I don’t know why MP3 player companies even bother to include junk earbuds with their products, but nearly all of them do. Its like buying a performance car with tiny wheels.
I have two that get the most use - Sennheiser PX-100 and Sony MDR-EX51.
The Sennheiser is a small set of headphones, and I think those provide much better sound (for the price) than tiny earbuds. It does let in some outside noise. The PX-200 model is similar, but more enclosed. The Sony is an in-ear bud (you push it down into your ear canal) that blocks a lot of outside noise, and that is useful in noisy places like airplanes and in the city.
Pretty much all of the very high-quality earbuds are in-ear (which is why I went with headphones). Some people use in-ear buds exclusively, but I don’t like being that cut off from the world around me; I nearly missed a flight one time because I was wearing those (they changed the gate and I couldn’t hear the announcement)!
The upside of using stock earbuds is that you don’t have to encode your music at good quality, because everything is going to sound bad anyway! :smiley:
