[Bullseye]

If you hadn't measured the FR at the listening point then you might easily have bass blobs (don't know exact term in english), problems with the midrange or any common problem you can get in a room. A speaker setup also depends on the distance from your speakers and the SPL you listen at.

Headphones don't destroy speakers regarding price. Because those calibration (more important than room treatment) and room treatment don't need to be extremely expensive.

As an example you can get a free DRC software to use by your own. Then you can buy a microphone to measure the FR in the listening point. If you want you can go for a DEQ2496 and use it as well, but it is not necessary having a computer + DRC installed.

Quote:

Originally Posted by wnmnkh /img/forum/go_quote.gif Really?, even well-calibrated B&W 700 speakers with decent setup in my father's house sounded meh compared to my HD650 in terms of detail. Come on, speakers and headphones have both strength and weakness regarding sound, but headphones just destroy speakers regarding price. Plus : and you just do not realize this calibration and room treatment do NOT come as FREE.

Skylab, DRC is not simple room EQ

 

[loopfreak]

Quote:

Plus : and you just do not realize this calibration and room treatment do NOT come as FREE.

You dont have to buy premium absorbers which is marketing thing, you can show some interest and make an effort to do it yourself with less money !

These days everybody wants an instant pleasure

 

[anoobis]

Quote:

Originally Posted by tuoppi /img/forum/go_quote.gif Even those 1000$ headphones have a better value for money than speakers of equivalent quality. Same quality speakers would probably be a lot more. 1000$ headphones are top end headphones where as with speakers 1000$ gets you only a mid level speakers at most.

There seems to be an assumption throughout this thread that it requires top level speakers to compete with top level headphones (not directing this specifically at anyone).

There are two relative standards here, one for headphones, one for speakers. A mid-level speaker system may well better a top level headphone. More likely, it probably depends on the criteria you chose.

 

[Skylab]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bullseye /img/forum/go_quote.gif Skylab, DRC is not simple room EQ

I am well aware of that. What I SAID was that digital room correction wasn't cheap, and that simple EQ (which is quite different of course) doesn't cut it.

And unless your PC is your only source, freeware DRC isn't going to be useful. I don't use a PC in my speaker stereo at all.

Anyway, as I said. I think this headphones vs. speakers bit isn't very useful. Different things for different uses. When no one is home in my house except me, I would never listen top headphones. It's all speakers then, baby. But much of the time, blasting my big rig isn't possible - so thank god for good headphones!

 

[Necrolic]

They're headphones, but so are their lower tier companions.

I wouldn't say it's a ripoff though, if you compare HD800 to HD600 or HD650, and T1 to DT880, there's really no comparison.

For example, DT880/T1 are both very musical, fun to listen to headphones. However, the T1 has better bass impact, deeper bass, is much clearer and much more detailed, better soundstaging, and the list goes on.

 

[Necrolic]

Quote:

Originally Posted by anoobis /img/forum/go_quote.gif There seems to be an assumption throughout this thread that it requires top level speakers to compete with top level headphones (not directing this specifically at anyone). There are two relative standards here, one for headphones, one for speakers. A mid-level speaker system may well better a top level headphone. More likely, it probably depends on the criteria you chose.

Agreed, speakers and headphones serve COMPLETELY different purposes. Speakers give a physical experience and in my experience a much larger "WOW" factor, whereas headphones have better detail retrieval and of course take up much less space and are a more personal experience.

If you're looking for what speakers offer, you may well prefer a $3000 speaker setup to a $3000 headphone setup, even if technically the headphone setup will sound "better".

Hell, I find myself listening to my KRK RP-5s, a very low end powered monitor, over my D5000s a lot of the time now, just for the speaker experience. Now while in a way this is great, it's also horrifying because of the money I know I'm going to wind up spending if this carries on.

 

[odigg]

This is an interesting thread

I think Beyer, Senn, and others have simply opened their mind to the existence and possibilities of the "luxury" market beyond creating "limited" and "special" edition products. The luxury market is most certainly a good market to be in, especially if you also sell stuff in at all other price points including the "I want the cheapest thing possible" market.

Luxury products typically exist because of A) perception of value and social prestige (e.g. clothes, purses) and/or B) implementing some technology that is really expensive to design/manufacture simply because you can or because you want it to eventually trickle down to mainstream products (e.g. Hydrogen powered cars).

I'm not sure where the various $1K+ headphones lie because I don't know how much it costs the manufacturers to make them. However, I'm quite confident that some fall into category A a lot more than B. I imagine the T1 and HD800 are a mix of both. Some extra $$ is probably padded onto the MSRP for A.

Regardless, "luxury" products are almost always out of "Best Bang for the Buck" when talking about price vs performance and they are not made for that audience.

As for the speaker vs headphone argument, I think, purely in terms of sonics, speakers and associated speaker components are a better buy than headphones. If nothing else, speakers have economies of scale on their side. When you bring in the used market (as Uncle Erik has pointed out) or pro-audio and active equipment, speakers kill headphones.

However, speakers assume a lot about people who use them. You need a room to put them in and you need to arrange your room to get the best sound. I've heard a set of expensive speakers sound really bad because they were in a room with a dining table, a media center, recliners, bookshelves, etc. They speakers could only fit where they were placed, and the placement was very bad. What about aesthetics? Do you or your spouse care about that?

If I had a pair of good speakers they would only really fit in the living room - a room where I would rarely use them! If you search you'd easily find stories of people who have purchased proper speakers systems and eventually concluded they didn't work in their life. For a lot of people smaller systems (e.g IPOD docks, mini systems) make a lot more sense and arguably give just as much pleasure, just without accuracy (which isn't important to a lot of people)

Headphones make few assumptions other than the listener having a head. If I wanted a luxury product that fit into my listening lifestyle, most certainly $1K+ headphones do that well. There is, after all, a certain bloating of the ego (mine at least) when I look at my headphone and know I have the most expensive model

It helps when I also know that the manufacturer has done something technologically new with the product.

 

[oqvist]

Think a poll is needed. For those that feel 200$ speakers beat 1500$ headphones or if it´s the other way around

Some do make a straight comparison regarding sound quality. And that shouldn´t be any difference right if the goal is to reproduce real life audio?

 

[InFn-0]

This might be off topic, but are studio monitors much better bang for the buck compared to hifi speakers which need additional amplification? I mean, will a Adam A7 destroy speakers like KEF XQ10 and so on?

Carry on guys, I'm on the verge of making a very important decision of my life, headphones or speakers.

 

[Bullseye]

That question is too vague, as the FR curve you will get at the listening position will vary a lot depending on how you have proceeded with your setup.

However from some DRC + ambiophonic users, their opinion regarding different monitors/speakers is that if both are correctly EQd (flat FR in the listening position) they will sound very similar -maybe indistinguishable- in a test.

There is always exceptions, but you can't generalize saying X speakers with A price will sound better than Y speakers with B price, being A>>B. A speaker setup depends too much on the listener position and the room you are using.

Quote:

Originally Posted by InFn-0 /img/forum/go_quote.gif This might be off topic, but are studio monitors much better bang for the buck compared to hifi speakers which need additional amplification? I mean, will a Adam A7 destroy speakers like KEF XQ10 and so on?

 

[Bilavideo]

I agree and disagree. Here is why. I agree because you can build great speakers for less than the price of an HD800 or PS1000. I disagree because I can tweak an SR60 to sound comparable to the big cans for a fraction of the cost.

 

[InFn-0]

Thanks for the reply mate, that sure helped. Sorry for minor thread jack.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bullseye /img/forum/go_quote.gif That question is too vague, as the FR curve you will get at the listening position will vary a lot depending on how you have proceeded with your setup. However from some DRC + ambiophonic users, their opinion regarding different monitors/speakers is that if both are correctly EQd (flat FR in the listening position) they will sound very similar -maybe indistinguishable- in a test. There is always exceptions, but you can't generalize saying X speakers with A price will sound better than Y speakers with B price, being A>>B. A speaker setup depends too much on the listener position and the room you are using.

 

[Nachkebia]

You know, some people can not afford to build top notch speaker setup, so I choose to build below average speaker setup and high end headphone setup, HD800 and T1. speakers just take alot of space, need cabling and so on, it is very complicated for me at least. headphones on the other hand is very simple, laptop > flac > dac > amp > headphone and you have top sound.

 

[Bilavideo]

If you're looking for bragging rights, money is one way the score is kept. Top cans are top cans, not simply for the cost of labor and materials but because you're buying a signature product. In the world of shoes, does the price of a Bruno Magli, or a Giuseppe Zanotti, or a Stuart Weitzman really reflect the cost of labor and materials? If we're talking about the diamond-studded incarnations, sure. Otherwise, you pay to play.

But isn't the world of headfi different? Doesn't a higher price get you better sound? If so, the Grado PS-1000 must sound better than the Sennheiser HD800 - $400 worth of better. By the same token, the HD650 must sound better than HD600? The Grado SR325 must sound better than the SR225. There must be an airtight logic to these differences in price, with the more expensive cans being so much more expensive to make and with each pricier product clearly better than its cheaper cousin.

But it doesn't work like that - and it probably never did. Every man has his price. You pay it to get what you want, but nowhere is it written that there's a tight relationship between price and quality. A $1,000 headphone probably doesn't suck, but whether the $1,000 can is twice as good as the $500 can, or whether you can rank headphone quality by price is highly doubtful.

I, for one, just have to laugh at the engineering choices of so many headphones. Who decided that plastic was a great material from which to create a sonic chamber? Who decided that leatherette would be ideal for keeping the soundstage clear and unmuddied? If plastic is the devil, why is it an integral part of Grado drivers all the way up to the PS-1000? If the HD800 has found the secret to quality sound, what will Sennheiser introduce to us five years from now? What's the psychology behind giving headphones numbered names? Which genius at Sennheiser came up with the idea of using "HD" - a video format - as a prefix for all of its better phones? What kind of "prestige" can Grado's Prestige series have if it refers to its lowest offerings? How much bigger is the RS-1 than the RS-2? Do the sound waves know it? What is it about aluminum that made it the choice of Grado's now-top PS1000 and its Prestige-series SR-325, but not so important for the RS-2, RS-1 or GS-1000? Is the RS-1 still a "reference" can if Grado has come out with the GS-1000? Is the GS-1000 its "statement" can if Grado has now come out with the PS-1000? Is the PS-1000 now what "professionals" listen to?

There's a lot of marketing silliness run amok through the fields of the Lord. Paying for improvements in sound is one thing. Paying for bragging rights, and so the top dogs can take an extra vacation, is quite another. Headphones have become a hobbyist's bottomless pit, with new offerings coming onto the scene far more often than real innovations.

The key to the headphone is the driver and how it is used, yet even the knockoffs are less interested in getting it right than in dressing their knockoff up to look like a more expensive headphone. Sometimes I think the blind are leading the blind. I'm tired of hearing about how this manufacturer or that "designed" their headphone to achieve this effect or that. It's obvious, as often as not, that designers are selling a product. As often as not, they'll worsen a headphone's prospects of sounding great in favor of a product design that simply looks cool or mimics a similar design on a different can.

As much as I'd like to believe that Manufacturer X so carefully designed its drivers to produce a very specific result, I can't help but wonder if they didn't simply buy or design a driver and then figure out what to do with it. So much of this looks like spec wars, with manufacturers thinking up new ways to chase the market rather than attract new business by experimentation and innovation. Bose is not the only manufacturer whose "better sound through research" amounts to a lot of careful study to find out what the public will buy next.

Such marketing and positioning are facilitated by listeners who act as if they were holding court at a wine-sipping contest. The number of adjectives coined to describe the headphone experience seems to be growing by leaps and bounds. I have to wonder at what point these guys stopped listening to the sounds of their headphones in favor of the sounds of their own voices.

 

[oqvist]

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