[asilker]

Hey HF community. This is a genuine inquiry, not an attempt to kick a hornets nest. I love the sensation of a soundstage filling a room, and I have a strong preference to a soundstage being in front of me. At this point, all of the gear in my setup has been chosen with the most primary criteria of being able to produce a large and multilayered soundstage in all directions.
 
I attended the Chicago head fi meet up last summer. The folks there were great, and very accommodating. I was able to hear a number of models from Hifiman (couple of 400's), Sennheiser (600, 650, 700, 800), Audeze, Fostex, and a smattering of others. The level of detail retrieval was incredible through most of these models, but two things bothered me: 1. the weight of having something hang on my head 2. I felt like a lot of details were emerging from my 5 and 7 o'clock - behind and below me. I think at one point I actually turned around during a Stevie Nicks harmony; she sounded incredibly real, but as if she was singing from my boot heel. A strange sensation for me.
 
So I would appreciate comments and discussion because usually with any community this size, there is some hype and dogmatic preference -- but there is usually also some real "magic" and there's a reason so many people are here. What am I missing here? I've been eyeing some HD650's or TH-X00 maybe you can convince me.
 
(gear photo included because let's be honest we're here for the eye candy)

 

[Douger333]

Very nice system, curious what speakers you use...  I am primarily a speaker user (Tannoy Canterbury SE's) and I got deep into headphones because my youngest daughter moved back in with me after my wife died. My take is that soundstage is usually not 
going to be comparable to a good speaker system. The Smythe Realizer (sp) has a reputation of creating a good soundstage but is not 
cheap... I also had a pair of A-T D700 phones that had a good soundstage for classical music, but could not achieve good volume levels 
on complex power music. Now I use Grado and Mr. Speakers phones with tube amplification and just enjoy what it is 

 
Doug

 

[donato]

It's a bit of apples and oranges for me. They serve different purposes for me. In my experience, you can't really beat the sound staging of a reasonable set up speaker system. But it's hard to beat the convenience of HPs. Running my speaker system bleeds a lot of sound into the rest of our modest SF-sized house so I can't always do that. But I can blast my HPs anytime I want. As you mentioned too, the intimacy and detail of HPs can be very impressive and immersive in their own way, but the soundstaging is more in-head compared to speakers. Plus, with many HPs, you can take it with you on the go. Pretty difficult with most speaker setups.

You can see my inventory for my HPs. On the speaker side, I fairly recently just sold my Magnepan 20.1 (loved the planar magnetic sound even back then) and replaced them with some Monitor Audio PL300.

 

[SHAMuuu]

Car Audio
Home Audio
Personal Audio
 
All different but great.

3x the fun, and hit to wallet and mind.