Quote:   To each his own. I only ridicule them if they accuse me of being unfashionable for not owning them.

Two years ago, the bad experience of purchasing the Beats solo caused me to become a headphone audiophile.

Interestingly, It appears that most of the Beats models frequently get trashed by the audiophile community as one of the most reviled headphones. And justifiably so. 

I'm thinking of buying this for my teenage son. The factors that interest me about these headphones are their price ($55) and durability. Do they sound better with a headphone amp?

Your top 4 brings back memories of dissatisfaction when I was influenced by the well known Cnet review praising the Senn HD 280 . I thought they were going to be such great cans, but I ended up personally disappointed with their sound. I wish I knew about Head Fi back then. Personally I...

Quote: I've come to the realization that the cans are broke, I'll have to get them repaired.  

I'm having a problem with the Hifiman EF2A that I use as a dac for computers.   For some reason the amp will only give sound to the right side of the Grado sr60i, the left side is silent. Any ideas what's wrong? 

  Quote: Agreed. My assessment is the majority aren't audiophiles, prefer speakers, and are not willing to pay a lot for high-end home audio. That mainly sums up why full-size headphone amps aren't mainstream.

Quote: I'm not familiar with them, are they household names?

I can't think of any major Electronic manufacturers that make dedicated headphone amps, not even high-end ones like Denon, Marantz, etc. Most Amps appear to be built by small businesses.

As a newbie, I was shocked to learn that the average stereo/AV receiver doesn't give high quality headphones the best sound. If I knew that a decade ago, I would have never spent several thousand dollars on receivers. The sales people at Electronic stores never told me about that.

Being a newbie, forgive me for not using the correct terminology. I meant dedicated headphone amps, like the Asgard and the Crack bottlehead I recently purchased. I can't find that at Walmart or Best Buy. They're not common in that aspect.

Hello.   I'm a newbie here, and a brand new audiophile. I've always been a headphone listener, I prefer private listening. But until the past 3 months I didn't know Headphone Amps even existed until I discovered this site. Before, I would go to Walmart or Amazon and never saw Headphone amps...