[Housteau]

In all of my years involved in audio I have never been very interested in headphone listening at home.  I have always prefered the sonic image to be presented in front and to the the front sides of me as I would experience at a live event.  Then, there is the immersive feel of the lower frequencies that only larger speaker systems can provide.  However, I am learning after all these years that there are some really good qualties about headphone listening that only they can provide.

I would like some opinions from those of you that enjoy listening to both headphones and speakers at home.  I enjoy recording live music when I can.  It started off with wanting to have my hands on some good master material of high resolution noncompressed music to enjoy and to help to evaluate my system with, because it is nearly impossible to find truely natural recordings except short sections on some test disks here and there.  Many recording engineers and mastering people regularly use headphones, but I have trouble doing that and prefer to work on the recordings in my listening room through my system.  That gives me the true full scope and scale of what is going on, or at least I hope that it does.  And that brings me to my main question.

Is it your opinion that listening through headphones is a more precice way of being able to judge the quality of a recording since by their nature the room, one of the major influence on the sounds we hear, is eliminated from the equation?  I ask because very often when listening to my recordings on someone elses system they do not sound nearly as good as they do here at home.  Although I do have a nice system and dedicated listening room properly set up, most of those other systems are also good systems, but possibly set up to provide different listening perspectives as we each do have our own likes in those areas.

When I listen to my recordings on my headphones I find them to sound quite good and very similar in overall character to what I hear in my room.  I don't hear any of the negatives I can sometimes notice on other systems.  That would lead me to believe that the differences I hear are do to the differences between the systems.  But, the kicker is that most commercially bought music can sound universally good in many places I listen.  That leads me to my second group of questions.

Are headphones much better at resolving and presenting to the listener high resolution noncompressed material than a standard two channel system system can?  Does a standard system only approach being able to handle such music with wide dynamic range when it is close to ideally set up?  Most if not all commercially available music is extremely dumbed down being highly compressed which does create a more universal listening experience. Even older LPs suffer from compression, just not as extreme as digital today.   Is that why I find many of the other systems I listen to to sound pretty good otherwise?

I guess the big question is:  Should I trust what I hear through my headphones and my own system since they are very similar?

   

 

[ajzepp]

Hey there! I remember speaking to you a good while back about the Monarchy NM24...do you still have that piece? I also remember some very impressive pics of your listening room!

Like you, I had absolutely zero interest in this side of the hobby until around November of 2011. I don't even really know what triggered it, but I think it's because I hit a point with my main rig (Magnepan 3.6s, Butler amp, SAS 10a, etc) where I felt like I couldn't do any better at the price point I was comfortable with. I also realized that sometimes I just didn't want to sit in my listening room in order to enjoy my music. So I bought a pair of Sennheiser 518 headphones (lower end of the line) and played around with them. In all honesty, they didn't do much for me. I looked around a bit more and started participating on head-fi and also in this forum here on AC, and I decided I'd try another pair. Well, a couple people suggested that I not focus on the *one* headphone that would be perfect for me, but that I try a few different ones in order to determine what I like. My strategy was to choose about 3 or 4 phones that were under $100 and then if I found something that really appealed to me, then I'd maybe go up the line to a higher end model. Well, that strategy worked out very well for me. Not only did it take away some of the stress of picking the RIGHT one, it allowed me to consider a headphone I probably wouldn't have otherwise - the Grado SR80i.

Anyway, here we are over a year later and I'm pretty hooked. I have to pair of "flagship-level" phones that are my pride and joy, and a handful of less expesnive models that all get some head time and have their applications. I will never get rid of my Maggies and I have certainly not abandoned my speakers and audio gear (and have no plans to), but I've found that my enjoyment of music is far more flexible while at the same time allowing me to enjoy it at a very high degree of fidelity. Your comment about headphones having the advantage of taking the room out of the equation is spot on, and I do feel that's a big reason why they are so enjoyable. But for me it was the flexibility more than anything. I love having amazing portable headphones to allow me to enjoy music at work, and it's great to just flop down on the couch or in bed, or even while I'm online, and not have to worry about being in the sweet spot or toe-in or any of the other factors that come along with speakers. And again, that's not a knock on speakers...I'm an advocate of BOTH 

[Housteau]

Hey there! I remember speaking to you a good while back about the Monarchy NM24...do you still have that piece?

  It has been a while.  I no longer have the NM24, but I did enjoy it when I did.  I had borrowed a friends  Benchmark DAC1 and did did side by side listening between the two.  The Benchmark just gave my system more of everything.  So, I went and bought a Benchmark DAC1 Pre.  I am now considering the new version that just came out.  It looks to be a nice unit.

Dave

[Quiet Earth]

Housteau,

I'm not sure if I understand your question so please forgive me if I got it wrong. Are you wondering if mastering your own home-made recordings with headphones will give you a better way to get those recordings to sound correct, no matter what kind of stereo system you play it back on? If yes, then I think that's what mastering engineers refer to as "translation".  If it's translation that you are trying to get a better handle on,  I think the gear has a little bit to do with it, but lot's of practice, and understanding how your system translates to others has more to do with it. That's why they pay a mastering engineer to finish a recording project. (It's a skill set and a service that is worth a fee.)


If that's not even close to what you were getting at, I would still like to know more about what you're asking.

[Housteau]

If that's not even close to what you were getting at, I would still like to know more about what you're asking.

Let me see if I can explain a little better.  Basically I am thinking that if music sounds right and very similar in all the important areas on both my headphones and through my speakers in my listening room, then my listening room must be set up well and I can trust what I hear there.  Does this seem reasonable?

Uncompressed, or lightly compressed music will not translate well on systems unable to properly reproduce it.  This I know and my guess is that is why some of my material doesn't sound as good on some other systems.  I am not interested in reaching, or meeting the commercial benchmarks set by the industry.  Those do create a sound that can be universally enjoyed everywhere, but at a great cost to us audiophiles, as the recording will never be as good as it could have been had it been mastered with us in mind instead of making it sound good on an iPhone as well.

My goal is to have my recordings as real as possible with the performers sounding as if they are in the room with me, warts and all.  Just about all recordings need some compression due to the nature of how our ears and brain work together.  But, even then a veil can be sensed as if streaks were placed over a once clear window.  The more compression added, the less real it all becomes.

I think many would be surprised to find that many of the so called audiophile releases we all like still could have been made even better had not some artificial standard not had to have been met.

So, I am not interested in having my material translate well being played back everywhere.  I just wanted to be sure that there wasn't something major inherently wrong with my listening room where my recordings only sounded good there for some wrong reason.  That is why I started to play with the headphones thinking that if the material also worked well there, then my room must be telling the truth.



   

[Quiet Earth]

Hmmm...... I would say that "things must be set up well and there is nothing major inherently wrong" sounds pretty reasonable on the surface. Although you must admit,,,  if it sounds great in your room and it sounds great on your headphone system, you have only proven there are two places you know where it sounds great. Or that those two systems speak the same language.

I will admit the subject of translation is over my head. I've only dabbled a tiny bit in home recording and never made anything worth sharing.  And to complicate things even more, my home stereo has evolved into something that tends to make everything easy to listen to rather than ruthlessly reveal poor recording quality. I'm hardly a good judge of recording quality.

Still, it's very interesting subject matter to me.

[Housteau]

I guess I am posting here mainly for opinions on something that I had been told by several people over the years.  That is, if you want to know how something should sound first listen to it through headphones and then your main system to know how your room and system artifacts add up to change that.  Their reasoning here is that it was a way to keep your system honest and a way to know if changes in set-up and room acoustics were going in the right direction.


 

[hibuckhobby]

Because music is a personal experience, evaluating what sounds "good" is not as
objective as some would have you believe.  With that said, a reasonably good headphone
system will allow you to hear farther into the recording (for better or worse) and will reveal
more low level information than a reasonably good two channel system.  IMO/YMMV. 

A properly set up two channel system will, IMO, demonstrate soundstage width and depth
better and the headphones will demonstrate the level of reverb added or the clarity of
backup singers better.  It will do this at a significantly less cost as well.  At the end of the
day, it's all about what you are after.  If your headphones and your two channel system
sound alike...AND you like what you are hearing... stop reading and enjoy.   
Hibuck....

[Housteau]

Because music is a personal experience, evaluating what sounds "good" is not as
objective as some would have you believe.  With that said, a reasonably good headphone
system will allow you to hear farther into the recording (for better or worse) and will reveal
more low level information than a reasonably good two channel system.  IMO/YMMV.

And music that is less compressed and as higher resolution files has more of that low level resolution, assuming the recording has it.  The term 'good' really is very subjective.  I have different commercial benchmark recordings that I try to compare to depending on the kind of recording it is, jazz, rock, blues etc.  I find that the Mapleshade recordings to sound quite natural and to lack most of that over-processed haze.

A properly set up two channel system will, IMO, demonstrate soundstage width and depth
better and the headphones will demonstrate the level of reverb added or the clarity of
backup singers better.  It will do this at a significantly less cost as well.  At the end of the
day, it's all about what you are after.  If your headphones and your two channel system
sound alike...AND you like what you are hearing... stop reading and enjoy.   
Hibuck....

Yes exactly, alike or very similar in the ways that they are technically able to be, yet each specializing in the areas that they are stronger in, just as you mention above.  I know that there are differences in headphones just as there are with speakers, but mostly I would think they are various shades of a similar theme and if that basic presentation between headphones and speakers is very similar, than I can now trust what I am hearing through either.

[ajzepp]

Because music is a personal experience, evaluating what sounds "good" is not as
objective as some would have you believe. 

Amen to that, hibuck...