I have no idea whether you're looking for a headphone or an IEM. For headphone, I was told that a good all-rounder portable is the AKG K450. It has removable cables too so replacing it won't be a problem. It's an on-ear headphone. A bit over your budget though. The other alternative is the Fischer Audio Oldskool 70's I have the Grado SR-60i, and I was told that these sound like the Grados but with more bass. I'm guessing it's gonna be a bit bright. The Grados sound wonderful with metal and rock (I'm a metalhead myself), but I haven't tried R&B and pop with it. I've also looked at (but never tried) Audio Technica  Pro5 Mk2, Fischer Audio FA-004, and Pioneer HDJ-500. Thought you might like to have a look at (and possibly audition) them.

For IEMs you have lots to choose for. You can opt for Shure SE215 (removable cables, but earlier batches had problems with poor connection at the earphone end) which is said to be fun sounding for a wide range of genres, or a few from Final Audio Design like the Adagio III. Also

The EP-630 IIRC have a decent amount of bass and treble that is a bit unrefined. If you want a more refined sound of that, and if you can stretch a little I would suggest the Future Sonics Atrio. Great bass, which may be good for pop, and satisfyingly weighty for hard rock and metal, and has enough treble detail and amount to make electric guitars sound alive. This is one of the greatest bass kings I've ever heard, second in amount to The Radius DDM, but overall quality wise it is number 1.

It'd be sweet if you can bargain an Audio Technica M-50 for versatility. M-50, in my ears, are quite all-around for many kinds of songs. That's for headphones.

US=United States?
But, if you're going back to US, why not go back then buy from Amazon? There are a lot of good deals online which offer significantly lower priced headphones/earphones/iem you can get here in Malaysia. If you're considering purchase here in Malaysia and go back to US, go for Shure as they're priced quite lower here over Asian compared to their birthplace-US. Besides, SE215 (IEM) has detachable cables too, and are good at bass.

FLAC file can covert to mp3, not from. Just like you can cut a big piece of paper to make it smaller, but u cannot expand the small paper to become bigger.

Download the entire album? Well, FWIW, CD is the best. If you're dl-ing from iTunes or other legal sites, then it's no use to download the whole album. Butta, AFAIK, when downloading the original released album, it MAY be better than downloading the Mix ones, like TOP10 charts, etc. It's because the TOP10 or similar ones MAY NOT be recorded from the original source. So, in this way, dl-ing the original album is better, but...well, if you don't mind your hard disk space tho...

Shure's price? It's made in China... LOL.

Anyway, feel free to ask more question so that you know what's going on.

Cheers~

If you download from someone who rips it from a single CD you might get a more consistent quality I guess.
Oh and converting FLAC from mp3 won't get you any better quality. You're ripping something that has already have some data and quality loss.

To determine if the product is good without trying them out is to look for reviews. Not just one but a few, from well-known sites and forums, such as head-fi and anythingbutipod. Our own renowned reviewer, ClieOS has a blog called inearmatters. Look for a product you think you like and search for the reviews here. As for not looking at reviews, you can try and look for the specs, but those only vaguely tell you what it will sound like. A headphone can respond to very low frequencies and yet may not be very bassy, and may respond up to 25kHz but may even be very veiled and lack any sort of treble sparkle. What specs is good for is looking at how long the cable is, how heavy it is, what design it has (open or closed type), what cable it has, that's it.

Recommendation from phillip88 is also good, and if you can stretch your budget that far go for it.