Headphones vs loudspeakers

..on another point regarding headphones.. Most headphone jacks are of poor quality, and the circuits are afterthoughts. To get the best from headphones, they need a dedicated headphone amp.

Stringreen: even with mid-fi non dedicated head phone amp the sound through head phones is better (with better tonality and fine dynamic shadings) than many high-end set ups. That is the dilemma. One more thing: though head phones many mediocre recordings become listenable --> I simply hear much more details through the phones. Of course the sound gets better with better head phone amps.

Chris

I wonder about the ambiant noise level in your listening room. It may be masking the details of your speakers. Headphones have close proximity to your ears and anywhere from a little to a lot of isolation. This can make it easier to hear details.

I've got excellent headphones, AKG K701s driven by a Woo Audio WA6 single-ended, class-A amp. You can see my speaker rig in the link below my name here. Anyway, I judge the health of both systems by how close they are to each other. They are very close in all respects, including detail. For the best listening on the speaker system I keep the ambiant noise level low, often turning off the AC, making sure the dishwasher is off, etc.

Dave

Headphones are more transparent for a number of reasons.

1. No need to deal with room issues - no reflections, suckouts, etc.

2. No need to solve coherence and phase issues with large multi-driver speakers.

3. No crossover in the way - therefore simpler and purer signal path.

4. Amplifiers are low power - therefore fewer gain stages. Again, can be made simpler and purer.

A small (single) driver can do many things so much better than larger drivers. Less mass means faster response times, less resonance (ringing and/or stored energy), and because the sound is being delivered very close to the ears, SPL levels don't need to be nearly as high, resulting in less distortion. It's much easier for head/earphones to be cleaner, more linear, more detailed, in a word, more 'accurate.' In addition to this, you've eliminated the room's acoustics which may contribute a higher proportion of total sound heard than you might expect, possibly more than half.

What you gain in detail and intimacy, you loose in soundstage and imaging. I've not heard binaural recordings. They may be the answer to the "inside your head" effect. However, you'd need 'bodyphones' to get the visceral delivery to *feel* the bass.