Also, consumer headphones in this day and age will be designed specifically around hiding the deficiencies of a phone/music player because that's their most com

Also, consumer headphones in this day and age will be designed specifically around hiding the deficiencies of a phone/music player because that's their most common use case. And they absolutely should be, people want their headphones to sound good. But headphones that make a bad source sound good may not be able to accurately portray what comes through a better player. I don't know if Pono is it but I think there's absolutely space for a hi-fi music player. Apparently Pono uses high quality DAC's: the ES9018 chip which cost about $65 to just go order.[0] The iPhone 6's chip costs ~$16.[1] That, plus the fact that the Pono uses better quality electronics throughout means there's good reason it should sound better. Ironically the 192k sampling rate is one of the least impressive parts of the player, to me. [0] - http://ecommerce.ismosys.com/ordering/product_info.php?manufacturers_id=34&products_id=479 http://ecommerce.ismosys.com/ordering/product_info.php?manuf... [1] - http://www.aliexpress.com/item/100-Original-New-for-iPhone-6-6-Plus-Cirrus-Logic-338S1201-Audio-Codec-IC-chip/32261899282.html http://www.aliexpress.com/item/100-Original-New-for-iPhone-6...