Oh man. This thread is full of ill-informed opinions of speakers. First, and foremost, you do not have to buy five figure speakers from an audio salon. There are *loads* of used and DIY speakers that kick mucho butt. For example, I spent about $200 to build my ribbons, $300 for the ESS AMT-1 pair, $650 for the Quad ESL-63s, $1,000 to build the ProAc Response 2.5 clones, and about $7,000 on the Linkwitz Orion+. Yeah, the Orions are pricey, but all the rest also whoop headphones at a lower price than a T1 or HD-800. Second, speakers aren't as fussy about amps as headphones are. You can run off a $50 used receiver and get a lot out of them. Even my "good" speaker amp - a Conrad-Johnson MV52 - cost about $700. There are lots of inexpensive speaker amps because people have been using speakers for decades. There aren't terrific deals on used headphone amps yet because the market has only taken off in the past few years. Another point is that headphones and associated gear has gotten pricey lately. Used speaker gear has not kept up and has become a better deal as headphones got more expensive. There's just this... ignorance here that assumes tha speakers are more expensive. They aren't. It's even gotten to where speakers can cost less. I'd pit the ESL-63s against any headphones - they are that good. And used ones are cheaper than any of the "high end" headphones.
