W9TR
Active member
I have both and love each in its own way. I own a few good pairs of headphones and they are a pleasure to listen to early in the morning and late at night when I don’t want to disturb the household.
They have much lower distortion, better time coherence and a more dynamic presentation than I’ve heard on any speaker-based system anywhere.
But they don’t throw a 3D image like a good speaker system does. All the sound is in my head or just slightly outside it. Some binaural recordings break that mold but they are few and far between.
If had to choose only one setup, the ‘phones would get kicked to the curb in a heartbeat.
One other thing - you can do state of the art phones and an amp for under $5k. Speakers and amps of similar quality - more like $50k .
They have much lower distortion, better time coherence and a more dynamic presentation than I’ve heard on any speaker-based system anywhere.
But they don’t throw a 3D image like a good speaker system does. All the sound is in my head or just slightly outside it. Some binaural recordings break that mold but they are few and far between.
If had to choose only one setup, the ‘phones would get kicked to the curb in a heartbeat.
One other thing - you can do state of the art phones and an amp for under $5k. Speakers and amps of similar quality - more like $50k .
