Headphone sounds "fast" if it has treble peak(s) and/or poor subbass extension (or generally bright signature).

I don't hear any difference even between 128kbps MP3 and lossless, but I hear a difference between headphones. Therefore, it's worth it.

I have one pair for different uses: - IEMs (HIFIMAN RE-400i) when going out - Fullsize sealed (Sennheiser Momentum) for travelling - Fullsize open (HIFIMAN HE-560) for home listening - Speakers (Logitech S220) for watching movies / playing games (I don't care that much about SQ in this case...

How do you define best? If it's the most popular then I think it's going to be Beats Electronics.

Have you tried Jays Headset Control app? It works perfectly with my Sennheiser Momentum remote control even though it's marketed for iDevices (and doesn't work with Android without this app).

It seems that clearing the cache is solution for this issue in Chrome.

I think the main reason to not bother with expensive amps/dacs is that headphones/speakers are always the weakest link in audio systems. For example typical harmonic distortion levels for high-end headphones are between -40 and -60dB. Lets say that our headphone has a first order harmonic of...

I think that this means that in theory HD800 is better because if there is any dip, it falls into inaudible frequency range. But you would need to do a lot of measurements to objectively say which one is superior (and of course that depends on your definition of "superior").

Length of 10kHz sound wave is about 3.3cm, so mesh distance can create dips in extreme highs range if the length is (n + 1/4) * wavelength (n is some natural number), because of the sound wave reflections. So for example if length from driver is 0.5cm then it can nullify 15kHz (depending on how...

Forum is broken for me too. I'm constantly getting notifications from Beats thread even though I unsubscribed (and seen these new posts) from it. Also I don't see new threads/posts like forum has been frozen yesterday. Clearing cookies doesn't help with the issue.

Well engineered EDM could sound bassy even with flat FR, by extending dynamic range. And it would sound much better than EQing bass since only bassy instruments would be pronounced, without making everything else sound muddy (that's why I don't like using bassy headphones with electronic music).

The design goal of O2+ODAC was to provide most transparent sound, so you don't get any special effects. For that, a dedicated gaming soundcard might be more suitable (if it really works, I believe it's possible to add all these effects at software level).

In your case, I wouldn't spend too much money on amp/DAC. Remember that the headphones have the biggest influence on sound quality. So $400 for headphone and $100 for amp+dac seems to be a better idea.

In context of distortion, I think you are talking about max input power. This parameter tells how much energy you can put into headphones before they will break. Perhaps it correlates somehow with distortion, but I believe that this is not even measured anyway, probably headphone manufacturers...

What are you exactly asking about? mW is just a unit of power, it can mean many things (like headphone sensitivity or max input power).