There are a few things going on here.  The first, as has already been suggested, is the law of diminishing returns. To get better genuine performance, that is, lower distortion and more detail retrieval, you sometimes need to spend a disproportionate amount above what you have already spent for the amount of improvement.  The second thing is, most differences are just tonal, ie: the frequency response is different. Added to that, a pair of headphones can sound quite different with different equipment for various reasons, mostly tonal again! Why do you think there are so many threads about tube rolling in amps?
 
However, I think with amps and DACs, one really has to jump up more towards the $1000 mark to notice a significant difference. I've seen a lot of people rotate through cheap gear with little or no improvement.
 
Next, the price to performance ratio for headphones has been improving considerably as online buying has become prevalent. Take the new full-sized Shure headphones. In measurements they better headphones many times their price. However their frequency response isn't to everyone's tastes.  Also, while higher-end gear offers more clarity, a lot of modern music isn't intended to work with high-end gear. Modern pop is highly compressed and very bright which mates well with low-treble high-bass cans like the Beats (or the LCD-2s incidentally!) My musical tastes changed considerably since I first joined Head-Fi. I think if it hadn't I wouldn't have been able to appreciate high-end gear. I still feel I can appreciate music, though not always the same music through my crappy car stereo even or just my portable rig.

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brooko said:

So what would an entry point ortho / stax setup set you back Deadly?  Cans and amp - or could an E9 power them?  Just taking notes for the future

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A bloody lot if you want the same relax clarity sound sig =P.
 
Ortho's are much better value because you can use em with your current gear, or any future amp upgrades can be used with normal dynamic headphones. I'd estimate something like 1k for the LCD-2, and a couple hundred for an amp.
 
The entry level Stax on the other hand, as good as they are, they're quite treble happy and I don't really like em considering my music preferences. An O2 will cost you something like 2.4k new, and the sky is the limit for the amp. I'd personally cook up a KGSSHV for like 600 bucks.
 
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dhaarbrink said:

 
If, to you, your $30 buck phones sound better than $100+ ones, by all means get those $30 cans. If you are 'lured' into buying expensive gear by guys/gals here on the forum, well tough tomatos. I don't sympathize for you.

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Yeah I kind of agree, forget about the expectations from the price tags or other members and just get something you like.
 
But the hype surrounding this hobby is insane, it's really quite difficult to NOT get sucked into whatever the FOTM is at the time. Because it's damn good fun and you don't ever want to miss out on the next big thing.

EDIT: nvm

So...you're dismissing this as snake oil because you've tried like 3 headphones whose sound signature you weren't particularly a fan of?  
 
You don't even know what your preferred sound sig is, and to add to that, you're trying to listen for detail that may or may not even be there, or don't notice the difference (it usually doesn't lurch out at you ya know. Do you know how to play an instrument? It's generally easier to pick out subtleties if you can distinguish the difference between in tune, sharp, and flat in an instruments, at least in my experience.), so of course you'll be unsatisfied. (You bought your SRH840's because they were on sale and not because of hours of research right?)
 
And regarding the E7, it's an entry level product. It's meant to do its job, but not too much more, and like I've said before, while the DACs in it are decent, remember that the circuitry needs to be equally as good, with a sufficient amount of power. While I'm impressed with Fiio's efforts, the E7 is meant to be mainly a DAC and not an amp, hence the creation of the E9. You're expecting the world for not that much money. It takes A LOT of money to be seriously impressed, if you're at the point where you're listening to the gear and not getting lost in the music (which ruins the point of spending money in this hobby in the first place...)
 
And to the rest of the people that can't hear the difference between expensive gear and cheap gear, I loved what someone here said. It went something like: if you guy who has never drunk wine (or was it beer?) an expensive wine and a cheap wine, it'll be much harder for them to tell the difference as opposed to someone who's tried a bunch of different wines to taste the minute differences. I totally butchered that but the point is to try as much gear as you can.

i hate to break this to you, but there are no hidden details in most heavy metal.
no great secrets waiting to be awoken with better gear.
its all there to be heard with ipod ear buds.
think:  compression.
 
i like metal (a bit) myself.  but, mainly the pre-compression era stuff.
maiden, priest, sabbath, etc.
 
listening to modern metal, you're gong to be hard pressed to hear an expensive headphone do anything different than a $50 headphone.
 
sorry...

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ishcabible said:

It takes A LOT of money to be seriously impressed, if you're at the point where you're listening to the gear and not getting lost in the music (which ruins the point of spending money in this hobby in the first place...)

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in the past yes, nowdays, far from it.

 
 

Headphones are just like food and cloths. You have your snobs and you have your fun deals. It's all too serious around here sometimes. $10.80

It's like good wine?
 
is the $8,000 per bottle vintage really that much better than the $50 bottle...or the $10 bottle?
 
Some people appreciate the subtle nuances, some don't. Good for you, you save a lot of money

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chinesekiwi said:

 
in the past yes, nowdays, far from it.

 
 

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Fair enough, I guess. But from the look of Casey's complaints, he'll have to have something amazing to stop complaining.
 
 

Why do I keep reading your repetitively nihilistic threads?

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thewuss said:

i hate to break this to you, but there are no hidden details in most heavy metal.
no great secrets waiting to be awoken with better gear.
its all there to be heard with ipod ear buds.
think:  compression.
 
i like metal (a bit) myself.  but, mainly the pre-compression era stuff.
maiden, priest, sabbath, etc.
 
listening to modern metal, you're gong to be hard pressed to hear an expensive headphone do anything different than a $50 headphone.
 
sorry...

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then i give up. i will not give up my music tastes because my gear hates it. i am done. i really don't think i will stay around here anymore but i might come back when i get my alessandro's.
 

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bcasey25raptor said:

then i give up. i will not give up my music tastes because my gear hates it. i am done. i really don't think i will stay around here anymore but i might come back when i get my alessandro's.

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Yeah I would give up too if you listen to metal... not because your taste in music sucks but as has been mentioned it is rarely ever recorded well. I was going to point out no matter how pricey a headphone you listen too on your Fiio you are still only listening to your Fiio. Toys aside I find op-amp based DACs are thin and lifeless, leaving me somewhat uninvolved, as compared to say a warmer, analogue sound. Diminishing marginal returns is the key here, much like the majority of portable device owners are happy with iBuds and the likes simply because spending $60 on another pair of headphones isn't worth it. So is it worth spending $1500 on a pair of headphones when a $100 pair comes close... is it worth spending $800 on a DAC when you don't even need one to listen to music? Same arguments can be had with anything; food, cars, clothes etc.

Just to answer the first question, I think we're all forgetting that headphone pricing is not either "bang for your buck" or "overpriced". We're all forgetting there is a middle point.
We're also forgettting his is like any other hobby. There are something we buy that we have  minimal reason to buy. My brother is a car fanatic and he recently spent $170 on "racing oil"... And he only took it to the track once.
Plus I'm surprised it took you $400 till you found out headphones were not your style. Heck i bought the J3 for $200 and i already know I'm not buying anything but an ipod anymore. I don't notice a difference other than the J3 being extremely hard to use.
 
Now go sell all $400 dollars worth of headphones, and go buy your self a nice set of speakers!

Here we are again bickering over prices. "A $500 headphone should sound like X," "I heard a $30k CD player," and so on.

Money sounds like nothing. Some $500 headphones are total crap. Some $100 headphones are quite good.

Money has nothing to do with it. Everything is personal preference, and there is gear to suit your preference at every budget.

The cheapest I'd be happy with is the K-501 I got for $100 some years back and the Dynalo I built for about $120 or so. On the other hand, a M50 with a portable amp costing around $220 total would leave me really unhappy. The same can happen with any budget.

What disturbs me is the total lack of curiosity out there. I love audio, so I went after a wide slice of technologies. With headphones, I own dynamic, electrostatic and orthodynamics. With speakers, I have traditional passive two-way dynamics, electrostats, ribbons, AMTs, singledrivers, and three-way dynamic dipoles with an active crossover. I haven't had planars, plasma or horns yet, but I will. I won't go into amps or sources, but I'm very interested in those, too. You get the idea.

Stop counting the dollars. They don't mean anything. Spend more time reading, learning and asking questions. Figure out what you want and then go after it. Build stuff, too. This isn't a fashion show or status symbol competition. It's about listening to and enjoying music. That's the goal.

To add to what Uncle Erik said, it's all about the music! I'd say the two things most neglected in the discussion of gear is the music being listened to and, as well as that, how loud the person is listening. An experienced member once said that he discovered the best way to search for headphones that would suit him was to find people with similar music tastes as him and see what they liked.  Being that I am, right now, evaluating two top-of-the-line headphones which are quite opposite in their presentation as well as how they function electrically, it is readily apparent how different the music is presented by each.