Headphones, or Speakers???

Just received a pair of Sennheiser HD-600 from my wife as a birthday gift yesterday, it is still under break-in period. It is another project for me: headphone amp and replacement cord.........

The reason I got this gift is that I quite often listen to Mahler Symphony No. 2 after 12:00 a.m. (most of time I will repeat the last movement) which is "somehow" annoy to my lovely wife who is already on bed. I am sure this explains everything.

Back to the topic, for me, headphone is a nice alternative. But it is very difficult for headphones to generate the massive energy that some instruments, e.g. organ, bring you in orchestral music.

Happy Listening.

Otto

I tried it for awhile. I used Stax Lambda with the Class A headphone amp/preamp unit. Sounded great. The thing that made me get out of the headphone listening was the lack of "body vibrations" that normally accompany the sounds in the ear. I am not talking about headbanging stuff here. I just didn't feel the music like I did with speakers, and I didn't like that. I think that has to be considered.

Hey, I heard the Orpheus cans at the Stereophile HT show, too. Sure, they sounded wounderful, but $11k wonderful...? I'd take that much worth of speaker over any headphones, any day. Heard some talk (likely nonsense, but vaguely informative) that you can get approximately comparable sound quality (how's that for an inherently subjective fallacy, but anyway) for roughly 10% of the price in headphones v. speakers. In other words, according to this formula, my Sennheiser HD600's at around $360 should be roughly equivalent in quality to my $3,600 Thiel 2.3's (no, not actually what I paid for either...). So, do I like'em about the same? Not at all. I've tried running the cans off of a Headroom Home amp, a Rogue 99, through the 99 to the Headroom, with a Meridian 508, with an AH!Tjoeb and all manner of permutations thereof and, every time, I'd prefer to be listening to the speakers. Don't get me wrong, the Sennheisers are great, and I really like the Headroom amp, but there is something more palpable and present about speakers that I, at any rate, haven't been able to duplicate with headphones. I gave up trying to compete with the two, moved the cans, the Tjoeb, and the Headroom in to the bedroom, and now they and the speakers get used at different times, for different reasons, in different places and everyone's happy. Guess that makes this another vote for "both."

Lack of imaging, lack of room vibrations and feeling the deep bass. Headphones are very useful but don't come close to speakers for me.

Try listening to Stax headphones while sitting on a first class subwoofer.