I bought my Q701's a year or so ago to replace my rather aged Senn 580 HD Precisions (over 10 years old now) and considering the difference in price as well as the age, I expected the Q701's to be much better, but I must be missing something because the Q701's just don't sound anywhere near as...

You're implying that these headphones are in some way related to political entities?  

Quote:   Crap covered in cheese is better than crap, but it's still crap either way.   The E17 I was using has the spec:    >250mW (16Ω Loaded );    >30mW (300Ω Loaded)   But this isn't anywhere near enough for these headphones. So make sure whatever you pick is spec'd much...

Quote: Don't do it, it'll sound awful. That's the mistake I made. Portables just don't have the power output these headphones need.

Quote:   This is because you're not using a strong amp (or an amp at all) it's also why they sound bad to you, I had the same issue; the headphones sounded worse than my other kit before amping. Don't use a portable amp either, I used the E17 and it sounded just as bad because it wasn't...

Quote:   Why would you need to use iTunes to know? Can't stand iTunes myself, doesn't support FLAC, pushes all Apples own stuff, no thanks. There are other audio library applications out there (i.e. Foobar 2000).

Bad news, it doesn't seem to work, I'm running into this problem - http://mailman.alsa-project.org/pipermail/alsa-devel/2012-April/051008.html   Full dmesg output: [  251.813672] usb 2-1: new high-speed USB device number 5 using ehci_hcd [  251.939539] usb 2-1: config 1 has an invalid...

Either derbigpr was trolling or using the Q701's with a bad amp. They sounded pretty terrible with the Fiio E17, but they sound amazing with the ADG NFB-10.2 where his observations simply aren't true.

Quote:   You should never do that if you're inputting to the device digitally then all you'll be doing is lowering the volume of the source for no purpose (the sound-card isn't acting as an amp or DAC and therefore shouldn't clip anything) . If you're sending to the E10 via SPDIF or USB...

That Merc site is simple to make, but I found it unresponsive, a bit irratic and it seemed to contain no information on any of the products. Keep in mind with cars you're generally going to see them in person first. I highly doubt anyone has ever seen an "Audio-GD Showroom" :P

I was going to say that someone from Audio-GD seems to have noticed this thread, lol.

Basically look back at what I described a few posts back, everything was just... crap. The headphones sounded far worse than my Senn HD580s. The E17 just appears to have REALLY been struggling to drive them.   To expand on this, with the E17 it was dull, flat and lacked bass. Basically...

Luckily I was right, I've just connected them to my new NFB-10.2 and it's AMAZING. This is what I was expecting in the first place.   So on a side note, DO NOT PAIR THESE HEADPHONES WITH THE FIIO E17!

My NFB-10.2 has been stuck in customs for 4 days now, but when it finally arrives I'll test it in Linux for you.

I didn't say that so stop putting words into my mouth.   Secondly, to counter your own argument - http://www.ferrari.com/English/GT_Sport%20Cars/CurrentRange/458-Italia/Performance_Figures/Pages/Technical_Sheet_458-Italia.aspx - they do have lots of details about their cars on their site...