I certainly think that you can, to an extent, train yourself to listen for audio quality; but if you can't hear certain frequencies I wouldn't think that you could "learn" to hear them.   There is some interesting research on early language development and discriminating between two sounds...

I bought some Nighthawks last week, so I ordered a balanced cable to use with the Pono.   I've always heard that the Pono player sounds even better running in balanced mode, so can't wait to try it out.

WAV is just uncompressed lossless. Plenty of free tools online to convert to FLAC. 

When you add a track to your cart on Beatport, you can then select a format. This track is available in MP3, WAV, and AIFF. I'm sure it's 16/44 because it doesn't say otherwise.

I am only familiar with the Trabant through U2's marketing for Achtung Baby and the accompanying tour, but point taken. 

I think the explanation may simply be that you prefer one master to the other.

Nah, I would never associate Beats with real quality.   More like a Beats Chrysler 300, but they would charge $250,000 dollars for it. 

At least three other manufacturers demoing wireless earbuds at CES, so they had better hurry up. Beats, like parent company Apple, have always been better at marketing than innovating.

I just picked up a pair of these on Wednesday. I've only been able to spend a couple of hours listening to them, but very impressed so far. Kind of Blue sounds very realistic in spite of the limitations of the recording.   I ordered a pair of balanced headphone cables from Surf Cables for use...

Did this question ever get answered? I'm looking for reasonably priced headphones that I can use with a Pono Player in balanced mode.   I'm considering the MH40 but only if they would support Pono balanced mode.