Headphones versus speakers


Is it just me, my speakers or a combination? Almost everything sounds better on headphones. Anyone else found this to be true? Explanations???
papertrail
Hey Rob,

I happen to have just checked this thread and saw your post as I'm sitting hear listening to the Rolling Stones at about a zillion dB on my headphones. I got a chuckle out of your advice, but seriously - thanks for the reminder. It's been so long since I could really crank up a system and not feel a need to be critical of the gear (and the room) that I've found myself just getting into the music - which frankly is a blast. But your point is well taken and I probably should turn these things down.

I'm with you, if I could get my system to sound right in my room I'd rather hear that - but I just couldn't make it happen in the room I have - so I've given up and I'm rockin' out.

Thanks again for the good caution - everyone should heed it.
Hi hifi, I wouldn't say you can listen as loud as you want. With headphones hearing damage is much easier to get than with speakers.

Headphones take the room out of the equation which is a big deal.

But nothing compares to life size soundstage in the room. So headphones are a nice backup or if your on a budget good bang for your buck.

Rob
It's an apples and lemons comparision. If I'm following a score,I use the Grado cans. If I'm just listening,I use the Maggies.
I wouldn't necessarily say headphones are better, but certainly different.

There a various considerations. Among the biggest is the acoustical environment. People building systems often focus on the equipment and in the process minimize or overlook the impact of the room - which creates the acoustical environment for the system. You can have spectacular equipment - equipment that will be tonally flat (accurate from roughly 30Hz to 20kHz), and capable of producing high definition sound with great imaging (side to side and front to back), but if the room is the wrong size, or if the dimensions don't have the right ratios (length to width to height), then some of the frequencies might not reach your ears at the proper time – regardless of equipment placement and the seating location within the room. The wrong reflections and absorptions in a room will emphasize some sounds and dampen others which will skew the accurate reproduction of the signal that the equipment may have been capable of playing.

When you put the headphones on you are overcoming a lot of what goes wrong with most rooms so you get a certain realism that is hard to produce with most systems in most rooms. Your mind is so compelled by what is uniquely played back in the headphone environment (when it's done right - not all headphones are done well), that you can forget about some of the qualities that are missing in headphones. You mostly only notice these qualities - which are sonic "cues" to your mind - when you take the headphones off and you listen to a good system in a good room. Headphones can be great, but if I could have the world's best headphones or the world's best system in the world's best room, I'd take the system and the room (unless I could have the 'phones and the system/room). I think in the normal world of music your mind expects verbal cues from the environment beyond what headphones allow. But if the room is giving the wrong cues then your mind gets confused, disappointed, fatigued, etc. - and then it's often more technologically practical and economically affordable to fix the problem with headphones than with a new room.

One of the really nice aspects of headphones (beside the fact that you can listen as loud or as soft as you want and not have to deal with interrupting other people's sonic environment or have other sounds interrupt your listening) is that you can buy almost any headphone for roughly the price of a midrange interconnect cable. It's a lot easier to push the state of the art technologically without going broke - and you don't have to even begin to think about the cost of room design and treatments - which might cost almost as much as a state of the art system, and which is probably needed to get a state of the art system to play to it's potential.

Net, net: great headphones bring you great technology and a controlled listening environment for a fraction of the price of a great system in a great room. Headphones are much like a model - they can be spectacular at their scale and cost much less than the real thing, but they generally can’t beat the real thing – if the real thing is done well.
Depends what's important to you. If your emphasis is on clarity of detail I couldn't agree with you more. I loved my Stax earphones for exactly that reason. However, if you want to have a replication of a live sonic experience in actual space, with the music in front of you, not in your forehead, you can't beat listening to well set up speakers, short of going to a live performance that is. The emphasis should be on "well set up".