Plugging in the headphones definately does not bypass the limiter -effect. I am unsure what you mean by EQ preventing speaker damage, since as far as I understand, equalizing would not do much to prevent that (unless it's a programmed parametric EQ doing the limiting only at required peaking values and boosting overall volume to compensate, instead of a regular compressor/limiter -effect).

In either case, I'd like the player I use to have a GUI, and correct me if I am wrong, but Mplayer doesn't, so it's not that nice for a Mp3-player. I also read that Mplayer is alot heavier.

Oh and about the CPU consumption, I've read the bug 5974 talk thorougly, and according to it the oversampling does not affect that much, but something else definately is the cuplrit with PA. Hope someone figures a way to around it.

ps. Easiest way to hear the effect is to listen to and old track which is quite far from a steady dynamic maximum, making the limiter work a bit more. I notice it the best (worst ^^) while listening to some Deep Purple/Pink Floyd/Old Metallica etc. Old poorly mastered tracks.