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...
victorfuertes t1_it6p9jy wrote
Reply to What audio quality justifies buying premium headphones? by fdbeyaz
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...