Best headphones for gaming and music

Sound is one of my areas of expertise and unfortunately I see more consumer futureshop/bestbuy/etc... brands than anything that is actually great quality. From my experience SHURE has been a good name for headphones, but unfortunately they are up in the professional level for sound quality, meaning that they aren't cheap. Disregarding the consideration for frequency sweep testing and at what Hz the best readings came from, I think the last ones I looked at had a sensitivity of over 120db SPL/mW, which is very good. For music, which is a range of frequencies you want something with a good frequency range/response as well. Anything higher than 30Hz, or less than 18 or 20KHz is probably not great.

If you REALLY cared about good sound quality you would also consider impedance, which typically for headphones varies a LOT more than any other speaker; Earphones -> 8 Ohms to 600 Ohms +, The average speaker is usually 4, 8, or 16 Ohms, disregarding odd brands that decide to use a non-standard 6 Ohms like Bose. It's hardly the case that impedance matches for playing sound via headphones though, and it is typically higher, but if you wanted good sound, that is what you'd do to optimize power transfer and minimize power loss. It becomes critical with *real*/larger speaker systems though, or you'll end up damaging your amplifier.