What's the quickest way to improve the sound of your MP3 player? Can the cans.

The headphones ("cans") that ship with players generally are mediocre -- adequate for listening to songs that have been encoded at low-to-medium quality levels and usually strongly biased for rock, which is to say a lot of bass and not much high end. Audiophile listening, however, is out of the question.

You can do better, and it won't cost you a fortune either.

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Of course, if you want to spend a fortune, that can be arranged. Karl Winkler of the U.S. arm of Sennheiser Electronics, one of the world's leading headphone makers, noted that an iPod or Dell DJ can drive Sennheiser's high-end, $500 HD 650 cans. Why you would want to do that is another story.

Apple's iPod and Dell's DJ MP3 players ship with "ear bud" style headphone, a/k/a as the stick-it-in-your-year design. The iPod buds are OK in sound quality, Dell's a little less so.

Sennheiser has ear buds in its lineup, the best of which are the $14 MX-500 Stereo In-Ear headphones. I wouldn't rush out and substitute these for your player's buds, but they are good choices for a spare or to replace a worn or broken phone. I ought to disclose here, though, that I am not fond of ear buds; I just don't like the feel of having something in my ear. But the MX-500s are small and come with a convenient storage case, so I do have a pair that I can stash in my briefcase to use for listening to music on my PDA.

But for a more serious upgrade, I recommend the $36 PX 100 cans. These are standard over-the-ear phones, but in a small size with a neat fold-up design that lets you stash them in a protective plastic travel case. Winkler noted that there is only so much you can do with small earpieces, which limit the ability to generate sounds, but Sennheiser compensated with drivers (the actual electronic components that produce sound) that have a very wide frequency response.

The result are headphones that strike a great balance of compactness, comfort, sound, and price. I use mine for exercise and other everyday uses. If you have good music player, I strongly recommend you get a pair.

For travel, though, I go a slightly different direction, the $100 PXC 250s. While the fold-up headband design is basically the same as the PX 100's, the earpieces are what's called a "sealed" design, meaning that they are designed to seal out some outside noise.

More important, the PXC 250 has noise-cancellation circuitry, which is effective at quieting the drone of airplane engines or other constant background noises. Sound cancellation works by detecting background sounds and generating reverse-image sound waves that cancel out the noise. I tested with jazz and classical pieces that have the kind of quiet passages that are hard to hear in noisy places, and was suitably impressed. The effect is a little hard to describe, and you really should check this out yourself, but it isn't just that the background noise is quieted. When you click on the cancellation circuit, it is as if a muffle is removed from your music, and it plays with a previously missing clarity.

The cancellation electronics are in a small tube, slightly larger than the diameter of the two AAA batteries it contains. An easily located thumb-switch turns it on or off. A padded nylon case is included, as is a double-plug adapter that lets you plug the PXC 250s into airline headset jacks.

The PXC 250s are probably the best value in this type of product -- Bose's much-hyped noise-canceling cans cost three times as much -- and are an excellent choice for the road warrior.

One other Sennheiser to consider are the $48 HD-497s. Sennheiser's "400" series is its value line, priced well below its audiophile 500 and 600 phones. The 497 offers sensational sound for the money, along with cool silvery styling. Alas, it also is bulky and does not fold up or otherwise slim down for travel, and really is not practical to take on the road. But they are what I hook up to my music players when I am in the office and want to shut out the world. If Sennheiser made a version that was easier to pack, it might well be my one and only portable player headphone.

While a few audiophiles think nothing of spending hundreds of dollars on headphones, Winkler said that the typical consumer is resistant to spending large sums on them. There tends to be price resistance at $50, he said, and even more at $100.

I suppose I can see where a consumer who just shelled out 500 bucks for a top-of-the-line iPod would resent the idea of need to shell out more for new headphones (or would simply assume that at that price the standard buds must be great). I'd argue instead that if you spent that kind of money on a player, you ought to be getting the best sound out of it you can -- with good cans.

(c) 2004 Al Gordon.

In addition to his computer interests, Al Gordon is a principal in the Boston-area strategic consulting firm, Mary Fifield Associates, www.maryfifieldassociates.com

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You can reach Al Gordon at:

al@tnpcnewsletter.com

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