
Three steps to quality sound.

We all listen to music every day, but did you ever think about the fact that you’ve probably never heard your favorite bands, albums, and songs? That it was just an empty shell of a “real” melody?

If this question is interesting to you, you want to feel new emotions from compositions that you already know, then you are welcome.
Three steps to quality sound
First, let’s find out what makes high-quality sound. I won’t delve into technical definitions, after all, this article isn’t about numbers, but I’ll try to describe the main postulates that will hopefully help you open up music from a slightly different angle.
Step 1: Headphones
I focused on headphones, not speakers or an audio system, as headphones are the cheapest way to play music and get to know the world of good sound. To get similar sound quality from an audio system, you will have to spend an amount several times, or even tens of times more than the cost of decent “ears”.
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B&W and Beats, headphones for a completely different kind of music
Many believe that it is the purchase of expensive headphones that guarantees high quality sound, but this is only partially true. In fact, buying expensive hearing aids without thinking is not the best solution. First of all, the make and model should be chosen based on your musical preferences, not price. Almost all headphones (except booster headphones) have their own “sound color”, which means that the models are perfect for listening to jazz and classical music, and quite often do some nasty work with D&B or hard rock. Find the right headphones for you and the genres you love to avoid muffled sound or overly overbearing bass (hi Beats).
You have finally chosen and purchased headphones and are now ready to enter a wonderful new world of good sound! But don’t be too quick to rejoice, this was just the first step …
Step 2: Source
Today, almost everyone has a sound source in their pocket: their smartphone. However, the quality of this font tends to be poor. It doesn’t matter iPhone, Sony or Samsung, sound is almost equally common everywhere. If you plan to listen to music from your phone, then you can safely remove your expensive high-impedance headphones, which you have chosen so carefully, their potential will simply remain untapped.
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To get the most out of your headphones, you need the right equipment. It can be a Hi-End player (Sony, Astell & Kern, COWON), amplifier, DAC or sound card.
You don’t have to start with expensive hardware. Trust me, even a portable amplifier or USB-DAC is enough to get you started.
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AudioQuest DragonFly: Miniature USB DAC, great value for money.
Step 3: Source
And now we come to the main point, without which even buying an expensive source and headphones is useless. If you want quality sound, forget about MP3 and streaming services (except Tidal, maybe). Only no losses! And stock up on hard drive space, you’ll need it …
Lossless Data Compression (Engl. Lossless Data Compression) – A method of data compression (video, audio, graphics, documents sent in digital format), whereby encoded data can be recovered with unique bit precision.
If lossless is lossless compression, then as you understand, there is lossy compression. You are most likely listening to the latter. I will not dwell on the characteristics of lossless and lossy in detail, I will limit myself to listing their fundamental differences and basic formats.
Lossless: FLAC; A THE C; APE
lossy: MP3; AAC; WMA; OGG







