[ry_goody]

The T5P is not the "best" headphone in any particular category. Others have better imaging, others have more detail, others have higher treble, or deeper bass.

However the thing I am noticing with my time spent with T5P's is that nothing sounds bad. Every recording sounds very good. My really old crappy 128 mp3's sound good. Songs of questionable quality on Youtube sound good. Every video game sounds good. I think that's what is particularly special about the T5P's, they are the only flagship I have ever spent time with where there is nothing that sounds bad through them . Audeze LCD, AKG k812, even cheaper ones like HD650 or K702. All of those headphones had a lot of tracks which I would just avoid listening to on those particular headphones. Some tracks could be just simply bad in some headphones. But that's not the case with the T5P. It seems perfectly tuned in detail and sound signature to sound good for every type of recording, even recording with average to sub-par production. It doesn't take you to the stellar heights that something like the K812 or Audeze can on particular tracks, but it makes up for that by never just completely crashing on specific tracks. Which really makes me feel that they are the best general purpose high-end headphone. I use them for all streaming music, and streaming videos I watch. I also stuck a ModMic stick boom on mine to add a microphone and use them as my gaming headset.

 

[Kukuk]

The T5P is definitely a fantastically forgiving headphone. I think one of the things that makes it special is that it's not only forgiving of the music you listen to, it's forgiving of the other gear in the chain. Amps do basically nothing for them, with DACs you can clean up the sound a little bit, but not by a huge amount, and cables offer a dubious improvement under the best circumstances, but with these "nicer" cables do absolutely nothing.

They're really a headphone I can recommend to someone who doesn't want to buy the whole gear chain. Just want to listen to music off your phone? The T5P is about the only headphone in it's class that I can recommend for that.

Outside of the T5P's efficiency, I think other flagships offer some of what make the T5Ps great. The Koss ESP-950 for example is a beautifully musical headphone which is just as forgiving, if not moreso. Every song picks up it's awesome soundstage and imaging, and while the bass is slightly down in level, if a song comes in with boosted bass, you still get that added impact.