Headphones are great, but will never be speakers... - Page 11

I much prefer to use speakers any day. Not because of sound but do to convenience.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Currawong 

I found this epic post while searching for something else on the forums. I have to say it is one of the best posts I've ever read on Head-fi, if not the best. It's in one of my favourite threads, "Leave portable hifi - it's too silly". As I have been thinking lately of investing more in a near-field speaker set-up, since I found enjoyment from a basic pair of Paradigm Titans in that way, this post reminds me about the compromises I've had to accept with headphones.

Interesting too is that quite a few Head-fiers have gone back to speaker rigs, leaving headphone listening for the office or abandoning headphones altogether. Though headphones can extract more detail for the money and you can listen anywhere you want if you have a suitable portable rig, there's simply something special about having the music out there in front of you rather than just either side of your head. I understand why a lot of regular hi-fi companies and audiophiles don't take headphones seriously. I'm also not surprised that people comment positively about the more "speaker-like" presentation of the HD-800s and K1000s or desire a wide soundstage when searching for a pair of headphones. But still, they can't do everything a good speaker rig can do.

 

As I'm so fond of saying here inside an international forum, 'Golden Ear' nailed it... Olympic style!  

Thanks for sharing, Currawong ~

The thing is, I don't wear headphones to emulate speakers. I'm not entirely sure why "Perfect 3D sound" is the ultimate goal for audiophiles nowadays.

Yup, I definietly find my B and W diamonds do beat any headphone in terms of sounstage, impact and just the sense of being there in the studio or concert. However, I do find that headphones such as the stax 009 offer amazing resolution that is equal to my speakers for less. Going on to more conventional headphones, models such as the lcd rev2s (my favourite) do offer very punchy, exciting sound with great bass and mids. (in fact i sometimes prefer the lcd 2 presentation to the b and ws)

    I admit a good speaker setup can be very satisfying but they can be very expensive and assembling a good system is no easy task. But imho you can never get away from room interactions that prohibit you from obtaining the best sound that is posssible with speakers. With the best headphones there are no room interactions that get in the way and in taking room interactions out of the picture you get all the available sound performance from your headphones.If you take the time to research your system and purchase the correct amp to drive your phones within the limits of affordabity you can achieve much better sound for far less of an investment in comparison to a loudspeaker based system.

 I have found in my experience that I have never come close to the performance that I have obtained with my audeze lcd-2 rev 2 headphones with any loudpeaker based system that I could afford.

 In fact I have not heard imho any systems, many of them quite expensive and elaborate, the levels of resolution that I get with the lcd-2 rev 2  headphone. But I have to admit that in a speaker based system several other people can enjoy the music you are listening to which is not possible with headphone based listening.

 There are also those who just do not like being tethered to what they are listening to and find it very confining.For those headphone listening is not enjoyable.But I find imho that I prefer listening to headphones because I feel that I am getiing a much more accurate reproduction of the recordings that I am listening to than if I was listening to that same recording on loudspeakers.I find that when listening to speakers there are just too many room interactions that affect  the sound preventing an accurate representation of the recording you are listening to.But I will still keep my loudspeaker based system for casual listening and or entertaining others.

Quote:

Originally Posted by buson160man 

    ... But imho you can never get away from room interactions that prohibit you from obtaining the best sound that is posssible with speakers. ....

This is why I rarely listen to my speaker rig, and in fact downgraded my electronics and only drive it with an Oppo DVD player and a fairly high power HT receiver now instead of my old high end CD player/preamp/power amps.

I'm limited to a basement room that isn't particularly high, and spent a lot of time and effort on absorbers and diffusers, but in the end it never got close to the clarity of my HD600's no matter what I did. It's enjoyable for movies and TV, but if I want to hear detail in the music and purity of tone, cans win out in every case.

In my experience with hi fi, people who don't have balanced hearing (few actually do) tend to hate the subsequent lack of imaging caused by headphones.  If you don't take the take the time to balance them for their own hearing.  I have 99% percentile hearing according to audiologist tests but still have a 5db difference between my right and left ear.  I don't like a vanilla headphone set up at all and need to adjust the balance on every setup before it will become transparent like speakers.

Not trying to start an argument or anything but IIRC as time goes by your brain automatically compensates for these ear imbalances to provide accurate sound positioning, so if you actually tune both ears to be equal you are kind of skewing the soundstage to one side.

Great article Currawong!

While i am tempted to agree with Mr Golden Ears regarding audio fidelity, the issue is for me a bit irrelevant. Let me explain:

I started to become interested in music listening (good listening) about 8 years ago when the band Pearl Jam started releasing their live shows in the FLAC format. I love live shows because you get to appreciate the performance a lot more, since it's more honest and in the case of Pearl Jam they don't bother to do some fancy Pro Tools editing to their shows to make up for some mistake during the performance. It's all there! During some tracks like Wishlist and Present Tense, there are 3 guitar players and they all play very differently. Headphones are the only tools in which i can appreciate all those instruments doing their own thing and feel i'm in the audience; i've never had that sort of experience with speakers.

Why? my head is always moving around and if i change my position so does the music, at least to my ears. I pretty much have to be sitting smack in the middle without moving to be able to get the same experience; with headphone i can even bang my head a bit and still wouldn't be a problem. Stereo dynamics are a bit more satisfying with my Grados.

Even if i could afford some Krell amps powering a couple of Wilson Audio speakers i still would have to get a room suited for that need, which is not an easy thing to do. My neighbors would probably kill me! There is also the fact that the vast majority of the music i listen to is not even available in HI-RES, so i cannot really vouch for that whole fidelity stuff. Would be kind of overkill to listen to popular music in compressed 16/44 with some very high end home equipment when said music is not even properly mixed, given all the loudness going on these days.

So,

Headphone are not speakers... they're better! at least for me