[curtainsinmotio]

 
A speaker system has obvious advantages due to its natural crossfeed of stereo image and the moving of air. Also, room acoustics become a potential enhancer (but, and this is important, also a potential limiter) of sound.
 
Now, I have heard many people say their main reason to listen through headphones is to avoid disturbing people around them. Other arguments include lower cost for high resolution and depth as compared to a speaker system, a head-fi system to a large extent taking up less physical space, the comfort of wearing them etc.
 
These seemingly most common reasons for listening through a head-fi system is far from the main ones for me. It has other huge advantage. The feeling of having music played inside and around your head is a completely different experience. Stereo imaging becomes more extreme (partly due to lack of crossfeed) and for instance the panning of sounds in psychedelic music becomes more of a mind**** (in a good way) as soundwaves fly in through and around your head. You get a feeling of actually living (or even being) the music instead of just participating as a spectator. With headphones, music breathes through your mind and you get a sense of internality instead of the externality experienced from a speaker system. Even dancing with headphones feels more..... well it feels better to me because music becomes part of my body in a way I can not say it does through a speaker system.
 
Any thoughts on this? Why, if at all, do you prefer head-fi and not hi-fi speaker systems?

 

[MalVeauX]

Heya,
 
I use headphones strictly for night time and travel where a speaker system at full volume is either disturbing to others or is not possible. Why? Because a well setup speaker system blows headphones away.
 
Very best,

 

[Sanity]

I like Headphones mainly because it's just the way I've always listened to music. Growing up I always had a pair of headphones, and it's just something that stuck with me. It's also a lot cheaper to get great sound from headphones when compared to a speaker system, and I also bother less people with headphones too.
 
 

 

[LithoJazoSphere]

*Isolation
*A different sort of experience, the OP nailed it
*Easier to decipher detail at comparable volumes
*Portability
 
Sure, a high-quality, properly set up and tailored to the room, speaker system, if you can crank it without anything interfering, is going to be overall superior to just about any headphone system you can design.  The experience of the sound waves hitting you from every angle, especially from a sub-woofer, is impossible to duplicate with headphones.  But the cost is greater, it's harder to get all of the variables exactly right, and you're limited to the acoustically best spot in the room, which is hardly convenient for listening to music all over your house, much less outside of it.  So while I have 3 different speaker systems in my house (admittedly two of them are fairly low-end) and enjoy them occasionally, I still prefer and spend much more time with my headphones.