Headphones Vs. Speakers

[B00nie]

For a good speaker setup you need:
(1) Good speakers;
(2) Good speaker cable;
(3) A good source/DAC
(4) and
a. a good pre-amplifier and power amplifier;
b. or a good integrated amplifier (pre and power in one chasis)
c. or a good receiver (none of them are that good).
(5) Good interconnect cables to connect your components together;
(6) A room with proper dimensions for sound reproduction;
(7) Acoustic treatment for the room
(8) Privacy to enjoy.

1) Essential
2) Trivial
3) Any decent hardware will do here
4) Any decent hardware will do here, effect is at most 1% compared to speakers
5) Trivial unless you get interference
6) Depends which sort of speakers you have, highly directive speakers are easier with rooms. ESL panels for example sound excellent even in bad rooms.
7) See above
8) Essential

 

[Blackstone]

1) Essential
2) Trivial
3) Any decent hardware will do here
4) Any decent hardware will do here, effect is at most 1% compared to speakers
5) Trivial unless you get interference
6) Depends which sort of speakers you have, highly directive speakers are easier with rooms. ESL panels for example sound excellent even in bad rooms.
7) See above
8) Essential

This is absolute nonsense. The idea that the pre-amplifier and amplifier can be any decent hardware or that the effect is 1% is about the most absurd thing I have read about audio in a very long time. This borders on trolling.

 

[B00nie]

This is absolute nonsense. The idea that the pre-amplifier and amplifier can be any decent hardware or that the effect is 1% is about the most absurd thing I have read about audio in a very long time. This borders on trolling.

It's far from absurd and is a fact. Not so long ago there was a post with a $10 000 challenge for anyone who could reliably tell two working hi-fi amplifiers apart in ABX test that was still not taken

The source and the amps play a miniscule role in the overall system. Once you start spending 50k+ to your speakers you can start to consider your source / amp might be a bottleneck already. Until that the source and the amps are the strongest part of your system as lnog as they're basic hi-fi quality. Once your overall system goes beyond 200k you might think your interconnects (cables) might pose a limitation.

For anyone with a novice system valued 1-2k, anything going to cables beyond very basic 'it works' is so ridiculous that it's laughable.

A system with a 100 dollar Philips amp paired to a high-end ESL panel will sound ultimately better than any system with a 200 000 dollar DAC, 100 000 dollar amp and a set of 500 dollar speakers. Well, if the Philips could drive 1ohm @16khz that is, but that's another story.

It's a bit like you had a 1950's black and white tube tv player and you came explaining that you need a 9k 120hz source with golden HDMI 1.3 cables. Guess what? The final link determines that you still get 240p black and white and analog noise lol.

 

[Blackstone]

It's far from absurd and is a fact. Not so long ago there was a post with a $10 000 challenge for anyone who could reliably tell two working hi-fi amplifiers apart in ABX test that was still not taken

The source and the amps play a miniscule role in the overall system. Once you start spending 50k+ to your speakers you can start to consider your source / amp might be a bottleneck already. Until that the source and the amps are the strongest part of your system as lnog as they're basic hi-fi quality. Once your overall system goes beyond 200k you might think your interconnects (cables) might pose a limitation.

For anyone with a novice system valued 1-2k, anything going to cables beyond very basic 'it works' is so ridiculous that it's laughable.

Spoken like someone who does not know what good sound is or is likely to hear it in their lifetime. You are spewing some really bad advice here for people who actually care about sound reproduction. Dacs, pre-amps and amps don't matter until you have $50,000 speakers? You also cite a test that has not been taken as proving a fact. My opinions are at least based on my first hand experience.

 

[Nenu]

Some people really cant tell the difference.
What is surprising is that they try to give advice about things they cant hear.
I understand from their perspective that purchasing better kit is a rip off because they cant tell the difference.
But they should respect those that can and understand that at this level, this hobby isnt for them instead of thread crapping.
Shrug.

 

[Deleted member 126051]

Honestly, so long as I can get a decent experience via headphones, I'll go that way.

Personal preference.

And I'm not buying into any audiophile bullshit.

I already know I have diminished range due to hearing damage. Mainly from standing in front of amp stacks at rock concerts for too long for too many years. But partly from an ear infection that nearly rendered me deaf as a kid.

 

[B00nie]

Spoken like someone who does not know what good sound is or is likely to hear it in their lifetime. You are spewing some really bad advice here for people who actually care about sound reproduction. Dacs, pre-amps and amps don't matter until you have $50,000 speakers? You also cite a test that has not been taken as proving a fact. My opinions are at least based on my first hand experience.

I'm pretty sure I've heard and built far better systems than you ever have. How many speakers have you designed and built personally may I ask? How many studies and books about audio reproduction, room acoustics and audio electronics have you studied?

How many RTA/room analysises have you done? Questions, questions...

A basic hi-fi quality source is far superior to any conventional and reasonably priced speaker with all measureable accounts. Actually regardless of price, the source far exceeds all measurements of what can be achieved with a speaker in a non anechoic room. As I said you can invest a million dollars to the source and it will still sound horrible if you play the sound through a cheap pair of speakers. That's why a beginner level system should always concentrate on getting the best possible speakers for the budget first, then looking at the source with the leftover money.

The reason why the source is emphasized so much in marketing is that it really offers diminishing returns. The salesmen can sell you multiple upgrades that offer really miniscule real world returns for multiple the price. Customer is endlessly unsatisfied unless he fixes the true problem of the equation: Speakers in the room.

Yes, not just speakers. It's trivial to build a speaker that measures almost perfect in an anechoic room. It's exponentially difficult to build one that does it in a normal listening room.

 

[Technical_Advisor]

I agree with the ESL panels comment. When I put a pair of Martin Logans in my living room I was sold immediately on the value they offer. Best listening bang for the buck I ever got from a purchase. And I don't have tens of thousands of dollars of equipment driving them either. Just a modest home system.

 

[Deleted member 126051]

The salesmen can sell you multiple upgrades that offer really miniscule real world returns for multiple the price.

In short, beyond a certain point, most of it is this:

 

[B00nie]

I agree with the ESL panels comment. When I put a pair of Martin Logans in my living room I was sold immediately on the value they offer. Best listening bang for the buck I ever got from a purchase. And I don't have tens of thousands of dollars of equipment driving them either. Just a modest home system.

Exactly. Hearing can be a real eye opener

 

[GotNoRice]

It's sad to see so many people getting offended over opinions, and offering broad generalizations that often don't work without context. In terms of amplifier power for example. If you're talking about two situations where you have amplifier power that is sufficient or even overkill, it is absolutely possible, even likely, that there will be no audible difference. Most common scenarios for someone looking to get into speakers involves small bookshelf speakers. Many of these even provide their own amplifier power (which presumably is sufficient), and even the ones that don't are only likely to require modest amplification. Bass requires the most amplifier power by far, but in these cases people are either listening at very modest levels, or using a separate subwoofer to handle bass duties. On the flip side there are plenty of people with large speakers, or unconventional speakers (panel speakers, etc) that require lots of power. The more power that your speakers are able to use, the more potential there is that you will benefit from a bigger amplifier. Again, assuming two amplifiers that are both sufficient or greater, difference is likely to be tiny if not imperceptible. I just don't feel that in a broad sense, generalizations do much to help someone here. Someone trying to power large speakers that dip down into <2ohms using a tiny integrated amplifier or similar will probably find out the hard way why context matters in the face of broad generalizations.

 

[B00nie]

It's sad to see so many people getting offended over opinions, and offering broad generalizations that often don't work without context. In terms of amplifier power for example. If you're talking about two situations where you have amplifier power that is sufficient or even overkill, it is absolutely possible, even likely, that there will be no audible difference. Most common scenarios for someone looking to get into speakers involves small bookshelf speakers. Many of these even provide their own amplifier power (which presumably is sufficient), and even the ones that don't are only likely to require modest amplification. Bass requires the most amplifier power by far, but in these cases people are either listening at very modest levels, or using a separate subwoofer to handle bass duties. On the flip side there are plenty of people with large speakers, or unconventional speakers (panel speakers, etc) that require lots of power. The more power that your speakers are able to use, the more potential there is that you will benefit from a bigger amplifier. Again, assuming two amplifiers that are both sufficient or greater, difference is likely to be tiny if not imperceptible. I just don't feel that in a broad sense, generalizations do much to help someone here. Someone trying to power large speakers that dip down into <2ohms using a tiny integrated amplifier or similar will probably find out the hard way why context matters in the face of broad generalizations.

In fact the power requirements of speakers are generally speaking just the opposite. The smaller speaker you have, the less efficiency it usually has and through that playing the same 90db sound with a small bookshelf may require 10 watts where a large tower speaker may be able to do the same using only 1 watt or less. Audio is one of those things where the saying 'there's no replacement for displacement' is true. The larger boxes and speaker cones you have the better efficiency you typically get. With bass a larger cone area also helps with things like power compression: the bass driver is a piston and when that piston pumps the air, the smaller the piston the larger the motion it needs to produce in order to create a certain level of sound. Because air is not solid, there is a loss of efficiency the larger the movement and the slower the piston has to move (lower frequencies). That's why a small speaker sucks at producing bass and a huge 4x21" speaker (or a horn loaded driver) excels in it because it can turn movement into sound much more efficiently. When you need to push a driver hard to produce bass the voice coil heats and starts to create more resistance to the system, meaning that your amp needs to fight even harder to produce that sound.

Conventional speakers never dip down to 2 ohm unless they're very exoteric in design (meaning it would require having 3 or more speaker drivers connected in parallel in the crossover network). ESL panels then again are a completely different story. They're mostly capacitive and their properties lead to having a rising impedance curve towards the high frequencies. The largest panels can dip all the way to 0.5 ohms.

When you drive ESL:s your amp will need to be able to produce a huge amount of voltage - meaning you need a powerful amplifier even though the panel won't suck that much current. Luckily the portion of audio at 16khz is so small in music that unless you happen to play a constant sine wave test signal, no significant energy is ever spent that way. Audio matching transformers typically have a RMS power handling of 15 to 30 watts and that's all that's required to play at ear slamming volumes. For those of you that didn't know, ESLs require a voltage of a few hundred volts to 7 kilovolts to produce sound. The audio signal is thereby converted in 1:50 to 1:75 ratio upwards using an audio matching transformer.

The transformer is the most expensive part of the whole ESL and pretty much defines the overall quality of the panel.

 

[GotNoRice]

In fact the power requirements of speakers are generally speaking just the opposite. The smaller speaker you have, the less efficiency it usually has and through that playing the same 90db sound with a small bookshelf may require 10 watts where a large tower speaker may be able to do the same using only 1 watt or less. Audio is one of those things where the saying 'there's no replacement for displacement' is true. The larger boxes and speaker cones you have the better efficiency you typically get.

I agree that the specific attributes and requirements of the speakers used comes into play, which is why broad generalizations about amplifier power, absent of context, don't always work. That was my point.

In regards to the examples that I gave, I was more referring to whether the speaker is expected to reproduce significant bass or not on it's own, as bass typically requires the most amplifier power. Generally speaking, larger speakers with larger woofers (or equivalent design using smaller woofers) are more likely to be expected to reproduce more of their own bass.

 

[B00nie]

I agree that the specific attributes and requirements of the speakers used comes into play, which is why broad generalizations about amplifier power, absent of context, don't always work. That was my point.

In regards to the examples that I gave, I was more referring to whether the speaker is expected to reproduce significant bass or not on it's own, as bass typically requires the most amplifier power. Generally speaking, larger speakers with larger woofers (or equivalent design using smaller woofers) are more likely to be expected to reproduce more of their own bass.

Sure but the point I wanted to make was this: A 21" woofer produces, say, 98db of 25hz tone with 1 watt half field in a normal enclosure. Your typical 6.5" woofer would need to be pushed upwards of 800 watts to produce the same sound pressure meaning it would first rip it's membrane to pieces and then burn its voice coil (a fraction of a second later).

This means that while large speakers are 'expected to play more of their own bass' it by no means indicates that they require more amp power. Quite the contrary.

Many people either do not know or completely overlook that the decibel scale is logarythmic. It means that going from 80db to 90db requires a ten times larger amplifier. And again 90 to 100db again ten times as much amp power. So you go from 0,1 watt to 1 watt, then 1 to 10, 10 to 100, 100 to 1000. So you can see why speaker efficiency is a huge deal. 6.5" 80db vs 21" 120db

 

[GotNoRice]

Sure but the point I wanted to make was this: A 21" woofer produces, say, 98db of 25hz tone with 1 watt half field in a normal enclosure. Your typical 6.5" woofer would need to be pushed upwards of 800 watts to produce the same sound pressure meaning it would first rip it's membrane to pieces and then burn its voice coil (a fraction of a second later).

This means that while large speakers are 'expected to play more of their own bass' it by no means indicates that they require more amp power. Quite the contrary.

Many people either do not know or completely overlook that the decibel scale is logarythmic. It means that going from 80db to 90db requires a ten times larger amplifier. And again 90 to 100db again ten times as much amp power. So you go from 0,1 watt to 1 watt, then 1 to 10, 10 to 100, 100 to 1000. So you can see why speaker efficiency is a huge deal. 6.5" 80db vs 21" 120db

I was not discussing or debating efficiency. Although that is obviously an important variable, and I am not discounting it, there is also a reason why most subwoofers require more power than most speakers. This applies even to efficient subwoofers.

 

[B00nie]

I was not discussing or debating efficiency. Although that is obviously an important variable, and I am not discounting it, there is also a reason why most subwoofers require more power than most speakers. This applies even to efficient subwoofers.

It does not. It completely depends on what sort of sound pressure you're looking for. A horn loaded subwoofer can produce an earth shaking 110db sound pressure using a mere 1 watt of power. All it takes to run it is essentially a mini amp.

Then if you want to push that sub to large concert level pressures (130db) you already need a 100 watt amp. But at 130db your hearing is in serious danger already.

It's all about efficiency. When you horn load a driver the horn puts pressure on the driver and acts as an acoustic amplifier. This means that the driver membrane has to move only a faction compared to what it would have to move in a regular box. This translates to huge efficiency, fast transient response, huge dynamics, huge power handling etc. positive side-effects. The down side is size. In order to make a horn that outputs 20hz at any reasonable level your horn needs to be a quarter length of the wavelength of 20hz (which is 17 meters). So yes, horn bass takes space.

I have a 18" horn loaded bass by the way.

 

[GotNoRice]

It's all about efficiency. When you horn load a driver the horn puts pressure on the driver and acts as an acoustic amplifier. This means that the driver membrane has to move only a faction compared to what it would have to move in a regular box. This translates to huge efficiency, fast transient response, huge dynamics, huge power handling etc. positive side-effects. The down side is size. In order to make a horn that outputs 20hz at any reasonable level your horn needs to be a quarter length of the wavelength of 20hz (which is 17 meters). So yes, horn bass takes space.

That's great and all, but let's not forget that this entire tangent (no one in this thread actually inquired about efficiency) was spawned by your generalization about amplifiers. Yet every one of your posts about efficiency seems to hammer in the fact that speakers with vastly different efficiency have vastly different amplifier requirements.

I have a 18" horn loaded bass by the way.

Grats?

 

[B00nie]

That's great and all, but let's not forget that this entire tangent (no one in this thread actually inquired about efficiency) was spawned by your generalization about amplifiers. Yet every one of your posts about efficiency seems to hammer in the fact that speakers with vastly different efficiency have vastly different amplifier requirements.

None of what I said overlaps with eachothers. The fact remains that the amplifier quality plays a very minor role in the overall system. It's far more essential to have proper speakers for the role intended.

Picture this: A general off-the-shelf hifi amp may have specs like 80 watts RMS at 0,01% THD and a ruler flat frequency response. Your general cd player / dac has a distortion of 0,001% and a ruler flat frequency response.

A high end speaker may have specs like 300 watt power handling but produce a whopping 10% distortion at 10 watts! And have 16 (sixteen) decibel variations in the frequency response 20hz-20khz. And that's just in anechoic chamber. Put that same speaker in a room and the frequency response becomes a mountain range (30db at worst at bass frequencies) and group delays, early reflections create a comb filter effect etc etc. The end result is literally nothing like the output the source put out.

So you can see how futile is to tinker around with amps and dacs, they really matter infinitely little when you have to deal with such problems in the room. Panel speakers (magnetic or electrostatic) battle these problems nicely. They produce a line source like sound and have a high directivity (which means that less sound is reflected to walls which means you get considerably smaller amount of reflections and this again leads to you listening the actual sound coming from the speaker instead of a huge mumbo-jumbo of reflections). In case of Electrostatic speakers also the distortion is ultra low because the lighter-than-air membrane is push and pull controlled in a weak-force electrostatic field. The push-pull operation cancels out most negative effects of typical audio sources.

This is why panel speakers sound way superior to most other speakers in most rooms. However panel speakers do have their own issues which is low efficiency and limited bass extension. Large panels create ample bass for regular listening but they'll never be dynamic cannons like some large conventional models. They also become extremely directional at high frequencies which essentially means that you only get the best sound in one certain spot between the speakers. They're not a home theater or party speakers! This with their huge size and price makes them rather unpopular.

But I love them.

 

[Dun Lee]

Headphones are are more portable than speakers, and more prone to hearing damage. If you are alone in your room, it'd better to listen from speakers, nothing attaches on your ears.

 

[pippenainteasy]

The thing about speakers is you can get some amazing used gear, which really puts downward pressure on prices.

Whereas getting used headphones is kinda like buying used underwear. It's not really something you want to do for health reasons

 

[B00nie]

The number one problem with headphones is the lack of head tracking. I've said it before and I stress it again. This is the biggest factor that makes headphone listening sound unnatural. The brain relies on small head movements to correctly track sound locations and with headphones attached to your head this information goes missing. That's why headphones sound like the sound is inside your head.

Here's a nice article about the challenges that headphone manufacturers face: Between the Ears: the art and science of measuring headphones

 

[pippenainteasy]

I find after having listened to the Focal Utopia, Elear, HD800S/HD800, Ether Flow, and Hifiman HE1000, I'd say the biggest problem with headphones is that they are single driver designs and they all seem to have something glaringly missing in the frequency range compared a multi-driver speaker system.

With the planar magnetic headphones I find the treble tends to be hazy and inferior in quality even to listening to a high end pair of speakers at ~6 feet listening distance. You can usually see it in the waterfall plot of planar magnetic drivers tending to look quite ugly and giving a "soft/hazy" quality to the treble that can't keep up with a speed and detail of a 20mm beryllium dome or RAAL ribbon tweeter in say a well-designed 3+-way speaker system.

With dynamic drivers the bass/upper mids tend to be thin and lacking compared to a well designed full range speaker system, but with superior highs. (Or if they do have decent upper bass/mid response, it tends to be a bit muddy, based on what I heard with some high end Sony or Pioneer cans--flagship Japanese cans tend to have a bass tilt at the cost of rising THD.)

Now I haven't heard the Stax SR009 yet, so maybe my mind will change when I hear that particular kit, but from what I hear the Stax is very amp dependent.