Do you prefer Speaker or Headphone?

I was wondering if I was alone. Ever since im young, when I want to listen to a album, I mean really listen, I put on my headphones.
Those couple past years, i started investing in good speakers, treating my room extensively. The result remains the same, I still prefer listening critically with headphones.

what about you guys?

 

Frankly, I prefer speakers.

Sadly, I married someone who shares neither my taste in music nor my chosen times of day for listening to it. That is the sole, original reason that I am here.

But, I'm also sorry that I did no serious listening on proper headphones for several decades just because closed 'phones made me feel claustrophobic way back then. I missed out. So thanks, to said wife, for causing me to discover headphone pleasures!

 

Speakers easily. It's a whole other level of engagement with the music for me.

 

Speakers for me too. Good speakers can resolve nearly as well as TOTL headphones but even the best headphones can't produce soundstage and imaging like good cheap speakers.

 

Speakers, if I can afford to do so.

 

...

 

Depends on a lot of factors. In the past I would always say two channel stereo, but I just moved. My new room has wood floors, no curtains and is smallish. The system that was phenomenal now sounds like a super tweeter. Not here long enough to bother with trying to fix the room so headphones again. ChrIstmas Bonus=Zana Deux; figure it will make a bad ass preamp when I get back into a different room.

 

Seems like nearfields have a narrow sweet spot? Sadly, I haven't heard a good set of full-sized speakers in over 20 years, but I will always remember the day. Headphones are indispensable, but good speakers can be mind-blowing.

 

For me, Headphones are easier to listen to for detail and timber, speakers for depth, nuance and micro dynamics. Both can be good enough to take your breath away, but I only feel immersed by speakers, as I can feel the dynamics, if available. Speakers are harder to set up but have a higher upside if you get it right.

 

Isn't that the point? Sort of.

But at least you don't have to take them off to go the toilet or the kitchen.

 

Same as @Thad E Ginathom , my wife's very much a "background music" kind of person. I could spend a crap load on some nice speakers but they'd never get beyond a light murmur unless she was out...and I don't think it's healthy if I'm constantly wishing my wife wasn't around . So, it's a headphone life for me yo ho ho

 

I prefer speakers but due to circumstances I'm limited to headphones. Eventually I'll move onto speakers but that's gonna be many years down the road.

 

I prefer headphones. I never had a good listening room. Which, for me, has been the most elusive stereo component.

 

Oh tell me about it... Now you make me wonder what the gf and I enjoy doing together. JK, but at least when making big decisions we stand united.

To answer the OP, I prefer speakers, and the sub. I am a sucker for ground rumbling bass at low volume. No headphones I tried even come close, including my X00, and I am only talking about cheap consumer grade subs.
If you ask me what do I use though, that would be a different story.

 

As someone who spends the lion's share of his music time listening to headphones and monitors personal audio gear closely and speaker hi-fi gear almost not at all, the answer for me is "Speakers" and it's not even close.

As much as I have learned to enjoy headphones, they are a convenience for me that I use frequently because of my limited ability to listen to my mid-fi speaker setup. I would much prefer to spend time and money on my two-channel system, but I am just very limited in how frequently I can use my speakers.

 

I would prefer speakers, but have been living in apartments ever since I went back to school several years ago and am not the type of person who likes to antagonize neighbors. But man the ceiling for sound is so much higher for speakers. I have heard speaker setups so good that I am pretty sure Norah Jones sitting on my lap and singing to only me would have been meh (sound wise) in comparison. But for now, I enjoy what my modest headphone setup gives me and look forward to building a set of speakers once my renovation is done (will finally have room for speakers and only a single neighbor who won't care).

 

I prefer listening to speakers in a room.

I have enjoyed near-field speaker listening but, while there are aspects to near-field that I find appealing, speakers out in a room is by far preferable to me.

Speakers
I guess it is the speaker soundstage that makes the biggest difference to me. I experience a sort of 3-D sonic effect with great width, depth and height and also the images within that soundstage with all of the different sizes, shapes, textures and (I guess I'll call it) density of those images. When the conditions are right, it can be thrilling.

In addition to the speaker soundstage, there is the tactile effect of sound waves on my body. That adds a lot to my enjoyment of music. I am not talking only about the lower frequencies. Depending on how sensitive of a state I am in, I can feel music all the way up the frequency spectrum. (I don't hear about this, but I know what I feel.)

I am referring (above) to sitting in the sweet spot and listening to LPs.

Headphones
I tried to enjoy listening to headphones, off and on, for years. It never really worked out until I bought Stax SR34 Electret Earspeakers in the 1980s. I still preferred listening to speakers, for the most part, but for the first time I really got into listening to these. I would sometimes feel like laying down on the couch in the same room as my speakers and listen to these Stax rather than the speakers. I don't remember the particulars of how these sounded, but I remember thinking of it as a kind of "dream like" way of listening to music with the sound occurring within my head and in a manner that I found quite pleasant. I had to be in the right mood for this. After I moved from that house, I never hooked these back up. I don't know why.

When I got into portable listening, I found (modest under $100) IEM listening enjoyable. But that was not dedicated listening and my expectations were much lower than dedicated home listening. Kind of like my attitude towards listening to music in my car(s). I can enjoy that as long as there is not something sounding wrong or irritating.

Last year, circumstances caused me to not be able to listen to my speakers on a regular basis. I decided to get more serious about headphone listening, while waiting for circumstances to change. I ended up with a PonoMusic Player (mostly loaded with well mastered CDs ripped to FLAC), balanced cables and Sennheiser HD650. Wow. I never thought that I would find headphone listening so enjoyable. The Pono has a more analog quality to it's sound than I had thought possible previously and the HD650 just sounds beautiful to me. Anyway, that was my first experience with listening to headphones and finding it so pleasurable. It enabled me to fully get into the enjoyment of the intimate quality that headphones has over speakers.

Wrapping it up
I still prefer speaker listening overall, but I anticipate that there will be many times when I will choose the sound of headphones.

 

In general, I'm in the "prefer speakers" camp also.

The soundstage, scale and visceral nature of the presentation wins me over every time. That's even after down-sizing from full-range, floor-standing, isobaric, active speakers to active/Exakt (a Linn thing) stand-mounts with a couple of sub-woofers. Part of that downsizing was down to it being very likely that my primary (i.e. "most time spent there") residence was about to be a Seattle house-boat, followed by a couple of years in an up-scale New York apartment), and my wanting to be able to "kill the bass" for the sake of neighborly harmony (or, at least, not having to pitch someone out of a 40th story window for whinging about my latest descent in Mahler).

Headphones, then, are, for me, an escape from such limitations, despite coming with their own, as well as being an opportunity to thoroughly indulge my personal musical preferences without driving my poor, sweet, fiancé to distraction.

So, headphones give me far more opportunity to enjoy a convincing, if not-quite-100%, musical experience for far longer and more varied situations than I could with speakers, but at the same time, I find listening on speakers to be a more fulfilling and complete experience.