Hey Matt, I'm a new guy in town, but I've been a producer / musical director / piano-conductor for musical theatre for a little over 40 years, and have spent a few hours with headphones (but as few as possible!).
When it comes to the ohm rating for headphones, you'll find that more is generally better. Headphones start at 32 ohms, and stretch up to 600 ohm.
The main difference is sound quality. At the lower ohm rating headphones, you're good for mp3 players, iPads, and such.
You'll notice at lower ohm ratings, that going from low to high volume is a quick trip in most cases. It's also very easy to make the low ohm headsets clip, or go beyond useful hearing to distortion. Also, you'll find the 300-600ohm headsets will be a bit pricier, because the metals used in the magnets that reproduce the sound will be made of better quality, and the wire windings that go round-and-round the magnets will be smaller (smaller is better) and more tightly wound. This gives you a better definition of your sound throughout the hearing range (usually 20Hz-20Khz for kids, 18Khz for us olde phartes.).
Basic sound theory: lower ohms gives less "space" to fit all of the audio. Higher ohms provide more space between the low volume and high volume, between the low frequencies and the high frequencies, to give you a bit better ride.
Why do sound cards and on-board chipsets go above and below the range of hearing? Below 20Hz, you get into what is called sub-sonic frequencies. These are indeed below the hearing level, but provide a low thud/thump "feel" to the bass that you generally can feel in your chest cavity.
Similarly, frequencies over 20Khz (I have a 7.2 system here, my ferro-fluid cooled digital tweeters reach up to 35Khz) provide a different sort of "feel." When the drummer is playing on the cymbals, the out-of-hearing range frequencies give you that "splash" feel from the vibration off of the end of the cymbal. You don't physically HEAR the splashing, but you can feel it in the audio mix, usually in the bone behind the ear.
300-600 ohm headsets will allow you to experience that "feel" in the upper and lower ranges, although they will not come anywhere near what a set of speakers will provide.
I'm sure I might not have included all of the "pieces" to satisfy your question, but if you have other questions, feel free to give it to me. I didn't want to fill up the forum with the different parts of a sound wave other than it's length:
• Amplitude
• Frequency
• Velocity
• Wavelength
• Phase
• Harmonic Content
• Envelope
..because it will turn into a REAL eye-rolling event. Sort of like when my wife comes home and I ask her how was her day.. and for the next 45 minutes she tells me..
Here's an example for you. This .WAV file is standard Red Book CD audio, as produced/recorded in my studio. We used 7 live musicians (on multiple instruments, multiple takes) and 13 synths to fill in the extra strings, brass, woodwinds, harps, gongs, and on and on.. It's the opening to the stage version of The Wizard Of Oz (Royal Shakespeare Company version base orchestration plus augmented instrumentation), and it took up 92 audio tracks in the studio. It's the closest I've ever come to filling up all 96 tracks we have here! But anyhoo, listen through your headset, then burn it to a CD and play it through the best sound system you have. The sound is UNCOMPRESSED, or "full fidelity," so if you try to listen with little cheepie computer speakers, it will sound "tinny," because itty bitty speakers just can't handle the power required to recreate the low end of the orchestra.
See what'cha think:
https://www.sendspace.com/pro/dl/n0s7x0
.. and that's an example of ork only, no singers. If you have a female friend that is a contralto with a high Ab (if you know a singer, they will know what that means), she can sing Climb Ev'ry Mountain with a modified original Broadway Orchestra:
https://www.sendspace.com/pro/dl/hjeqx6
Enjoy!
mm3
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