I loved that article about sound quality and such. As a (more or less) former head-fi member, totally preaching to the choir! I still have my proper redbook setup... next to the ipod, and a few different headphones depending on need. In the portable world, the Koss portapros are still a safe bet, as are newer Senn px100-ii's, or the ones I love are the Aiaiai Tracks. Then there are these two companies in China trying to tap into how you make an audiophile earbud, and they pretty much figured it out, Yuin, and M2C.
It's like with ukes, there are gems at all the price points.
It's also amazing how behind the times the record labels really are. They put out formed act after formed act, while people use Youtube to make something real out of those songs. Instead of recruiting actual talent, they'd rather waste their time shutting down those channels and pretending they don't understand what fair use means.
By the time they figure it out, it may not even matter.
