The headphones themselves make by far the biggest difference. You might be able to hear the difference if you have an A/B of the tracks (mp3/flac).

Bottom line for me. I really like music. So I buy nice headphones. Simple as that.

Unless you're listening to 96 kbps Kazaa rips from 2003, better headphones will make music sound better. You might notice that cymbals sound a bit less shimmery if you listen to the same 10-second music sample a dozen times, but the quality drop is so much smaller than the variance introduced by differences in how studios record/mix/master tracks that it's honestly not worth worrying about (except maybe in rare, extreme edge cases).

Note that because audiophilia is fundamentally just dressed-up consumerism, you'll see a lot of this kind of gatekeeping poorly rooted in reality from people trying to seem more refined for knowing how to buy things. It's like how people stopped buying Merlot not because they compared its taste to other wines' firsthand and concluded it was worse, but because a character in a movie they watched once told them that cultured people don't drink it.

MP3 has a stigma in some places because old mp3 was bad. But modern MP3 320kbps is good enough, most people won't be able to tell it from lossless in a blind test.

Get whatever headphones you'd like to

320kbps is completely fine. The quality differences between that and lossless music is not very big even with the most detailed headphones. I have to focus hard in order to hear the differences with my headphones.

Headphones will always be the biggest difference in audio quality/listening enjoyment. Generally when you go from cheap (<$100) to mid priced ($150-$600) is when you'll hear the biggest difference in audio quality. After that it's all diminishing returns, and you'll have to listen to more high end stuff ($800-$1500) to find if you value those smaller improvements. After that higher end stuff, anything more expensive will be less of an improvement and more of finding whatever suits your tastes most.

You also have to remember that different people will like different headphones. Don't take peoples' words as gospel, and know that you'll only know if you'll like a headphone by listening to it with your own ears. I would not have my favorite headphones I have now if I listened to what other people liked the most.

Go to an audio store if possible to try some stuff out. If you're in the US, my personal favorite stores are The Source AV (Torrance, CA), and Audio 46 (New York City). Both of these stores are the biggest in the country, and are absolutely amazing. If you live near, or are on vacation in these 2 areas you should definitely head to either store because you won't regret it.

320kbps is largely arbitrary. it’s a container not an indicator of the quality of the music. dana krall at 192kbps is going to sound 10x better than the gone jackals in flac…

that being said quality headphones are a double edged sword. they will make great recordings sing and make you hate music that isn’t mastered all that well.

they are like a macro lens… if you want to peer into a track, get you some “cheap” grados for $100ish or maybe 560s by sennheiser. with those cans you’ll be able to hear exactly what the track is trying to say, for good or ill.

cd quality music that is properly mastered is really the top of the food chain. that’s when you’re trying to hear chair creaks and humming and intakes of breath and all manner of subtle positions and etc. but the line between that and 320kbps is razor thin and requires a quiet environment and a completely proper setup…

long story long? having quality cans is definitely worth it, they let you hear all the detail in your music. one thing to note is a lot of “audiophile” cans can seem “flat” to the uninitiated because they tend not to boost bass or sound very dynamic… good luck, as it’s one hell of a journey!

320 CBR is definitely not bad. Lossy encoding is generally quite smart. The bad reputation of MP3s comes from music websites that were encoding 128-190kbps. These were bandwidth-limited. I used to have plenty of home brew OGG and MP3 VBR CD rips that sounded just fine.
There are many expensive and unremarkable headphones anyway and among the good ones, there isn't a very big difference in transparency, even if the price can vary wildly. $150 gets you a trusty hifi pair to live with.

It's all about the mastering or remastering. I just got a bunch of Japan Remastered Virgin Vinyl, for my jazz collection, and they're like butter compared to the originals.

That's what you should be looking for(mastering). There's no difference between 320 and FLAC for everyone except for that one odd person who has genius ears.

I say enjoy your music. No fun in picking the music apart, trying to find a little nothing between lossy and lossless.

Unless you train yourself to listen for the differences or are an audio engineer, you won't be able to tell the difference. In my experience, I would have to turn the sound up to notice the difference between high quality compressed (lossy) and uncompressed (lossless) sound.

In terms of headphones, aside from price, know what kind of sound signature you like is the first step. Next. find a store you can go to audition them. Finally, I'd pay attention to comfort, built(materials used) and durability. If you hang around this sub long enough, you will notice that many like the humbly priced Koss' cans.

Good luck finding ones that you'll enjoy!

Find a high end audio store that u can listen to some great quality cans. You'll probably be blown away. I'd bet the farm on it.

Nothing prevents you from enjoying your music with better headphones. Sure, you might be missing on air, details, realism with mp3. But if those better cans have good rumble and make you bop your head more often, that's more important.

I went the highest resolution possible route, with ultra high quality flacs, upsampling, and a can of HD800S, and yeah it's a good improvement. But I can listen to mp3s on my phone with IEMs in the street and still have a kick ass time, it may not be audiophilia but whatev

Better headphones will make anything above 128kbps sound better. Below that and compression artifacts will really show itself…

There is no relationship between audio quality (in terms of bitdepth, sample rate, bitrate...) and good headphones. Good headphones make lossy compression artifacts more noticeable, especially on mp3 below 256kbps. These lossy codecs not only deteriorate the quality of the audio, but also try to make this loss less noticeable by applying psychoacoustic models obtained from population hearing averages (IMHO the psychoacoustic model of ogg is superior to that of mp3) but nowadays it is not worth using formats such as mp3 or ogg except for the needs of streaming systems on mobile devices or very limited connections or storage. For spending more than $200 in an earphones, the minimum detail is uncompressed 16bit/44.100 Hz PCM (CD standard) or FLAC/Lossless but the DAC is very important and there are so many valid ones at reasonable prices even below $100. The optimum quality for audio format is 24-32bit float as bitdepht and starting in 88.2 kHz (the double of 44.1kHz, widely used for classical music) of sample rate. The most common formula for high-quality content distribution is 24bit-96kHz, I think that it is a more than worthy quality and in reality is which is the original quality of many pressings of vinyls that are not mastered in a lacquer cut, although sadly I know of cases of vinyl pressed from 16/44 files and I suppose there are even mp3 vinyl pressed from mp3 192kbps bitrate and so on...

The bitrate is usually irrelevant to the reproduction quality of the headphone. 192kbps MP3 is not the biggest bottleneck with a Susvara or LCD-5 and the difference between that and lossless can be heard with some $50 headphones. Good headphones sound good (and better than less good headphones) even with poor quality files (128kbps and below). The sound quality difference between an excellent and good headphone stays about the exact same regardless if you use Spotify or DSD512.

For general fomo reasons I recommend 320kbps MP3 or lossless, but in most situations standard streaming is perfectly fine for almost anything.

I always insist on having the lossless copy of things for my collection, be it a CD or download.

For listening? Apple Music 256kbps AAC is just fine, even through fancy cans.

MP3 320kbps is adequate. You don't "need" more. Of course you might want more (lossless or hi-res), but you don't need more.

Even with my Andromeda 2020 IEM (very sensitive and generally considered a very detailed IEM), I have zero problem listening to properly mastered music on YouTube. Even a simple live performance like Ed Sheeran's Tiny Desk Concert on YouTube can reveal the difference in detail / "resolution" between my gears, but none of them sound bad because I listen to a music video on YouTube.

If the music is poorly mastered, you will suffer though. Decent headphones / IEMs tend to dig out those problems.

You might not notice quite as much the resolution difference between a $1000 vs $200 headphone, but certainly you will still hear the improvement in headphones in the $200-$300 range (like Sundara, HD6xx, R70x) compared to < $100 headphones.

With that said, getting a tuning you like will be more important than resolution, anyway. So starting in the ~$100 range, and learning to use EQ, can be a good idea too. You will know better where to spend your money once you have a clear idea what your own preferences are. And finding a place where you can actually try some things for yourself before buying might also help. Trust your own ears.

Quality of the recording.

Source first, then work downstream from there. High end dacs and amps will only amplify issues with bad source material. Not to mention high resolving headphones.

>Some people told me that premium headphones are not needed to listen to 320kbps mp3 files

Yeah what you would really need is a time machine. No one uses mp3 anymore. 320kbps with modern codecs and compression algorithms are surprisingly transparent.

Buy good headphones

1. Most people can't tell the difference between 320kbps and lossless. If your files sound good they should be fine with any equipment. Although I have mostly CD quality FLAC, the 320kbps MP3s I have sound equally good.

If you want to take the test yourself, try this : https://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2015/06/02/411473508/how-well-can-you-hear-audio-quality

2. Great cans will sound good with good files (which it sounds like you have). The transducer is the most important physical part of any setup (whether it is speakers or headphones) and should be the first thing invested in.

3. You should be hesitant to buy anything over, say, $500 from a purely audio quality standpoint. In my opinion, what you're buying past that point is build quality and comfort. That is just my opinion of course, so take it for what it's worth.

FWIW, I think the best deals for new cans below 500 bucks are the Dan Clark Aeon headphones on Drop (open and closed), and the Focal Elegia headphones on Adorama. You can find good deals on lightly used cans as well.