Music you can only "get" through headphones. - Page 2

^ Well, many might have to move to acquire a suitable listening room. Or perhaps even buy a house.
Certainly a lot more than "thousands of dollars"...

On the original subject of this thread, try something like this:

Cans + silence + nighttime recommended.

I'd say that basically anything that requires concentrated listening to "get" will have a higher headphone affinity.

Course there are things headphones can do that speakers can't. Headphones allow for isolation and blocking out the outside noise. Speakers can't do this. A dedicated sound proof room sure, but that's not the speakers. So there are plenty of limitations to speakers that headphones can overcome. And to overcome that, it's not the speakers, but where the speakers are placed, which is entirely different when comparing speakers to headphones.

Sure there are... 2 things immediately come to mind. Good headphones (in some cases) can block outside sounds. They can also stay quiet enough to not be heard through walls even when turned up very loud.

They are also very good at costing less.

You really don´t need to spend more on speakers to get speakers that sound better. Not when you get passed the 200$ limit anyway... the more expensive the headphones get over that the more in circles the speakers run around them if you get the accoustics right. Or maybe I was just lucky with my 200$ speakers. They do sound crap compared to my brothers 1500$ man do those sound good! But then he has a much better room too built for the purpose. Accoustic material is generally what cost money and time to get a speaker system running and where the headphones have the biggest advantage... I mean you are putting an accoustically controlled room when you put your headphones on if the sound engineers done their job correctly.

Other advantages is the smaller soundstage headphones can create... Often a disadvantage but sometimes an advantage. Intimacy is just what some music needs.

Example is pretty much anything vocal based for me or Piano. Chopin and the likes or classical due to the detail retrieval.

There are many reasons why audio mixing is done on speakers and not headphones, and higher quality sound is one of them. The only time I ever mix with headphones is when I can't bring along my speakers, and ever then I only do a quick mix and then I will fully remix it when I get to the studio.

That said, I do like to listen to all of my mixes through my cans because sometimes you hear things on them that you don't through a monitor. I actually like to listen to them on as many speaker/headphone and source setups as possible. A good audio engineer realizes that it needs to sound good from crappy sources as well as high end.

I would not change my quality headphones for any speaker set. I think that in terms of quality, for example, a UE and a Yuin OK1 are equal to some very expensive speakers. This is my experience. However, I do not reject too good speakers, which I don't have now.

If this is the case, you got ripped off. Very expensive speakers? I'm not sure you have a good idea of what the price of very expensive speakers might be.

I'd just like to add that depending on recording technique you can get some recordings that can sound better or worse on speakers/headphones. And I'm not specifically referring to binarual recordings.

My dad and I do some live recordings (couple a year) with two stereo mics. The best overall setup is with the two mics about a foot or two apart. This gives the music a really good sound on headphones and still sounds quite good on speakers. The ideal for a speaker setup having the mics the exact distance apart that the playback speakers will be. For us that was about 8 feet or so. Sounds really great on those speakers, but on headphones it doesn't that good.

It's easy to figure out why these different placements translate in the way they do. You want the mics to be in the exact same location that the speakers (or headphone drivers) will be. The sound waves coming out of the speakers will interact and match the waves that were going past the mics. Likewise if your playback system doesn't match the mic setup (playing 8ft distance between mics during recording and on headphones) then your ears will essentially be 8 feet apart and everything will be a distorted and sound odd. I'm not exactly sure why speakers fare better with changes like this. It's probably because of their better soundstaging ability. They make up for the recording/playback mismatch whereas headphones can't make up that difference as well.

This might help explain how some recordings really come alive on headphones or not.

My speakers weight 180 lbs per. Try taking those on the train