carter840
New Head-Fier
In my experience, to be able to hear someone speak to me when they're not in my field of view is very difficult with any on-ear or over-ear headphone, unless they significantly raise their voice which you don't want in an open office. It would require listening at such a low level that the benefits of nicer headphone/DAC/amp is largely wasted. You can test this for yourself with any old pair of on-ear or open-ear. Put them on, play some music out of your phone, and experiment with the volume at which you can hear a friend 15 feet behind you speak your name at some random time interval after hitting 'play'. I think you'll be surprised. The best at maintaining contact with the outside world while still being able to enjoy music are ear buds. There are nicer ones around than the ones that came with your phone, still relatively inexpensive. If you think about it, one of the goals of high-end gear is the immersive experience, which is in direct conflict with your statement I quoted.
I completely agree with you, I myself am struggling with this as well. Perhaps it's not logical to proceed down this route. An alternative could be to use my existing Westone 3 in ears and a 5th gen iPod (which supposedly has a pretty decent on board DAC). I just noticed that so many people use over the ear headphones at work and once I started shopping for those it evolved into DAC and Amp.