Planes and trains I use Monster Turbine Pro IEM, I also have a set of AKG K272HD.

Occasionally, if listening late at night when the parrots are asleep, I use headphones - Grado SR325e

From my experience, definitely not. Although I'm sure you could find a quality pair if you're willing to pay for it.

Some things are meant to be listened to over headphones. David Gilmour's and the Orb's "Metallic Spheres" is literally designed for headphones, such that all of these different sounds are jumping out at you. I listen to a lot of 90s alternative hits through headphones (such as Nirvana, Green Day, Red Hot Chilis, etc).

On the other hand, I would never play Led Zeppelin (and most other classic rock bands) through headphones. Those guys are meant to be projected. I can also never imagine playing most of Pink Floyd, Genesis, King Crimson, and Tull by speaker - just because I like to play those loud and clear at top volume.

Some things I play through both, based on convenience. A lot of metal is good coming out loud from headphones or speakers - it fulfills the same satisfaction that I just need so badly sometimes.

Preference, my friend, preference.

If you have had, on any occasion, the chance to hear things on speakers that cost over $500 EACH, instead of a pair, you would know the difference. The headphone set would have to be high quality studio equivalent to get the fullness of the sound.

I prefer speakers, even though nowadays, they are not as useful as they were way back when, when you would blow up some things that we call classics and this and that ... but I can take any of the high quality remasters, and I think they sound much better on the speakers than they do headphones.

I think a lot of this is about its quality ... since most home use and headphones are not what most people have, and I am not sure that the "quality" can come through as much as it would otherwise. Kinda feels like ... you're just listening to the Rolling Stones anyway ... why bother?

If it's vinyl, I prefer headphones, because my speakers are cr*ppy and my headphones pair very well with the amp.

Ultimately, if I want to lay down on the couch, I use headphones 

For headphones I've tried all the usual suspects and just don't like them. My favourite ever were a pair of Howland West electrostatics but they fell to pieces after 30 years faithful service - I now use cheap JVC (bluetooth and tethered) because I like the balanced sound they produce and can wear them for several hours without any adverse effects. 

I commute an hour a day, and listen to music while on the bus. I use Bose noise cancelling headphones for the bus. At home, depending on the music, my mood, and where I want to listen, I will either listen to music through my surround system - 5.1 Denon speaker system - or through one of a couple of bookshelf systems distributed throughout the house. The bookshelf systems are wireless Bose Soundtouch systems - convenient, and sound ok, but nothing to write home about in the sound department.

I do use headphones with my digital recorder if it's late at night. 

I'm not enjoying headphones a lot ... and here is an example.

LP: From the 70's, specially the German stuff like Schulze, Tangerine Dream and even CAN that was usually very well done, studio wise, for my ears. I have what some folks would have called 30 years ago a very high end setup, with ESS Heil AMT1 speakers (air motion transformer!) and a high end turn table with a $300 dollar cartridge on it ... it makes a difference on that cartridge, btw.

The quality is smooth and strong.

Now you get the CD's and put them on in the same system, and they do not sound as clear. Perhaps is this or that or what not, and it simply does not measure up. So I go get one of SW's remixes and guess what ... it sounds great on headphones, but does not seem to divide well on the speakers ... which I thought was a bit weird for me.

I think the crunching and all the bruhaha for the digital stuff has taken away some quality or what we used to call "hi fidelity" which you will KNOW what it is about if you EVER get one of those RED SEAL albums that came out in the late 60's and early 70's ... these were the best of the best super recorded, clean and strong all around. No headphones, to my mind, have ever come close to those. So here, speakers would win.

The future, though, is changing things, and I believe the digital will eventually will surpass the other stuff and at that point the headphones might become a better listen, but in the end, IF MUSIC is about the room and the acoustics on it, it would be impossible for it to sound better on headphones, since you can not duplicate the air movement (sound) in the room in your head!

I'm not overly technical on these things ... sorry!

Well, I used to think my Definitive Technology BP6 was sexy until I started hearing "...those don't match the room, can't you get something smaller..?"

I have heard a similar pr of SF at a local dealer, really nice towers for sure. They are made with a leather front that also wraps up the top too. To power these puppies you need some very high quality amplifiers....

micky wrote: WaterSnake wrote: Just wondering what people's opinions are on the matter, and if they have any preferred model or brand ect. I personally prefer speakers because I've had the chance to use some incredible ones in the past, but I'm intending on saving money for some high quality headphones as I reckon they'll have the edge over a proper sound system at lower prices.  speakers all the way man... pfff....you can not annoy your neighbors or rattle the pictures on the wall with headphones.

Thinking practically... I approve! 

Bluetooth headphones serve the same purpose.

I live in a house and speakers just annoys my wife.  I don't recommend it.

Its only money, you will make more . I agree on good looking speakers, its one reason I bought the Rega RX5, I bought mine in walnut, matches really nice with the decor in our music area. Can't post a pic, PA still wonky for me right now . 

I saw a review of something by Advance Acoustics, French company if I remember right.....I remember reading good gear for a tremendous value.

Nice

I agree and I don't. In some ways, this is about ... how much and how well, you want to hear these things?

The impact that you get from a large room with great speakers, is FAR AND FAR AND FAR and away, better and stronger to your body, than if you were to hear it on your headset, and I am not sure that folks have considered this when hearing a lot of the progressive music that we love. 

The impact of it, on the body, is a better experience, in that it goes farther around your body, rather than simply keep it into one area of your body. You can not imagine the experience your body will get when listening to something, just through headphones, rather than experience it in a large studio with equipment that is far and beyond what our ears can imagine and have heard.

It's a weird discussion, in that we're mixing what WAS, with what IS, and that's an unfair discussion. I am not sure that FM radio could have an impact today, like it did 50 years ago, when there was no such thing, and you were hearing this THUNDEROUS music that shook you to pieces ... in stereo, in large cities where the signal was even BETTER than your own ability to conceive it.

Today, this is meaningless, as the ear thing is as good as the stereo on the radio, but one's ability to differentiate is not there, because you have not heard the large room with the large speakers and the music exploding out of the cones!

You will know, why a Strauss is Strauss (or 2001 opening!), or the 5th is the 5th, or The Rite is the RIGHT thing to listen to ... and that experience has a limitation on the ears only, instead of the body!

Today my in ear monitors will never give me that experience. This is why I have an audio system where I listen to my music thru speakers.

Hearing the craziness of Soup by Can or the simple build up of say Stairway To Heaven by LZ and the big sound with the huge soundstage that fills my room, cannot be compared to headphones. The helicopter sounds and clocks from Pink Floyd that just fill the room all around me.....That's cool!

Perfect example ... and if you check out my review of Roger's The Wall, opposite the original, you will find that I mentioned this, and how valuable it was to the experience, and mostly when the girl comes in to the room and mentions all the guitars ... in the original, in Quad around the Sports Arena (LA), it was like the door was behind you and the guitars were up front, and she could "see them" and you felt that as she walked across the room to the guitars. On the headphones, that separation is not quite there and developed as well as it was originally, and in Roger's? Totally gone, and it went from left to right on the stage and that was that, and the "personal" experience side of it was GONE.

A lot of this is missing in Steven Wilson's redo's, for example. The ability to make the music "BE HERE AND NOW", instead of an idea of where it should be. SW's mixes are more like a symphony conductor just getting the symphony together cleanly ... but missing a lot of the emotional ability and involvement in the music itself.

That is not a knock on his solo work, or Porcupine Tree, however, it is, in general, something that is very much SW's style .. he's "apart" from it, observing it ... he's not in the middle of it, and I think that is a very important consideration when listening to music.

One girlfriend of mine thought that LZ was very sexy, and got her going. But she would not listen to it on Headphones, because it was not the same. The sound itself, live, or on speakers, provided a physical response that the headset could not provide regardless of how loud it was. Since that time, this has become a huge difference ... how men and women perceive music ... we're too damn mental, and do not know enough or give a darn about the physical. Women, differ in that perception, in ways that we can only imagine. And, at the time (first 4 albums) the other one she could relate to, was Rickie Lee Jones, who lost most of that feeling after "Magazine", when she got "famous".

There are just some nuances That make the album even more groundbreaking and progressive in sound engineering that you can only appreciate through a good set of headphones.

I'm not sure this is true, or correctly worded. Check out, if you can, the DVD with Klaus Schulze and Lisa Gerrard, and the added on interview with SW and then the one about their ability to clean up something inside the music for the CD to make it cleaner ... that bit itself, is SHOWN on the screen in loud speakers that they and us can hear VERY WELL, even if it is slightly augmented from the overall piece, so that it can be heard on its own and ... the need to clean it up shows up. 

In other words, it can be picked up both ways. It does not matter which, and it probably is determined by your comfort zone. But the scary thought is ... for hundreds of years, no one used HEADPHONES and yet, the music is here ... and we hear it ... do you EVER wonder why? Do you really think, it's just the melody? Or the headphones, that kept that music around for some hundreds of years?

The mind and body are amazing, and a receptacle with no ends ... and its memory, is golden, and far more valuable and "alive" than any headphone you will EVER use in your life! In essence, you are LIMITING the complete experience of the music if all you use is the headphones! The rest of your body is only imagining what your ears translate, instead of letting it receive it "directly" ... from the speakers or the source!

Reminds me of that commercial ... is it live or memorex ... I guess everything has to be memorex now, and we can't even conceive of it being alive ... might as well have sex with a plastic doll?

......better on a well assembled audio system with speakers. In the recording studio and mastering/mixing rooms they use monitors (box speakers) not headphones.

Not knocking cans, they have a purpose.

here, here....Can't do this w/headphones

I don't often play my old stereo speakers these days but on occasion I go downstairs and crank them....but they are over 40 years old (custom made in Indiana at college) and even though they were decent then they sound a bit dated now.

My ESS HEIL AMT 1 speakers, cost me about 650 to 700 dollars in 1975 or so  ... had to hear PF, and KS and AD2 and all those folks in a much better set than what I had! I just had them re-coned here in Portland they still kick butt, and I asked Jay (the old man at the store JaMac) what he thought at the speakers ... he said he would not buy a whole lot of some speakers these days, that are built way too cheap for the appreciation of music ... mostly because everyone is so commercialized with the cheap stuff all over the market!

To me, that says a lot about the music itself and the need to "relate to it". For most teens, including us, it was just a passing phase that went away when the kids started arriving!

Not to me!

moshkito wrote: Catcher10 wrote: ... The helicopter sounds and clocks from Pink Floyd that just fill the room all around me.....That's cool! Perfect example ... and if you check out my review of Roger's The Wall, opposite the original, you will find that I mentioned this, and how valuable it was to the experience, and mostly when the girl comes in to the room and mentions all the guitars ... in the original, in Quad around the Sports Arena (LA), it was like the door was behind you and the guitars were up front, and she could "see them" and you felt that as she walked across the room to the guitars. On the headphones, that separation is not quite there and developed as well as it was originally, and in Roger's? Totally gone, and it went from left to right on the stage and that was that, and the "personal" experience side of it was GONE....

One more thing here, since it makes a different point about listening to music. Catching things LIVE is not the same thing as catching them on the Headset ... and I am not convinced that you would go watch someone live ... simply because of what you hear in the ears, although today (the 21st century) this is quite different than what it all was 40 and 50 years ago ... you heard this unbelievable thing on the speakers, and you wanted to see it live. 

This might be the reason, why, as an old man, I have lost the desire to go to concerts. Very few of the current line ups and bands, would be interesting for me to catch and see, as if it was an "auditory" experience, or something that my whole body would want to experience. Now, if you ask me about King Crimson, a perfect example, and you follow (to an extent) the comments and ideas that RF suggests, like closing your eyes to listen to the music, your inner experience, goes wayyyyyyyyyyyy beoynd the ears, and this has a tendency to take things away from the r'n'r idea of a concert which is to ignithe the "fan'atic" in you so it can generate more sales. The "excitement" ... is, supposedly, in something that you see/catch ... and that is not always TRUE at all ... that's a rather naive bit about "listening", which can explain a lot more, than we allow for.

I was just listening to Rachel Flowers and it should suggest to you that her "listening" to things, is so detailed, that she can pick them up, and knows how to get to them. Our own listening is not so detailed, in general, and a live concert, or 1K headset, is not going to make it any better. Neither is the speaker set ... 

This, leaves it all ... in one thing. The magic of music, for us all. And, sometimes, we have to let go of the ideas, in order to experience, the part of it that creates that magic ... it's not even just in your ears! Can you, now, imagine, how a Bach, Mozart, or old piece of music, can still live, and excite us? It wasn't the stereo speakers, or the headphones ... it was the music itself!

Remember that!

As you know I am not a headphone user, I do use IEM on the train and the experience is just OK. Last night I plugged my phones in to my integrated amp and listened to KC ItCOtCK Side II......I was having a great time with the spaciousness, sound stage and clarity of the music. Now to your point Nick, I too have spent good time with my analog setup to pull out the best from my rekkids, so the sound is pretty sweet and it was coming thru the cans nicely...... But I love my speakers

PS: 2nd time posting this reply ...You know other than all my vinyl buddies here I don't need to come here, I keep telling myself!