[Audiophiliac]

Think about what $1k speakers sound like compared to $1k headphones, with their not caring about the rest of the world hearing their presentation that's right next to your ears, with good volume control. This is stupid how much better my headphones perform. So far, they only go up to $6k value. What would happen if someone tried for a $25k limit showdown vs speakers, for now? Are we stuck with not knowing how to make better drivers at all than this? Do we need mini 32 mini planars to meet speakers? Until then, my one driver is theoretically working well. How did the $50k but with the marble case, amp, and DAC Sennheiser's improve themselves over what there is? Are those the actual best there is, so far?

 

[Lindholdt]

It's all subjective. In my opinion a well built $500 speaker set can still do things that any headphone are able to do.
So it's all about your priorities, and what "good sound" is to you.
No headphone can replace my speaker setups, but they can be a great addition.

 

[Audiophiliac]

It's all subjective. In my opinion a well built $500 speaker set can still do things that any headphone are able to do.
So it's all about your priorities, and what "good sound" is to you.
No headphone can replace my speaker setups, but they can be a great addition.

It's a fair argument to prefer speaker presentation, for sure. But after that, sound good is what I'm looking for, rather than good sound. Again, it's a different presentation, if someone else were here, well, I happen to have 2 output jacks this time, but that still doesn't mean that it will be their correct volume on the low impedance jack, but I could still have more reason to be going with speakers, at that point.

 

[bigshot]

A good 5.1 system in a sympathetic room is a LOT better sounding than the best headphones. That's why headphone technology right now is all about coming up with a way to reproduce spacial cues. It's still very primitive and speaker systems have leapfrogged forward with Atmos, but the future of audiophile sound lies in signal processing, not more fidelity.

Many people either can't afford or don't have the space for a decent speaker system. Headphones are a good alternative if you can't manage it all. And headphones are better for privacy or if you don't want to bother other people with your music. But commercial music is designed from the ground up to be played on speakers. A speaker system, even a fairly humble one sounds better than cans.

Headphones are like one dimensional sound- a straight line between your ears. Stereo speakers are like two dimensional sound- a flat plane of soundstage at a distance in front of you. Multichannel speaker installations are three dimensional sound- a sound field that covers the entire room. Each one of those is a step up from the one before sound quality-wise.

EDIT: One added note... you can't judge the quality of headphones by the price. The secret to great sounding headphones is finding a set with a frequency response that matches your particular ears perfectly. For a lot of people, that is the Harman Curve, and many headphone designers aim for that. But your particular ears may prefer something different. A study found that there was no correlation between price and sound quality with headphones. Test subjects liked mid range cans just as much as high end ones. It all depended on how well the response met their requirements. That's why it's best to go to a store and audition headphones before you buy; or at least work with an equalizer and find your ideal curve, then look for published measurements that match that curve.