speakers in it) used. I asked Jude Mansilla his opinion on the importance of a good chassis: The driver (aka the speaker) itself is of immense importance, but the chassis it's housed in is also absolutely critical. I've heard prototypes that contain highly advanced drivers in a less-than-optimal chassis, with poor results. I've heard headphone prototypes with legacy drivers in new, specially optimised chassis that blew me away. Both are critically important. So when you pick the headphones to hack, use a pair that has a reasonable set of cans around it, otherwise your work will be for nothing. Upgrade the Sound Quality on the Player and the Source A good set of speakers is key, but they won't sound great unless you push music from a quality player through them. For most people, any old media player will do, but let's take a look at the ways you can hack and upgrade your current gear to sound better. Find High-Quality Digital Downloads If you run music out of your computer, it's likely you use low-bitrate files like MP3. As we noted when we looked at whether bitrate really matters , the chances of you noticing the quality of a digital source is dependent on the quality of your speakers. Since we have a great set of speakers calibrated and angled perfectly in our stereo system now, it's time to take a look at high quality digital music files too. For true high quality sound, you need lossless audio files