sghound

good line of thinking. for me, slight diff, i'd get the Mylar1 or 3, stick with it until i've saved up for UM2 or even the upcoming Westone 3 (not UM3 which is commonly mistaken for).

generally, i like the Cowon & Samsung SQ over the Meizu. in terms of which Cowon model or K3, it really boils down to your personal preferences. if you want a quality MP3 music maker which is ultra-portable, then the K3 is hard to beat. if you wanna play higher quality/size formats like FLAC, then u gotta go the way of something like X5, but together with that comes a larger package with greater fragility (HDD). so weigh your priorities b4 making the decision. for myself, a protable rig has to be ultra-portable with minimum compromises. i chose Flash players coz their smaller, and more durable than HDD (better try not to drop). i can live with MP3 at 320kbps played back on a 8GB flash player, thru a quality portable amp and quality IEM. on my current 2GB K3, i store the bitrate at 128kbps, tats why i'm eyeing the 8GB variant so that i can pump up the quality to 320.

all you need to know http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?ti...less_comparison

yeah the HDD is big enuf for lossless. but i'm not sure if it can support WMA lossless. FLAC is supported though, and is arguably the best sounding & most widely supported lossless format currently.

the ipod can play flac if u replace the entire firmware with rockbox. on its own it can support lossless AAC not the superior FLAC. http://www.rockbox.org/ another killa FLAC product, many consider the X5 to be the king of portable players for sound quality. Cowon seems to be way ahead of the game. http://www.cowonglobal.com/product/product_X5_feature.php

look no further http://en.meizu.com/product_m3.asp

Sennheiser HD25-1

i second that. Mylarones are unbeatable for that price range. $45 nia at Jaben.

try the $45 Crossroads Mylarones at Jaben Adelphi.

for newbie, the biggest bang for the buck has to be the CROSSROADS MYLARONES. untouchable for the price.

looks like the OVC T25. a copy of the Vibes. http://sound.zol.com.cn/40/402528.html

kena the same problem twice liao. damm sick of the poor grado QC. nice sounding drivers for the price though. but the comfort and QC very much undesired. pity.

no trial pair. but headfi got very good reviews, and they're quite accurate most of the time. pray tell, what phones u got? brand? pix?

checked out DG Lifestyle yesterday but the $115 offer was only for their opening sale. they now tag it at $169 which is still the lowest in town.