I can only 100% agree to @Alu and @The1Signature
There is this concept that speakers are best, headphones are an watered down version of speakers and earphones are an watered down versions of headphones.
But this mindset is very outdated (lots of audiphiles are purists and things only change very slowly in the audiophile world) imho and in my experience, its the opposite way. Earphones are the best, then come headphones and even my 2000€ MDR-Z1R easily beats 40'000€ Speaker setups in optimized rooms. I've heard so many speaker setups from crazy enthusiasts who spend up to 100'000€ on their setups and they sometimes ask for my opinion and i have to bite my tounge not to say "Well, my earphone are better". I always have to find some diplomatic answer^^
Not just we, more and more people (and especially a lot of professional musicians, not just on stage but especially in studios while recording/mixing/mastering) are shifting towards earphones. Where speakers where the reference in the past and Headphones/Earphones have been used in addition to verify and fine-tune, more and more studios start so use earhpones as the reference. Even in the Studio where is not even remotely as loud as on the side of an stage, the isolation is worth gold and the sound quality is just so much better.
Which makes sense. The further the source is from your ear, the more factors you have to control, the more variables you have you can not control, and so on. With Headphones you need one single driver that is very hard to tune and control to do the whole frequency spectrum. In an multi driver earphone you can tune every single driver seperately and then you can control which driver gets how much electricity and so on. An speaker setup have to control thousands of liters of air, the reverb from your own body, all walls and the phase differences from the other speakers and so on. Its not even an competition.
I tested way more Headphones than Earphones and still i only own one single Headphone i only use 10% of the time (if at all). Every Headphone i test lets me dissapointed.
I recently tested the Final D8000 which is an excellent Headphone, it is really really good but then you compare it to the Final A8000 which costs >1000€ less and its just worse. The A8000 is just better in everything, including comfort. Not just the sound quality itself, so many factors in addition like, they sound the same, no matter if i am wearing glasses or not, they isolate stronger and so enable me to hear the music better without pushing them hard. Or take people with long hair (often woman) and so on.
There is this concept that speakers are best, headphones are an watered down version of speakers and earphones are an watered down versions of headphones.
But this mindset is very outdated (lots of audiphiles are purists and things only change very slowly in the audiophile world) imho and in my experience, its the opposite way. Earphones are the best, then come headphones and even my 2000€ MDR-Z1R easily beats 40'000€ Speaker setups in optimized rooms. I've heard so many speaker setups from crazy enthusiasts who spend up to 100'000€ on their setups and they sometimes ask for my opinion and i have to bite my tounge not to say "Well, my earphone are better". I always have to find some diplomatic answer^^
Not just we, more and more people (and especially a lot of professional musicians, not just on stage but especially in studios while recording/mixing/mastering) are shifting towards earphones. Where speakers where the reference in the past and Headphones/Earphones have been used in addition to verify and fine-tune, more and more studios start so use earhpones as the reference. Even in the Studio where is not even remotely as loud as on the side of an stage, the isolation is worth gold and the sound quality is just so much better.
Which makes sense. The further the source is from your ear, the more factors you have to control, the more variables you have you can not control, and so on. With Headphones you need one single driver that is very hard to tune and control to do the whole frequency spectrum. In an multi driver earphone you can tune every single driver seperately and then you can control which driver gets how much electricity and so on. An speaker setup have to control thousands of liters of air, the reverb from your own body, all walls and the phase differences from the other speakers and so on. Its not even an competition.
I tested way more Headphones than Earphones and still i only own one single Headphone i only use 10% of the time (if at all). Every Headphone i test lets me dissapointed.
I recently tested the Final D8000 which is an excellent Headphone, it is really really good but then you compare it to the Final A8000 which costs >1000€ less and its just worse. The A8000 is just better in everything, including comfort. Not just the sound quality itself, so many factors in addition like, they sound the same, no matter if i am wearing glasses or not, they isolate stronger and so enable me to hear the music better without pushing them hard. Or take people with long hair (often woman) and so on.
