It was when I first got to America in 2010 and bought earbuds I was 10 at the time, I got em from Dollar Tree, I thought distortion at 40% volume and muddied vocal and bass along with a general sense of dread when listening was just because I was listening to music on YT. Then one day some doofus left his earbuds on a bench, I waited 20 mins and he never came back so I picked it up. I think it was Sony? or Philips? That was when I first got introduced to too much treble so instead of shouty it was more like shrieking, even with that though it was clear and everything was pleasant enough to listen to. I knew I wanted better so I looked it up, it was 80 bucks and I couldn't really go around asking my parents for that stuff.
it wasn't until I was in high school that I owned something besides the typical apple earbuds, I already bought plenty of random IEMs that sounded good to me. Then I got the HyperX cloud headset and that's when I learned headphone clamp force were a thing. Squeezed my head so hard it gave me a headache and I kept them like that for way too long. My first real "hi-fi" headset was the HD599SE, got em for 100 bucks at amazon. It was good but it didn't wow me because I didn't know what to expect with it being my first set, and I used to EQ incorrectly everything I ran into.
now I'm here, trying to learn more about it and getting into the hobby. I try not to get too caught up looking for the best or the FRs and blast some music every now and then. Music's just amazingly great with a great set of cans