headphones vs speakers? (1 Viewer)

Hi there!

This is my first post and it may be rather different from the usual ones. This is merely out of curiosity.

Recently, i have a discussion with a friend. He argued that generally, music from surround-speakers will NOT sound as good as that from a decent pair of headphone.
This, he reasons, is because all the sound from a pair of headphone reaches the ears while in the case of speakers, some of the music will inadvertably be "lost" or distorted in the room, through the window, imperfect rooms, reflections ...

In short, the level of detail and clarity of the sound from the headphone can never be reproduced in a room that is not acoustically-treated. Is that true?

Does anyone have an opinion on that?

You can't get the full range of sound or the directionality with headphones; realistically, as long as the room isn't horrible, you're not losing an extremely huge amount of detail.

In my opinion, music through headphones sounds good but it sounds artificial to me. Even in the best acoustic environment live music also loses some to the walls, ceiling, and seats. You also get reflections off of the walls, ceiling, and floor and depending upon the type of venue (concert hall, small club, etc.) these losses and reflections are what give the music it's particular kind of ambiance. With that in mind, 2 channel or 5.1 channel music through speakers can more accurately reproduce the live music experience than headphones.