I find that one can achieve great sound staging with headphones. I am not an expert on headphones by any means. Last weekend I was delivering a pair of JVC Victor HP1000 headphones (I bought 2 pair, sold one as my wife or son would refuse to wear them due to their size) to a gentleman here in Michigan. He owns about 5-7 pair of top end headphones and offered for me to listen to each of them.
Of all of his headphones, some of the most highly regarded in the industry and even mentioned within this thread, I listened to one pair that I (based on my likes) found the most appealing. These were a pair of modified Dennons (I believe it is the 500 model, but am not 100%). He had new wooden cups made for them in Australia (after buying blocks of special wood himself - I think from Hawaii). He then modded the area behing the driver with a special dampening material. Enough of those details . . .
In the end, when I put these headphones on, listening to the same piece as with all the other headphones, I literally turned around to look at the area where the sound was coming from. It was that real and that far away from me. I honestly thought the headphones were turned off and the sound must have been coming from a pair of speakers off to my right (obviously having a full band there would not have been possible). This being said, was one of the most natural sounding musical listening experiences I have ever had in terms of accuracy and my perception of reality.
This being said he was playing the headphones through a Wadia transport to a Wadia DAC to a good headphone amp of which the brand was I do not recall (he had several RSA amps). Very impressive to say the very least.
