Can headphones mimic speakers?

I've searched through and read dozens of threads and hundreds of responses regarding headphones but did not find a single response that touches upon what I seek. Is there a headphone made, lets say for under 1,500.00 that gives the depth and soundstage that speakers can? I know there are some wonderful headphones that offer excellent detail, but fall short of the speaker experience as the music always seems "in your head" and not around you.

 

In a word, no. Headphones by themselves cannot mimic the depth and soundstage that speakers can. You'd need a processor to do that. The Smyth Realizer A8, after proper set-up, can make listening through headphones sound eerily like listening to loudspeakers. I demo'd a unit and honestly couldn't tell the difference between the sound coming through the Stax headphones connected to the Realizer and the sound coming from the speakers in the room. But the Smyth Realizer A8 will set you back a few thousand, and there's no point getting it unless your willing a buy top quality headphones to go with it.

 

No.
Even simulation stuff is going to fall short. Ya cannot changes the laws of physics.

 

With all due respsect. you have no business talking about what the Smyth Realizer can and cannot do until you've listened to it. I myself was a skeptic until I tried one out. It can create a thoroughly realistic and convincing soundfield through a pair of headphones, provided it has been properly calibrated to your ears. This is no cheap simulation.

 

Physics boy, physics. Go and google up how this stuff actually works. How your brain interprets sound, low end, reverb etc etc. Let me guess, you dont have room to set up speakers...

Nothing rammed against your ears is going to sound like speakers in a room. Maybe something different than normal, thats it.

When I think of all the phase tricks a unit like that must use...I hate to think of what its doing to the mix.

 

Yes. As long as you don't wear it on your head and drive it loud enough to hear it from the other side of the room, any headphone will do.

 

It is possible for headphones to lose the blob between your ears style of sound. It is possible for headphones to present an open seamless image or headstage that seems to be just in front of your forehead rather than a blob behind your eyeballs. An image that seems to be outside of your head. An image with depth and layers. Getting there requires a combination of good headphones, good amp, good source, and possibly some crossfeed processing.

First you need headphones that are capable of presenting that style of sound. The HD800 would be an obvious choice. A major factor of its design was to present an image or headstage like that. Planar headphones can also do it, but to a lesser degree. Headphones like the Audeze, HiFiMan, Fostex orthos, and Oppo. My experience is that the more standard dynamic style drivers don't do that trick as well.

Next you need an amp that has a deep soundstage that doesn't put you in the front row. An amp that puts you several rows back from the stage. The difficulty is that the vast vast majority of headphone amps put you in the front row. Very few put you several rows back with depth. And the ones that do tend to be expensive and often involve tubes. Most people never get a chance to hear such an amp, so it's understandable that they might believe that an amp with that style of imaging and headstage doesn't exist. They do exist. I'm listening to one right now. The amp is a very important part of the puzzle if you're trying to escape the blob in the head sound.

You also need a good source that has good imaging. A good DAC for digital. A good phono preamp and cartridge for vinyl.

And for tweaking you can try playing with crossfeed plugins if you do computer as source. Lots of choices for different crossfeed plugins to try. But they rely on having a computer as source and digital music. Not a good way of doing things if you want to listen to a turntable.

There's some other ways to escape the blob in the head sound. A headphone amp like the SPL Phonitor 2 that has fancy crossfeed processing
http://www.audio360.org/amps-dacs_a0022_review_spl_phonitor_2.php
I haven't heard the Phonitor 2 yet. I don't know how well its crossfeed may manage to put the image in front of your forehead and get rid of the blob in your head style of sound. And there's also the Smyth Realiser that's been mentioned. Expensive and complicated.

 

I guess the logic is speakers don't sound like headphones & headphones don't sound like speakers , however we can not comment on stuff with personally experiencing it . Right now there's a French int class D amp out there breaking all the rules . What I did hear recently is the Abyss headphones , who claim to be best in the world. They sounded excellent better than Stax & that's saying something . They don't cost 1500 but my Beyer DT 880 sound superb.

 

Hey Mike, in a nutshell, no, all headphones image differently than speakers. (I have yet to hear what the Smyth realizer can do.. always wanted a pair of Stax phones) Good headphones can recreate a more realistic image, such as Stax, and I like my Sennheiser HD420SL headphones. Most headphones fall short. The reason for this is in the physics of sound, and the space between our ears. I am not referring to the brain, only the distance! (ha!) Headphones physically separate the channels discreetly to each ear, so the image gets processed a little differently in the brain. Sound in air from speakers, mixes the two channels in air as sound propagates from each speaker. In other words, the right ear hears mostly the right channel, however the left ear will receive the rt speaker a few milliseconds later. This doesn't happen with headphones.

This bleeding of channels to each ear can be minimized by speaker placement, toe in, room treatment, etc which helps to direct each channel to each respective ear. This enhances the recreation of a three dimensional image.

Of course, sound in air is our natural way of hearing, so the recreation of the image should sound more natural, more realistic. The irony of this, the headphones produce a stronger image, but the image is mostly side to side and central (sensed at the top of the head) and lacks depth of field (front to back) Apparently, the only way we can sense (or be faked out) into hearing a frontal central image, and front to back imaging, would be headphones whose drivers are further away from the ear, and perhaps a slight frontal proximity. (Just a reasonable guess)

 

Oh I have plenty of room for speakers, it's the WAF -wife approval factor that I need to deal with. I tend to enjoy my music a bit loud and while she is accommodating, I thought if there were a really nice set of phones that eliminated the issues I have with them then why not.

You mention physics, but technology seems to trump what we have come to take for granted as fact these last few decades wouldn't you say?

 

No, technology doesn't trump the size and shape of your head and ears, the nature of acoustics in a room, the way we perceive phase and pitch over distance and between our two ears vs. having those drivers pinned to or inserted in your ears.

You can use binaural recordings or tricks like cross feeding the two channel signal or DSP solutions to improve the illusion of depth and space with headphone listening -- none of these solutions have to do with the 'phones per se, they're solutions at the recording or signal processing level -- and you might find something more enjoyable than two channel stereo recorded and mixed for playback with speakers but listened to via headphones. But it's still not the same as speakers in space.

Just accept the phones for what they are -- something other than speaker listening -- use the signal processing solution you prefer if you like, but just like technology can't make vegetables into meat, Tofurky notwithstanding, technology can't make headphones into speakers in space.

 

Another problem with headphones compared to speakers is bass.

With speakers you can sometimes feel the bass - a kick drum say. It's true that you can also feel bass on headphones but only at the ears and I find that an unpleasant experience.

I've not heard the Smyth Realiser but it is intriguing. It measures your actual speakers and translates that into your headphones. I believe you can also import specific speaker set ups too.

Cross feed is something else and in my experience anyway, has only a very subtle impact which you may not notice even if really trying to listen for it. The fact that many top headphone amps don't bother with it make me wonder if it is actually worth having.

Another solution is playing binaural recordings, music recorded with a special head shaped twin microphone. I've listened to some and wasn't overly impressed but that may be because most of the few recordings are not that interesting to me.

With $1,500 to spend I suggest you just look for the best possible headphone experience and accept it for what it is. It can be very enjoyable and, depending on your speaker set up, offer more detailed sound. Consider also a separate headphone amp too.

 

My latest headphones are the NAD Visio HP50, which feature NAD's so-called “Room Feel” design. I love 'em. These are not super high-end cans but I can't imagine a better sounding $300 headphone. The Room Feel thing is not about soundstage and an out-of-head simulation but about EQ that mimics good speakers in a room. Here's how Tyll Hertsens described designer Paul Barton's work in his review:

Barton makes these assumptions with a lot of solid information in his head, however. First, he knows one heck of a lot about what a good speaker sounds like in a good room. And second, he has an expert grasp on acoustic couplers and how to measure headphones. Combine these two skills together and you've got a potent brew for developing some great sounding cans. I've spent quite a bit of time picking his brain on his thought process, and the development of PSB and NAD's "Room Feel" technology.

Basically, if you take a direct radiating speaker that measures flat in an anechoic chamber and put it in a room, you'll find that it will have a significantly warmer sound. This happens because as frequency gets lower, the speakers radiate more omni-directionally, and therefor, the sound power content in the room as a whole gets stronger as frequency get lower. While this increase in low frequency response is somewhat decoupled from our perception of the sound from the speakers, it remains an important part of our impression of what a good speaker system sounds like.

In headphones, of course, there is no "room response" in the equation, and designers have typically either attempted a flat response into the lowest notes or added a big bass hump to satisfy bass lovers, but no real thought has gone into making a headphone response match that of the typical low-frequency boost heard in a good room. Here Barton's long expertise in matters acoustic come into play, and he has developed a very well reasoned headphone target response curve that takes into consideration low-frequency room gain and a number of other characteristics of a speaker's sound in a room, which has been labeled "Room Feel" by the company.

Paul and I both await Sean Olive's final headphone target response curve with baited breath. He because he's pretty darn sure the NAD VISO HP50 is right on target, and I because after hearing Paul's latest take on "Room Feel" have got to believe that tuning headphones to sound like good speakers in a good room leads to a darned good sounding headphone, and I'd love to have a better compensation curve for my headphone measurements than the one I currently use.​

 

In my opinion, no. Not even close.

 

Have you heard the Smyth Realizer? You can't honestly state what you say, either as a fact or an opinion, if you haven't. As earlier comments noted, their technology is an extraordinary achievement. It's not cheap and it's finicky, but you can't dismiss out of hand the utterly convincing speaker-mimicry it pulls off.

 

I don't see headphone/amp combinations making a stage 10 feet in front of me with depth and width. Between my ears or around my head, yes. I'm not that big a fan of the image in my head type of sound. Maybe a DSP can imitate that but not a headphone on it's own.

Secondly as pointed out, headphones will never create bass that excites other things in the room, your chest cavity, your chair, your pant leg.

You will not get these things with headphones. I'm happy for those that can live without these things but I much prefer music over loudspeakers.

 

A very similar thread has already covered a lot of what is being discussed in this thread.

http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/headphones-put-loudspeakers-to-shame.331504

 

http://www.smyth-research.com/products.html

Looks interesting. It has a motion sensor "Headtracker" which no doubt monitors your movement and produces some shift in azimuth to simulate speaker listening. Whether that is better suited for hi-fi listening or virtual reality gaming, I dont know.

 

Unless a pair of headphones can duplicate the effect on your body, as well as your ears, from music, there is no way they can ever mimic speakers.

Doug

 

"Mimic" doesn't necessarily mean to produce a match identical in every aspect (such as vibroacoustic LF sound and subaudible infrasound) and microscopic detail to the point of absurdity, it just means a convincing imitation.

 

Funnily enough if you read the Smyth Realiser pages you can get some physical input by using a vibrating chair!

For those that have used the Smyth Realiser, does it give long term listening satisfaction?

 

huh? Err, ok. lol.

 

I ask you have you heard the Smyth Realizer? It truly is a ground breaking product. If I didn't have the room for a top notch system I'd buy it in a heartbeat. Personally I use headphones to get s different perspective, so I would have no use for it but don't short change the technology BEFORE you experience it.

 

I have never heard a pair of headphones produce the delicate high frequencies of cymbals. You will never get the effects of imaging with headphones.

 

What headphones have you heard? Stax can do the delicate ring and decay of cymbals. The HD800 can. Better planar magnetics can. Headphones with the more traditional cone style dynamic drivers though do tend to have difficulties with delicate treble.