Sounds like an inside job and the headphones are probably in a container going to Asia by now. Highly doubt that a well organised gang of thieves like this would try to sell the whole shipment over time on eBay and the like.

  That's how I feel about every Bethesda game by the 2nd playthrough. When it's fresh and new your head is spinning with possibilities of what's now possible that wasn't before, eager to see how the story is etc. And then you realise the stories haven't improved in years, the gameplay save a...

  Most likely get to markup the cables by a whole bunch more when selling them separate.

Ok I must've missed the reasoning but how on earth are these things considered portable? Unless we're counting everything smaller/lighter than the LCD series as portable now.

  No but I'm sure they'd be a lot easier for a thief to sell than anything by Audeze since the average guy has no clue about Audeze. Everyone knows Beats though.

Is it really that hard to spend $10-15 on a decent extension cord...I don't think so, especially since it solves the problem completely.

This is not an ad he says as he advertises... 

  If long distance means airplane, I hope for your sake you're planning on getting the closed back version. 

  I don't really see people walking around with an EL-8 plugged into an iPhone much, it's still a full size headphone and most people would consider it too bulky for any sort of portable use.

If the superdrive is new I'd return it or exchange for a new one. Alternatively you can try a non-apple external dvd drive or a different computer and see if that works?

  5 feet for an ethernet cable is what I would personally consider rather short as would a lot of other people.

  Same reason headphone manufacturers don't ship their headphones with $600 cables because both are dubious at best and there's no point wasting time and resources on the minority that care about either since they can just burn them in or change the cabling themselves.

Most streaming services are not all that high quality, as a matter of fact 128kbps files are not uncommon for them. Unless you're using Spotify premium which I believe is 320kbps or Tidal which is lossless there is not point in investing a lot into a setup since you're going to limited by the...

Telltale's Game of Thrones - 8/10, love their games, very good storytelling.   League of Legends - anywhere from a 1 to a 10 out of 10, depending on the day, toxicity of teammates and various other factors. The joys of MOBA games :(

OP did state around $50, the Fostex and DT880 are nowhere near that price.   Honestly considering they're for gaming and your nephew is only 11 I'd get him the HyperX Cloud gaming headset and call it a day, They're durable, provide very good audio for the price, have a mic if he wants to chat...