Portable Audio for Snobs

February 7, 2005 2 Comments by Jake Brown

How to make your iPod an audiophile’s dream – It’s all about lossless file formats and good headphones. Via LHB.

2 Comments

  1. Tom4
    2557 days ago

    I rip straight to MP3 and have a $100 pair of Titanium headphones and my iPod sounds great.

  2. Amighty
    2548 days ago

    I am a headphone freak, my fiance thinks I’m crazy. It’s because I try/buy so many pairs of headphones looking for the right one. I’m not so interested in an amplifier since my iPod is my primary player and I don’t really want it to be any bulkier than it already is. Minidisco.com has a good selection, including a lot of Japan-only items.

    I also really don’t dig in-ear buds, I find them kinda gross, hard to deal with when not in use, hard to get a great fit, and while they block outside noise, they amplify noises like chewing and walking.

    Hats make over-the-head annoying and I used to love the Sony MDY-G72 behin-the-neck model. They stopped making those and the replacement is ungly and considerably bulkier (altho the G74′s sound really good). Now I’ve got a nice pair of the Senheiser p60′s (i think) that are decent.

    When I’m less worried about portability, nothing beats my GRADO SR80′s. On a plane or in front of a computer I like the Bose Noise-cancelling headphones. they don’t sound as good, but they do an amazing job with the hum of afan or a jet engine.

    I have started to rip everything to 128 bit AAC, and find that it sounds pretty good. I only notice compression in a quiet room with my studio headphones. It seems wasteful to do the whole lossless thing since files on the computer are intended for portability. What I have noticed is that some CDs are recorded much better than others, and it’s hard to tell where compression artifacts start a nd crappy original source material begins.

Post a Comment

Your email is never published or shared. Required fields are marked *