Careful! The Stealth was the most expensive purchase I ever did because I started hearing source chain differences with them and now I own a very nice stack :) Enjoy! It’s my favorite headphone and while I got it second hand for a steal I think it’s one of the ones worth full price!

You’re not nuts, some headphones don’t mesh with your specific ear shape.
That said, if your ears and brain are very used to a certain sound signature it can take a few days of listening for them to ‘click’ with your new cans.

Have you tried it? There’s a measurable reduction in in-band noise and out of band images (that can intermodulate back into the audio band as distortion).
Many will argue about the audibility of these effects but it’s a fact that upsampling using powerful hardware is measurabily superior to what your dac is doing internally.

I’ve been using HQPlayer for more than a year and I love it. I bought a NOS dac (Holo May) specifically because it works so well with HQPlayer. The ability to subtly sculpt the sound according to what it needs is amazing. Pop music gets upsampled PCM with a short filter for best transient response, orchestral/classical music gets a long filter with DSD for layering and space.
Software wise you might think the cost is steep but if you compare the sonic effects to what some people spend on cable “upgrades” it’s a bargain.

Well in an attempt to keep this thread positive I’ll share:My current favorite headphones are the DCA Stealth, because they’re the only headphones I’ve heard that do midrange as well as the HD600 but with more separation, better and cleaner bass extension and to top it all off they’re closed back so you’re never bothered by environmental noise.

Only negatives are they’re very sensitive to seal and the bass will disappear immediately if you’re wearing thick glasses for example. They are also very source picky sounding a bit thin on underpowered portable amplifiers.

It’s really interesting that Radiohead are apparently the only ones that figured out how to compress the shit out of their albums to 4-6db dynamic range but make it still sound amazing…