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You never know. You could get some interesting answers.
Oh, I don't doubt it. I never said the original poster shouldn't have asked. I'm sure if you asked enough people you'd get some really fascinating and refreshing perspectives about rec-league basketball as well. That doesn't change the fact that asking enthusiasts if they find their hobby worthwhile should lead one to expect a certain kind of answer, otherwise a place like head-fi wouldn't exist. I was challenging the notion that this question can be answered accurately, impartially, and/or in a way that the original poster will necessarily find applies to his or herself.
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Although the question may seem ignorant the person asking it is genuinely curious about it and if we can be of any help then great. Not to mention I'm sure hes not American or more doesn't use English as his native language. There's always that language barrier between cultures that others have to consider.
I realized after posting that somebody else already made the second point earlier in the thread (though some people thought it was expressed...shall we say...tactlessly). My intention was only to be lightly humorous and to remark on the difficulty of the task. I was criticizing neither the question nor the person asking it. You used the word "ignorant" but all questions to which the person asking does not know the answer are by definition an admission of ignorance aren't they? I certainly don't mean to impede or discourage inquiry for the original poster or for anybody else. Although, if the language rift is as wide as you suggest, then it will be even more difficult for the original poster both to amalgamate all of the information here and to sublimate that information into something useful. I do however mean to call into question the ability of head-fi, abstractly, to furnish this question with a meaningful answer as this is a highly subjective, deeply complex, and often divisive topic; what we call value. Comprised of use value vs. exchange value (to frame the argument in the universal terms of Classical and Marxian economics) and the myriad determinant factors that also enter the equation such as the relativity of exchange value based on an individual's capital, futures, income (less their expenditures), etc. Or the relativity of use value that is debated endlessly on head-fi and is one of the emergent purposes of the site, particularly since the introduction of ratings in the head gear section and the consolidation of reviews. Use value is made infinitely complex by nuanced differences in individuals opinions be they informed by the physiological (frequency perception and sensitivity or varying shapes of the ear), material (quality control and driver matching, ear pad wear, dependent hardware synergy and "quality" which is itself a microcosm of argument here on head-fi), psychological (whether or not people believe it even exists is frequently contested, but burn-in may fit in this category or the former or both depending on how you define it, often we become accustomed to a certain sound as our brains are capable of making a presentation seem "normal". Just see how long some subtle new eq setting that initially may sound stark takes to become unnoticeable until you change back), or cultural and sub-cultural (genre choice, and in some cultures economic pressures may alter the effects of any combination of these on the interaction of use value with exchange value). Use value is in fact some indistinguishable amalgam of all of these factors, further obfuscated by all the flaws in human memory and the variation of these factors as a function of time (i.e. your outer ear changing size and shape as you grow, your inner ear ability to perceive certain frequencies changing as you grow, changing tastes in genres, burn-in if it exists, etc.) that we are also already subject to, which makes methods of determining use value such as auditions and loan programs problematic. And this is just off of the top of my head in the middle of the night while revisiting Radiohead's Amnesiac.
I'm not saying that it's presumptuous or unproductive to attempt to undertake a response to the original poster's question in light of the inability of any one human to conceive of all of the factors involved at once or even communicate them let alone do so in a way that will apply perfectly to a stranger on the internet. Indeed one need neither master the knowledge of all the various factors to form an impression for his or herself, nor to communicate one's own impression. Sure there are close enough matches simply by probability given the limitations of human variation and of what headphones exist and are available for acquisition. In fact if you really wanted to cut to the core of my criticism you could use another such pragmatic maneuver like, "Of course head-fi! What other place in the world better to ask such a question? And so it is with the recreational basketball league!" That would be reasonable and correct, but wouldn't change the fact that one would be inclined to receive a certain type of answer here.
My answer to the original poster is in a word, "yes". In one more word, "It's complicated".
tl;dr, I felt my silly little joke was misunderstood, and then proceeded unsolicited to practically tell the history of the universe, a very very long climb for a not so fantastic view.
