[Music Alchemist]

  The Lab 1 sure looks impressive! and I like that it can be used by others too ( wife ) ... 

 
Good luck getting one. Only 150 were made.
 
I believe there is an upcoming model that's supposed to sound the same, without the fancy construction.

 

[Morphious]

Wow, that is a very limited run, you would figure that 3D printing was meant to make things easier to mass produce :-/  

 

[jjcha]

Looks like you've got a number of options you're looking at.
 
Not sure if these are portable enough for you, but when traveling for more than a few days, sometimes I'll bring my ATH-W10VTG with me.  As you have a decent budget, I might look to the ATH-L3000.  You can stash these fairly easily in a roller case, though neither have the detachable cable you're looking for.  The L3000 is arguably about as top tier as you can get without dealing with extremely fragile/electronics driven headphones.  But they might not be portable enough for your needs.
 
If I kept a Grado HP1000, I might also consider it for travel purposes.
 
On the more portable/ high end consumer level, I use the Sony MDR-R1 mk 2 as something I can toss in a backpack/briefcase.  Just got the MDR-1A which just came out a few days ago and a Sennheiser Momentum.  These will be more portable than the Z7 you looked at, but seems to me you're looking for something a little more "audiophile".  I will say the R1 and I suspect 1A and Momentum sound remarkably good given their limitations as high end consumer, portable cans.  The R1s don't make me miss my better headphones that much when at a coffee shop or library or hotel room. 
 
I suspect you're looking for something in the middle with respect to portability and performance, then the ones you listed may very well be fine.  I'm not familiar with the Oppo and have my own limited experience/preferences against Ultrasone.
 
You haven't really described the sound you're looking for either.  Fast/detailed?  Soundstage/imaging?  Effortless mids/vocals?
 
Best,
 
-Jason

 

[Morphious]

OK guys thank you for all of your help!    I pulled the trigger.
 
Here is what I decided on:
 
Source: Astell&Kern AK120II.  It has all of the spcs I was looking for, got Great reviews and looks fabulous. I wanted something a little bight, as my home setup has all silver Kimber cables and has spectacular highs. I wanted this type of sound as well in a portable device and this seems to deliver this in spades.
 
IEM:  Final Audio Design LAB 1. every unreal review cannot all be wrong, even ones from known audiophiles... I made an offer for them and cannot believe it was accepted for a new pair. This fits in to my original idea of making the ultimate travel set up.   I have not had IEM's before but the over the ear devices had some drawbacks. They are big and bulky, and on long trips to Asia the headband was uncomfortable when laying my head against the pillow    
 
Once they all arrive I will write up a review. Off to download my first 24/192 audio files...
 
Have a Great day! 

 

[Music Alchemist]

  OK guys thank you for all of your help!    I pulled the trigger.
 
Here is what I decided on:
 
Source: Astell&Kern AK120II.  It has all of the spcs I was looking for, got Great reviews and looks fabulous. I wanted something a little bight, as my home setup has all silver Kimber cables and has spectacular highs. I wanted this type of sound as well in a portable device and this seems to deliver this in spades.
 
IEM:  Final Audio Design LAB 1. every unreal review cannot all be wrong, even ones from known audiophiles... I made an offer for them and cannot believe it was accepted for a new pair. This fits in to my original idea of making the ultimate travel set up.   I have not had IEM's before but the over the ear devices had some drawbacks. They are big and bulky, and on long trips to Asia the headband was uncomfortable when laying my head against the pillow    
 
Once they all arrive I will write up a review. Off to download my first 24/192 audio files...
 
Have a Great day! 

 
Nice. Astell&Kern's players are overpriced, but pretty cool nonetheless. Where did you get the LAB I from?
 
After you download 24-bit files, you can convert them to 16-bit / 44.1 kHz (same specs as CD) with a program like dBpoweramp and it will sound the same. You may even find that they sound the same when you convert them to 256 kbps AAC! And then, you have much more space available to fit more songs onto your DAP.

 

[Morphious]

Wow, I would hate to disagree with you, I can play a 88Khz audio files on my home system and I have used the dBpoweramp to down convert with to 256-355kbps range, and both my wife and I can absolutely hear a difference.  The sound stage falls apart, the resonance in the voice is gone, the overall imaging diminishes and the instruments lose their positions and it all sounds mushed together.  My goal is to listen to the best sonically possible music I can, buying/building a portable system that can do this then down converting even to 16/44.1 is just a waste of my money and totally against everything I set out to achieve....  I would rather have 200 Incredible sounding songs than 5000 bad ones  

 

[Music Alchemist]

  Wow, I would hate to disagree with you, I can play a 88Khz audio files on my home system and I have used the dBpoweramp to down convert with to 256-355kbps range, and both my wife and I can absolutely hear a difference.  The sound stage falls apart, the resonance in the voice is gone, the overall imaging diminishes and the instruments lose their positions and it all sounds mushed together.  My goal is to listen to the best sonically possible music I can, buying/building a portable system that can do this then down converting even to 16/44.1 is just a waste of my money and totally against everything I set out to achieve....  I would rather have 200 Incredible sounding songs than 5000 bad ones  

 
Notice I said that you may not hear a difference with 256 kbps AAC, not that you definitely won't; it's just that many people can't.
 
Did you convert and listen to 16/44.1 lossless, then? That's the real comparison you need to do.
 
All the differences between 16-bit and 24-bit are outside the range of human hearing...it's physically impossible to hear a difference unless your system is producing distortions created by the higher-resolution files.
 
Read this article. It should be enlightening.
 
And here is one of many threads discussing the topic:
 
"Why 24 bit audio and anything over 48k is not only worthless, but bad for music."

 

[Morphious]

Great info!   I have just bought the last system I will ever need  

 

[Music Alchemist]

  Great info!   I have just bought the last system I will ever need  

 
You seem to have a nice speaker system too. I guess you're not planning on getting a high-end desktop headphone system? That's what I'm most interested in.

 

[Morphious]

Correct,  have 2 nice home systems.  A Very clean tube amp with speakers that have no cross overs for classical and jazz/blues, and then I have a Bryston ( 20 Year Warranty! ) amp and DAC with 5 speaker surround for that hard thumping music and movies.   I went though Many systems until I found ones I like ( and my wife likes )  and I have not had the itch to upgrade in 10 years...
 
But now portable technology and SQ has caught up with the home systems,  I wanted to create a portable system that can at least match the pleasure we get out of our hone systems, without the years of trial and error...   Hope I get it right on the first try  

 

[Music Alchemist]

  Correct,  have 2 nice home systems.  A Very clean tube amp with speakers that have no cross overs for classical and jazz/blues, and then I have a Bryston ( 20 Year Warranty! ) amp and DAC with 5 speaker surround for that hard thumping music and movies.   I went though Many systems until I found ones I like ( and my wife likes )  and I have not had the itch to upgrade in 10 years...
 
But now portable technology and SQ has caught up with the home systems,  I wanted to create a portable system that can at least match the pleasure we get out of our hone systems, without the years of trial and error...   Hope I get it right on the first try  

 
That's cool, man! Many people feel that high-end headphones (such as the STAX SR-009 and Abyss AB-1266) surpass even $500,000 speaker systems, minus a few unique things that speakers can do. Another device I want is the Smyth Realiser A8 virtual surround sound audio processor, which can record and emulate seemingly limitless speaker system configurations. More than a few users insist they couldn't tell they were listening to headphones! I still want to get into speakers someday, but not anytime soon.

 

[Morphious]

Ok, here is an observation I made today. While doing research on Lossless due to Music Alchemist's comments and links above.  I downloaded 2 dozen albums and MQS files from LINN and others. I also have a program called Similarity App. In this application you can run an Analysis of a files to see lots of information about the audio track. Most of the files barely had any peaks in the frequency Khz range that reached above 88Khz.  I did a little checking and found that ultrasonically, Not many instruments can go over 100Khz no matter what, Symbols can hit up to 102Khz.   My style of music had a high of 55Khz on a 2014 master hi rez file. Everything above this if encoded into a 192 Khz files is useless and empty space ( I.E. a 0 in digital language) Most space above 100Khz is set to 0. This means it is just wasted space that cannot affect the soundstage, or anything else in the audio spectrum, as there is nothing there to play or affect anything as it is a 0 ( or row of zeros )   But zeros do take up physical space in a file, and makes the file larger. This would lead me to believe that 96Khz would be near the best any file can be heard, Maybe with clipping on an a properly recorded symbol, but even the reference material out there are not recorded to this level.   
 
Bit depth is a different story. the more / wider the bit depth the more it affects the whole spectrum of sound. It's more 1's and 0's that be crammed into the full frequency spectrum as the file is being played, and this has to have an effect on the sound in every way.   Similar to color bit depth, the more your bit depth, the more colors you have. Even if you cannot see all of the colors above 24bit, it does affect the image clarity and depth. 
 
Someone please correct me if I have went off on a misinformed tangent... 

 

[Music Alchemist]

  Ok, here is an observation I made today. While doing research on Lossless due to Music Alchemist's comments and links above.  I downloaded 2 dozen albums and MQS files from LINN and others. I also have a program called Similarity App. In this application you can run an Analysis of a files to see lots of information about the audio track. Most of the files barely had any peaks in the frequency Khz range that reached above 88Khz.  I did a little checking and found that ultrasonically, Not many instruments can go over 100Khz no matter what, Symbols can hit up to 102Khz.   My style of music had a high of 55Khz on a 2014 master hi rez file. Everything above this if encoded into a 192 Khz files is useless and empty space ( I.E. a 0 in digital language) Most space above 100Khz is set to 0. This means it is just wasted space that cannot affect the soundstage, or anything else in the audio spectrum, as there is nothing there to play or affect anything as it is a 0 ( or row of zeros )   But zeros do take up physical space in a file, and makes the file larger. This would lead me to believe that 96Khz would be near the best any file can be heard, Maybe with clipping on an a properly recorded symbol, but even the reference material out there are not recorded to this level.   
 
Bit depth is a different story. the more / wider the bit depth the more it affects the whole spectrum of sound. It's more 1's and 0's that be crammed into the full spectrum as the file is being played, and this has to have an effect on the sound in every way.   Similar to color bit depth, the more your bit depth, the more colors you have. Even if you cannot see all of the colors above 24bit, it does affect how the image clarity and depth. 
 
Some please correct me if I have went off on a misinformed tangent... 

 
Sorry, but most of what you said has nothing to do with reality. (No offense.)
 
The average human can't hear anything past 20 kHz. All you need is 16-bit / 44.1 kHz, with the exception of DSD, which is more complex.
 
It would be best to take stuff like this to the sound science sub-forum.