Why do TOTL headphones cost the same as TOTL speakers?

I wish it was this simple. A bajillion earpads have recessed mids with al the older LCDs' and the super forward midrange of the LCD-5 remains with a bajillion earpads. I'm playing the opposite game with both of them.

 

Gotcha, well, that's just what Sankar told me (that the concave pads specifically address the dip) but perhaps I misunderstood him.

 

Yup, I just put Utopia pads on the Clear and it sounds very different. And vice versa.

Although I have found pad swaps to be mostly unsatisfactory. Either the stock pads work for me, or I get a different headphone. But pad swaps change the sound to the point where significant attention should be paid to them by headphone makers.

 

interesting. Not my experience. But my experiences haven’t matched up with what they’ve said before so…

 

I'm interested in the sentiment that really good speakers don't cost more than really good headphones, from a learning perspective. I'm rather new to the headphone hobby, and I nearly don't know anything at all about good speakers (and speaker amps etc., for that matter).

My impression always was: You'll get a complete system with 90-95% TOTL performance with headphones in the € 2000,- to 3000,- ballpark, while it would be more like € 4000,- to 5000,- for a two-channel system. Is that completely wrong? Plus, I thought that the equivalent (both in real and perceived value) of € 4000 to 6000 headphones was more along the lines of € 10,000 to 15,000 speakers?

Not that I could gain much from speakers: In my family, the musical tastes and habits differ wildly. My wife and daughter mostly listen to charts music, having my music played for everybody to hear is considered a nuisance. My son, in turn, who isn't old enough to be a music fan, mostly listens to game soundtracks. Also, my wife considers it strange to listen to music and not do anything else at the same time. Music is just a background for her, so better sound quality is not important at all. Music equipment has to be convenient as in "just works" (think AirPods), that's it. So, while it's hard to justify me spending money on headphone equipment, it would be even harder for a decent two-channel setup. Which I could either only use in the attic, completely separated from the rest of the family, or in the living room when nobody else is at home.

 

Going back to an old thread somewhere on here, I recall @purr1n mentioning something in the vein of 5-figure USD speaker rigs being comparable in terms of sheer resolution to the HD650 (cannot find the exact thread, may have been nuked in the hack or my Google skills letting me down again). The closest I can find is this thread: https://www.superbestaudiofriends.org/index.php?threads/is-there-an-hd650-in-the-speaker-world.2979/

While I have had the pleasure of listening to kilobuck hifi systems in the past, these've all been in store demo settings so resolution is beyond consideration at that point. With that disclaimer out of the way, I do think that even with competent open-back headphones there's something lost in how nuanced and expressive a diaphragm can be when coupled directly with one's head and encountering resistance therefrom. You know it's bad when there are times a phone speaker playing in the shower can sometimes more clearly resolve a background element that normally gets buried in the mix on what's generally considered a competent chain (Magni/Modi3+>HD600).

Reall, I think it's a relatively sane stance to take that due to the relative simplicity of their design and intimate proximity to your ears headphones really do have an innate advantage insofar as resolution and detail retrieval goes. It's in their inability to convey spatial cues and sense of thoracic slam meaningfully that they lose in a massive way. I grew up with headphones and speakers both, mostly an old Pioneer 2ch system at my granddad's place that didn't get used very often but nonetheless remains a fond memory, but I was solely a headphones bloke during my formative years so am particularly picky about headstage; even then I begrudgingly concede that speakers sound better by an overwhelming margin.

I have not a whit of a clue about the bills of material or research fees involved in product development for single SKUs (not counting "improved" re-releases that negate the need for new tooling to be developed) but imagine that the differences between those of headphones and speakers are in very different tiers altogether just on account of how much more room for fiddlement there is with the latter, though the retail pricing appears to vastly exaggerate said differences.

And hey don't diss game soundtracks-- Final Fantasy, NieR, and Cyberpunk have some absolute bangers

 

Thanks for your answer, but it’s a bit confusing for me: Headphones can’t be as nuanced, because they are so closely coupled, but they’re inherently more detailed?

 

I could have phrased that less convolutedly

Just based on very limited experience with nice speakers: textures and the like are more easily discerned with headphones, but to my ears even relatively cruddy phone speakers are able to push odd minutiae to the forefront. It could just be the relatively bass-anaemic voicing un-masking things that are normally lower in the mix. I was just guessing at how this might be attributed to diaphragms having to work harder due to the front end resistance and the funky acoustics that entails.

There's just a "free-er" and more effortless sort of sound to speakers, not quite sure how to put it into a more quantifiable metric. Maybe dynamic range, or something to that effect.

Mind, my main headphones are still bass-heavy even after some additional venting and the HD600 isn't necessarily a "fast" sounding headphone, so jumbled passages may come off... jumbled.

 

I used to believe the whole “you can build a headphone system for a fraction of the cost of a comparable speaker system” meme. (Where did it start? Head-Fi in the early days?) Then I built a C-Note kit for some limited DAW use. Changed my mind right quick — I’ll take the C-Note over any ultra-high-end headphone system I’ve ever spent time with (disclaimer: I never heard an [original] Orpheus). Don’t get me wrong: I love headphones for giving me the ability to listen without disturbing anyone. But if that factor goes away, they’re squarely second best, especially in price-to-performance.

 

I have seen a ten-one ratio thrown around - it will cost you $10,000 to build a speaker system roughly equivalent (it's rough because HP's can't stage, speakers can't isolate, etc.) to a $1,000 HP system. I don't think it's 10-1, but its certainly not 1-1. DIY, vintage gear scavengers/restorers, and the like will often point out how their relatively low cost speaker systems are equivalent or better than a TOTL HP stack, but clearly they are not comparing apples to apples, and of course you can buy used and do some DIY in the HP market as well.

In the end what is "better" will be determined by your preferences and circumstances (e.g., do you rate the staging/imagining of stereo speakers over the raw detail of HP's). I don't know about a definite ratio, but for my preferences/circumstances a TOTL HP system is significantly cheaper than the "equivalent/comparable" speaker system.

 

That 10-1 rule is total bullshit.

An old Onkyo mini system sounds better than most headphones. The ATC SCM11 at £1.4k are better overall than every headphone I've ever listened to. (The tweeter is a bit limited, but that's more of a tradeoff).

You have to spend around £1k-1.5k to get a headphone that isn't hugely deficient in some way, and that's only in the last 5 years or so.

Though headphones should offer great value; they do not. 99% of them are total shit. They use TPE diaphragms, the surround is part of the frickin diaphragm, they use weak magnets, have terrible frequency response, and sound dynamically flat. With most areas of performance being lacklustre at best.

The industry as a whole hasn't figured out headphones yet, so there's no blueprint. They don't know what the hell they're doing most of the time, and it's almost all consumer grade garbage.

 

With the exception of binaural tracks all music is mixed for speakers. Headphones might be used for part of the mixing process, but really only to check if they missed any details with the monitors. Headphones are never used to finalize the mix. So unless your speakers are garbage, you’re going to get a certain presentation with speakers that you simply won’t get with headphones.

Another thing is bass. Even when headphones are flat to 20hz, there is no comparison to room filling bass. Being in a theater watching Jurassic Park and seeing the T-Rex walk is going to be superior than sitting in the same theater with headphones instead of speakers. Bass is meant to be felt, not just heard.

When I had a Schiit Gungnir on loan I fed it through my $100 speaker + $30 Class D amp as well as my (HD650 + HE-500) headphone system. The speakers weren’t really for evaluation but convenience to not switch sources. Objectively the headphones did technicalities much better, speakers were higher distortion and the amp has it’s own issues. However I kept going back to the speakers because the imaging I was getting was nuts. Would I be saying the same thing in an alternate timeline where headphone audio is the #1 focus for music producers and speakers were the secondary form of enjoyment? Probably not, but it goes to show that source is king.

I do hope one day that Netflix adds headphones as an audio track along with their options of 2.0, 5.1 and multiple languages. Tons of people watch on phones or tablets so it isn’t that niche.

 

Thanks for your answers.

To sum up what I got so far: Technicalities tend to be better on headphones, but imaging and bass are inherently better on speakers. Also, many headphones have strange frequency responses, or at least peaks here and there that speakers wouldn't show.

From my own experience: My Dynaudio Music 5 provides a certain sweetness to the sound that no headphone I owned could provide yet. But that might actually be an FR thing that headphones could provide, too. The imaging isn't good, of course, the left and right channels are too close to each other to provide any good stereo. The bass is wonderful. It's quite detailed, but my headphones are much better at that. I guess the level of detail a headphone can provide can only be achieved in acoustically treated rooms.

Personally, I love detail and resolution. If I really want to listen and do nothing else, I'll use my headphones. But I can't say I have a two-channel system at home that plays to the strengths of that kind of system.

I once heard a really expensive two-channel system, some 15k all in all at least. It resolved nicely (not as good as my headphones, but very good), but I wasn't impressed otherwise, as it sounded too cold, too much treble, not enough oomph at the lower end. But that's a matter of taste again, I guess.

Bottom line for me: In the end, you can't say what a certain 2-channel system "as good" as a certain headphone system actually is. It depends on what you are looking for in music.

 

This deserves more than epic. It is deeply insightful and has more substance in a few paragraphs than most hundred page threads.

 

This is true, the experiences are fundamentally different.

This doesn't really make sense. Music is not really mixed 'for' any one type of system. A sound engineer creates a recording aesthetic using the tools available to him or her, which in some arbitrary and nebulous way they feel is representative of the aesthetic of the musical work. This involves their own biases and tastes as well as the tools at their disposal to create and evaluate that aesthetic. They have tools used to evaluate this aesthetic, which you can say are primarily a pair of monitor speakers, but if we're talking about modern pop and rock recordings, final evaluation must also pass in many cases on Apple earbuds and Google Home speakers. So the argument does not and never will follow.

If you want to talk about the perception of imaging at home, consider the following. Listeners perceive the localization (depth and pan) of phantom sound sources through the release of the auditory masking effect. Have you ever heard a sound in pitch darkness and had a very difficult time telling which direction it came from? This is because our ear-brain system relies on the relative delay of a secondary interfering sound source in order to calculate (un-mask) the location of the first.

It turns out that traditional stereo recordings are not capable of the release from masking effect. This is why when you actually get an 'accurate' image, it sounds like a police line-up of the players on a horizontal stage. It is all a carefully crafted illusion based on artificial reverb, panning and intensity differences. Of course you already knew this, but if you actually want to talk about any sort of 'accuracy' to this illusion, a good pair of headphones will allow you to hear these effects much more clearly. In a typical domestic speaker setup, the interaction of your speakers with the room (precedence and boundary effects) contribute a great deal to the final sound you hear, to the point where it is completely and utterly unclear what was done by the sound engineer in his utopian 'mix' versus what your system is reproducing.

And that's OK. None of this is to say one playback system is superior to another. It's all about the experience you're able to have in the comfort of your own home. It's better to espouse preferences than correctness. I've had musical experiences through headphone systems that made me feel close to God, and I'm not a very religious person. Likewise I've been able to have a full-body concert experience in my basement with a pair of La Scala's, but I would never try to say it was representative of the 'mix'.

 

You've probably seen the experiment where people wear glasses that present an upside down image to their eyes. They quickly adapt and can function perfectly well. Similarly, we adapt to the imperfections in our vision and the area where the optic nerve creates the blind spot.

I suspect something similar happens with headphones. Frquent headphone users adapt to synthesise a realistic impression from even a speaker-optimised mix. Such listeners can coax out soundstage more easily from headsets with specific kinds of in-headphone, or in-tube acoustics-simulating distortion. That's despite the mix missing many of the audible effects from real rooms like delayed and frequency dependent mix of channels and room effects.

So this is the opposite if the usual 'with more experience you notice more' claim. With more experience, you see through the defects and notice them less or not at all. Noticing the defects in audio presentation can become as hard as noticing your optical blind spots.

I don't think normal people would get anything from 'soundstage' headphones because their hearing hasn't adapted to the artificality of speaker-mixes on headphones. Much better for them to start with and use DSP which more authentically mixes the channels with appropriate delays and other consequences of a speaker acoustic environment.

 

It's many years since I read about this, and I've never done it, but I think I remember correctly...

What happens, is somewhat different to what most people would read into the word "adapt." People do not get used to living in an upside-down world. What happens is that, given time, the brain turns it all the right way up! The curious thing is that it does not do it all at once. I remember a participant saying that, in his upside down world, he suddenly noticed that some smoke was going upwards, not down.

The power of the brain is astonishing, and very much a part of our lives as music lovers. Stereo is the wonderful illusion. The L-R panning/balance and the other technical tricks establish the basis, and our imagination does the rest.

With headphones, our imagination has to work harder. I recall reading someone: "There I was, lost in the music, with each instrument in its correct place. Then I opened my eyes and caught sight of myself in a mirror. The whole thing collapsed into the ordinary headphone experience." (Words to that effect; misremembered/paraphrased; it was a long time ago).

As a description of the experience, it got a big "Yes!!!" from me.

Or maybe they just have more expensive imaginations

 

Premise if very false. I think of totl headphone as $4k, which is mainstream speaker, maybe hi end for 2 channel but just.

 

For what value of "mainstream*?" Most people will spend less than that on an entire system.

I don't know if this applies to speakers. Once upon a time all decent speakers were expensive. Then, around late 60s to 70s, the price of very-acceptable hifi came down a lot. The trend was for good sound to get cheaper. Although the possibility of spending as much as they wanted was still there, of course. And sometimes it was worth it, if only for the woodwork!

HD800 is as far up the ladder as I am ever going to go. That's partly financial constraint, and partly... because.

The market, however, will no doubt progress. 500, 1,000, 2,000, 4,000. Any at 8K yet? Probably 16K is not far off




*$4,000, obviously

 

Focal's hi end speakers start at about $4k, if you consider their 900 series to be the last mainstream speakers, you can get a pair for about that ... and they have a deep selection above that too. And pro gear, forget it, all kinds of $4k speakers. Whereas, with headphones, I can't think of more than one headphone that is more than $10k, I mean, are there really any more than Sennheiser Orpheus that really exist?