SE 115 I think mine are. And buy some Comply (I think) buds to fit on them - supe comfy.

...on how you store your music. There must come a point where the quality of the hardware outstrips the quality of the music at the lower bitrates.

Normally I'm all for paying as much as you can afford, which will work if you are playing back at high bitrates or lossless.

...a pair of custom earpieces. I wrote about my experiences with these but I'm not allowed to post the link so here it is :

Custom Earpieces

I have wanted to try some custom earpieces for sooooo longand the opportunity finally arose. A birthday with nothing else I could think of approached, or nothing else, at least that didn’t cost a heart-stopping amount of cash that we don’t actually have.

I’m a bit spoilt when it comes to headphones. Many years ago I invested the (then) ridiculous sum of £250 in a pair of Sennheisers. These were absolutely spectacular, of course, but suddenly you are ruined for anything else. Try a pair of cheap ‘phones (in-ear, over-ear, it makes no difference) and you just can’t help but make the comparison. Add to that the way that less expensive ‘phones tend to move about, especially the in-ear types, and suddenly you’re on the receiving end of a very disappointing experience.

When the iPod came into my life, clearly I needed a pair of ‘phones that were portable. Sound notwithstanding, I just can’t bring myself to wear BIG ‘phones out in public, so I bought a pair of Shure in-ears, the E4C’s. These were eventually replaced by Shure (another story, but a big thumbs up to Shure for honouring their 2 year warranty, even right at the death) with a pair of 310’s. These sound great (they cost around £140 but you can shop around on the nets for the best price) but despite coming with a range of earpieces the best fit for me was the yellow foam type, the ones where you squash the foam first, stick it in your ear and then it expands and “seals” the ear canal. This works OK but they still pull out at the slightest provocation.

Which brings me to the custom earpieces. I saw an ad with a company called Hi-Fi Headphones for custom made earpieces but ones that fit a range of ready-made ‘phones. At around £90 these seemed reasonable (admittedly by comparison to other custom-made earpieces) so in I plunged.

The procedure was straightforward.

Pay !
Get a voucher for a visit to a local Audiologist
Visit audiologist. They spray foam into your ear which moulds to your ear canal and the outer bit. Only takes a couple of minutes to go off and that’s it.
Wait about 2 weeks and the postman delivers a nice little leatherette pouch with two clear plastic earpieces. The Shure’s push into these and the whole thing pushes into your ear.
But…there was to be a disappointment. The promise was a secure fit, great sound isolation and great sound reproduction, due to the fit and the way that the sound is directed into the ear canal. The reality, however, was that the right ear felt uncomfortably loose, the actual ‘phones themselves didn’t seem to fit particularly well into the earpieces, looking like they were made for something with a 90 degree angle, and the quality of the sound was really poor. I put this down to the fit, and the slightest movement of my jaw altered the bass response of the sound considerably. All in all £90 had bought me a worse fit and worse sound quality than the £1.25 foam ear pads.

Not happy.

Anyway, a call to Hi-Fi Headphones and a subsequent call to ACS, who actually make the custom bits, resulted in a second appointment to have my ear impressions taken. On the second visit it became clear that the consultant either wasn’t used to the process specifically for audio earpieces or wasn’t aware that that was the purpose of the first visit. This time round I was made to bite down to open up the ear canal and the 2nd set of impressions was obviously longer in the ear canal on the right hand side.

When the new earpieces arrived the difference was huge. As I said, the shape of the earpieces was better and the fit was now snug on both sides. Sound isolation and quality was world’s better and now there was no change to the sound quality or bass response no matter how much you jiggle your head around or even pull on the cable.

Now that they’ve been made correctly, I can’t recommend these enough. They sound great and are MUCH more comfortable that ANY other in-ear buds that I’ve tried – and I’ve tried lots of them ! They also fit a pretty wide range of ‘phones, so if the worst happens and you need to replace your ‘phones (or upgrade or course) then you aren’t wasting your £90.
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as Tony the Tiger would say. But they will make you look like a salesman for HP or IBM which isn't cool. Try some Shure ones - hardly noticeable on and with a little bit of rock heritage. And better value for money.

...Bose, I would abandon buds altogether and go over-the-ear. I'm done with in-ears, I think.