ear8dmg
500+ Head-Fier
- Joined
- Aug 28, 2008
- Posts
- 562
- Likes
- 14
More the other way around for me. It was the lack of room acoustics, and layout that kept me using speakers as my primary listening option. Headphone use was never a realistic listening experience for me so they were a last resort.
When I got married and moved into a small flat, primary speaker use was no longer an option. I used speedlink medusa 5.1 headphones for a while. They gave an impression of direction, and had a bigger headstage than the stereo headphones I'd tried before them. The sound quality wasn't great though and they were still my secondary option.
Than changed when I bought an Asus Xonar D2 with built in dolby headphone. Shortly after that I had the chance to borrow a set of HD600s, which was the start of my interest in decent headphones. I can honesty say that if if wasn't for Dolby Headphone, i would have stuck with speakers. I'm just not keen on the 'in head' effect that you get with most material over headphones. It's pleasant enough when we get well recorded material that captures soundstage but the majority of close miked music just sounds un-natural over headphones. With dolby headphone I can enjoy a speaker-like soundstage for most music, while still getting the bang-per buck element of headphone listening for things like detail etc.
I don't think Dolby Headphone is the be-all-and-end-all for headphone listening but it was enough for me to shift headphone listening to my primary choice. It might be different if I had several grand's worth of speaker system but it's the best I've got.
Edit: Just to mention - the Xonar does Dolby Headphone an awful lot better than the PowerDVD / Foobar plugins I tried when I was using an Auzentech X-Fi Prelude.
When I got married and moved into a small flat, primary speaker use was no longer an option. I used speedlink medusa 5.1 headphones for a while. They gave an impression of direction, and had a bigger headstage than the stereo headphones I'd tried before them. The sound quality wasn't great though and they were still my secondary option.
Than changed when I bought an Asus Xonar D2 with built in dolby headphone. Shortly after that I had the chance to borrow a set of HD600s, which was the start of my interest in decent headphones. I can honesty say that if if wasn't for Dolby Headphone, i would have stuck with speakers. I'm just not keen on the 'in head' effect that you get with most material over headphones. It's pleasant enough when we get well recorded material that captures soundstage but the majority of close miked music just sounds un-natural over headphones. With dolby headphone I can enjoy a speaker-like soundstage for most music, while still getting the bang-per buck element of headphone listening for things like detail etc.
I don't think Dolby Headphone is the be-all-and-end-all for headphone listening but it was enough for me to shift headphone listening to my primary choice. It might be different if I had several grand's worth of speaker system but it's the best I've got.
Edit: Just to mention - the Xonar does Dolby Headphone an awful lot better than the PowerDVD / Foobar plugins I tried when I was using an Auzentech X-Fi Prelude.