I'll just give my two cents. Before I started on my home rig journey, I bought the ESW10 on impulse (good deal). I was then thinking of building a home rig around it because of all the comparisons with full sized cans. However, after trying it with everything from an iPod to a Yamamoto, I realised that the ESW10 does not scale as well as full sized cans. For me this wasn't really a bad thing, because I could still use it with my iPod and even my laptop's headphone out and have it sound way above acceptable. I then built my home rig after a full-sized can (Grado RS-1) and no regrets whatsoever. Different purposes, I guess.
1) Normally it's quite tricky to audition different sources because the rest of the components in the chain differ depending on the shop you go to. What I did was start with the amp that paired the best with the headphone you like then work on the source. If your amp+headphone is a warm smooth combination you might want to pair it with a clean, detailed source etc.
2) Yes, the Stello stack is one such example. (Correct me if I'm wrong) but I believe this happens more often with Hi-Fi equipment than headphone rigs. Like I mentioned above, I would go about matching an amp first before going with the source. If they sound good together, no one is stopping you from making the pairing.
3) No comments on this player, haven't heard it before. But you can get it from Alpha Audio or KEC at Adelphi, pay in cash and bargain hard (heard this from a fellow forumer kchew).
Hope this helped. Best of luck. YMMV as usual.
