Can a really good/great pair of headphones and amp match or beat a room system?

[W9TR]

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 .

 

[Bones13]

Are you the one that moved from Alabama to Seattle?

Yes.

And yes to the price differential. BHSE+Stax = $10k new when I bought. That’s all half the cost of the speakers and my modest amps. I use all sources, and Preamp for both systems.

 

[Randy Myers]

Certainly, very good headphones and amp can be had for less than speakers and amp, however they can also be close. Obviously, the upper end of speaker gear is much higher.

The Woo amp is over $2500 and the Abyss headphones currently are about $4k, and the Black Dragon cable was about $600. In normal folks' terms quite pricy for headphones, therefore it is a perspective thing.

 

[the professor]

One can get an amazing headphone system for a fraction of the money an equivalent speaker based system costs.

If you need to listen quietly then headphones are your only option.

But imo the headphone experience just doesn’t convey the emotion of the music like speakers can. And I’ve had all (except the msb amp but have listened to it) of the top headphones up to a couple years ago when I finally gave up the headphone quest.

Obviously no money is saved for the source since it doesn’t change. I find that very few dealers/manufacturers use a top source in their demo set ups. This is a shame really since headphones are so revealing that the source is so very important.

 

[Mike]

We have lots of great headphones in the store. I like the STAX 9000 myself a lot. The Meze’s are also all super comfortable.

 

[Mr Peabody]

We have lots of great headphones in the store. I like the STAX 9000 myself a lot. The Meze’s are also all super comfortable.

To my knowledge Stax is the pioneer or one of them for electrostat headphones. It seems they went under the radar for a long time. I heard about them in the late 80's early 90's but dropped off after. They are also one of the companies that realized early that electrostats are magic with tubes.

Tubes with electrostats can be just haunting realism in certain aspects of the sound, I call it presence. The sound isn't for all the genres I listen to. I'm not a headphone listener but would love to have a second set up of tubes/electrostats.

Years ago I bought a Musical Fidelity X-can headphone amp, it's really not a stereotypical tube sound. For awhile that and Sennheiser was marketed as a great match. It's just I can't remember the last time I had that thing plugged in to use.

I won a Wiim Mini that's been sitting around maybe I'll hook that up to the X-can to see what happens.

 

[Randy Myers]

I remember hearing about Stax way back in the day. At that time most headphones would be used with a headphone jack off your receiver/pre-amp. Having a separate amp specifically for headphones was a sort of revolutionary idea, if my memory serves me. Then again, I do not recall there being a high-end headphone market back then either.

I believe Koss and then Sennheiser were two of the bigger players. The Sony Walkman really started the portable revolution and lightweight (although seriously lacking) headphones.

 

[mep]

Yes.

And yes to the price differential. BHSE+Stax = $10k new when I bought. That’s all half the cost of the speakers and my modest amps. I use all sources, and Preamp for both systems.

Aside from the family reasons for your move, how do you like living in Seattle?

 

[Bones13]

I grew up in Houston, and lived in Texas till I was 30, so it was very big when I left. We lived in San Francisco for 6 months. (got to experience the '89 earthquake) Then spent 35 years in Mobile, AL for my active orthopedic practice years.

Seattle is fun. It was a bit rough driving fro 5 days from Mobile to Seattle, landing just before Christmas. Weather is the worst from mid December through about February. Big city amenities. Getting used to parking was a bit of work. But then, we pretty much walk to their house, and there are 3 very nice, walkable, restaurants. Our favorite is at the end of our block. We got lucky finding an eclectically remodeled home that my wife loves, and has my enormous room. House prices are crazy here, I was lucky to have sold a small Rosemary Beach Condo, and a home in Mobile for enough to afford what we needed here.

We had ALL the family in our house for Christmas. It was a bit tight, but one of the families was there for only 4 days. Today we drove up to Orcas for the week (my daughter's vacation)

So, we consider life to be great. The winter this year is not as difficult as last year, so I expect we are accommodating.

 

[mep]

I grew up in Houston, and lived in Texas till I was 30, so it was very big when I left. We lived in San Francisco for 6 months. (got to experience the '89 earthquake) Then spent 35 years in Mobile, AL for my active orthopedic practice years.

Seattle is fun. It was a bit rough driving fro 5 days from Mobile to Seattle, landing just before Christmas. Weather is the worst from mid December through about February. Big city amenities. Getting used to parking was a bit of work. But then, we pretty much walk to their house, and there are 3 very nice, walkable, restaurants. Our favorite is at the end of our block. We got lucky finding an eclectically remodeled home that my wife loves, and has my enormous room. House prices are crazy here, I was lucky to have sold a small Rosemary Beach Condo, and a home in Mobile for enough to afford what we needed here.

We had ALL the family in our house for Christmas. It was a bit tight, but one of the families was there for only 4 days. Today we drove up to Orcas for the week (my daughter's vacation)

So, we consider life to be great. The winter this year is not as difficult as last year, so I expect we are accommodating.

Thank you for sharing your story and I'm glad you and your extended family are happy!

 

[Mr Peabody]

To my knowledge Stax is the pioneer or one of them for electrostat headphones. It seems they went under the radar for a long time. I heard about them in the late 80's early 90's but dropped off after. They are also one of the companies that realized early that electrostats are magic with tubes.

Tubes with electrostats can be just haunting realism in certain aspects of the sound, I call it presence. The sound isn't for all the genres I listen to. I'm not a headphone listener but would love to have a second set up of tubes/electrostats.

Years ago I bought a Musical Fidelity X-can headphone amp, it's really not a stereotypical tube sound. For awhile that and Sennheiser was marketed as a great match. It's just I can't remember the last time I had that thing plugged in to use.

I won a Wiim Mini that's been sitting around maybe I'll hook that up to the X-can to see what happens.

I should have put this in a new thread, I did what I mentioned above.

The Wiim Mini is under $100.00 so I shouldn't expect much and for that you do get several music services to choose from. I just signed into my Tidal account. I did not use the digital out only headphones and into the X-can. Either way I found the sound not so good, the highs sounded rolled off and lacked clarity overall. I played with the EQ some but preferred "flat". I think I'd get better sound just going from my phone to a decent set of BT headphones.

One other quirky thing I noticed. I tried the Bluetooth connection and Tidal Connect. Tidal Connect didn't seem to work for the next song, it played the song but the controls stopped working. Bluetooth worked fine and to my surprise actually seemed to sound slightly better than the Wy-fi connection on same song. Very odd. My guess is this thing is so small they just didn't do Wy-fi well.