[OniVerde]

90% of my music listening is done from my Rio Karma. And most of the files are 160kps and above. How high end a headphone can I go before I start noticing the flaws? I want to be able to enjoy the music. What's the most high end headphone/amp combo you guys recommend? I would especially like to hear from fellow Karma owners.

 

[taymat]

Well at 160kbps there will be noticeable differences to the original cd and codec induced artifacts so I'd say what you have will do you just fine for now. However you could try a grado sr-60/80 or alessandro ms-1 if you like the portapro, as it sounds grado-like apparently.

 

[breez]

Depends on what codec you are using. A recent version of Ogg Vorbis @ around 160kbps using VBR isn't bad at all

Then again, 160kbps CBR MP3 with something other than LAME might sound quite bad.

 

[nickchen]

I'm not sure if the single view towards bitrate isn't a bit too technical. I have tons of MP3, 50% of it being from illegal Kazaa source. Some 192 kbit really sound more illegal than their source, whereas I also have several 128 kbit pieces which blow my head away. Just listened to "lifeform" from Future Sound of London on my Beyer DT 770 Pro yesterday, which is comletely coded in 128 kbit, and found no lacking quality.

Maybe it's also a question, how the MP3 was coded and what software was used. It had some cheapish encoder program in the late 90's, and its results were cheapish as well. Nowadays I use Music Match Jukebox or Soundforge to encode MP3s, and the resulting MP3-files sound much, much better (even on 128 kbit, but I rather use 192 or 256 kbit).

I think, some people tend to play an audio-CD on local player and plug it to the line-in source of their (on-board, of course) soundcard and do hard-disk recording, and this will be encoded in the background afterwards while playing some fat dircectX-game in the foreground. I know, I'm exagerating, but that is how some of them sound.

 

[EdipisReks]

i think 160 KBPS MP3's sound kinda weird, even using LAME. most of my listening at the computer is done with the standard or insane presets in LAME (which makes MP3's around 224 and 256 kbps, respectively), or 224 kbps AAC. with my Corda HA-1 MKII and Sony CD3000's or Etymotic ER-4P/S, the sound quality is absolutely fine for casual listening. i think that as long as you aren't doing critical listening, compressed music can sound absolutely fine with most set ups, as long as the codec is decent and the bitrate is fairly high. for serious listening i break out the CD's or encode in lossless, but compressed music is very handy.