You do need the proper equipemnt for it. If you have like $20 headset or $100 speakers (like i have) you probly wont hear much difference. It also depends on the source of the sound of course. If you convert a mp3 to wav it wont sound better. But when you compress sound, you will always lose some quality. I wonder if its possible to have the exact same quality as the original source if you covert it to some other format, eventho its the same bitrate. I heard that you lose some quality when you convert.