[Q: What file-format is best recommended by you to download purchased music in? And why?]

4 minutes ago, Grayling said:

Awesome, thanks for the advice. A45 with a 400gb micro SD comes out to the same price as the ZX300A. And yeah, that 45 hour battery life is pretty unbelievable! 

Haha yea I got my 400gb on Amazon Prime day for $135 bucks. Love it though!

 

[Q: What file-format is best recommended by you to download purchased music in? And why?]

Actually I just recommended to my co-worker to get the A45 if he didn't specifically want balanced. It has EVERYTHING else plus extra battery life because less thermal efficiency w/ the processing in ZX300. But yea the balanced sounds damn good but not like a must have if you have other balanced audio options. The ZX300 was my first delve into balanced portable audio so that was my main purchase point of it!

[Q: What file-format is best recommended by you to download purchased music in? And why?]

On 7/9/2018 at 10:34 PM, Grayling said:

I use iFi DSD Micro Black Label fed by a Fiio X3 into Audeze LCD-2 headphones... hardly mediocre, and the only time I can tell the difference between lossless and 320 mp3 is with very well recorded acoustic music. Even then, I have to really concentrate hard on every detail to be able to distinguish between the two. It makes no real difference with electronic music.

A rare bird of my feather....mine is iFi DSD micro black fed by Sony NW_ZX300 into Sennheiser HD6xx. I agree with your interpretation, however, I do tend to collect FLAC 16bit as my baseline bc I feel the rips to a proper FLAC are made by encoders that are competent and passionate for quality sound.