn't good stewardship. They do sound fantastic though, and if they ever make a more durable model, I'll be first in line. But until then... Altec Lansing saves the day.
These headphones, the UHP106NP Backbeat Classics, are very, very nearly as good as the Sonys, and, through the website I just linked to twice (click here, a third time!), are less than half the price ($18 before shipping). They're incredibly durable, have a cloth covered cord (so it doesn't tangle), and sound fantastic. The cord is a bit noisy when it rubs on things, so you might want to safety pin it to your shirt or something when running, but on the whole, they're the best combination of value and sound I've ever come across. So throw away the iPod ones, and the Skull Candy ones (why everyone thinks they're high-end I have no idea, I've tried several pairs and they've all sounded awful), and experience the sound that your favorite bands spent months in the studio trying to create.
T
