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Could headphones be used to evaluate speakers?

If a speaker manufacturer made recordings of music played on their various speaker models and the recordings were made using identical acoustically designed recording rooms with consistent recording equipment, could those recordings be used to give a prospective buyer a way to evaluate different speakers by using high fidelity headphones? Could this be a way to allow prospective buyers to get a good or very close evaluation of speakers?

I know there are many variables within a buyer's home that will effect a speaker's actual performance (audio equipment, room design/acoustics, etc) but couldn't this at least provide a buyer a way of narrowing down speakers to a final speaker he may want to further evaluate or purchase? It sure would be easier for a manufacturer to ship recordings and a pair of headphones than ship large floor standing speakers for evaluation.

If a standard recording setup were defined and consistently used, I could even see where a third party would provide the service of making the speaker recordings in their studio for different speaker manufacturers. 
1extreme
delkal
110 posts
 
I have seen videos on youtube where they demoed new speaker cables or other tweaks............and you could hear the differences listening on your laptop speakers!

So if you believe them I guess the answer is YES.

stringreen's avatar
stringreen
6,531 posts
 
totally different
wildfoxinn
69 posts
 
You can only convey the on-axis behavior of a speaker on a headphone. And even then it's assuming you have properly calibrated the headphone to match your HRTF, which can be tricky. And I think sound power is a better representation of overall tonality which a headphone isn't going to be able to convey.
roberjerman
4,319 posts
 
NO! 
mijostyn's avatar
mijostyn
8,570 posts
 
You are forgetting the room is a major part of the performance of any speaker system. Some speakers will do well in a certain room others may not. Having said that If you have a good set of reference headphones you can use them to get an idea of what your system is doing by comparison. I use to do that often when I made significant changes. Now I have a system that pings each speaker and gives me an exact read out of each ones frequency response anywhere in the room then automatically calculate and apply correction curves as well as any changes you wish to make to the response curve. The other added benefit is that I am use to knowing exactly what I am listening to so when I hear another system I can usually tell right away where it is off. 
I think this kind system will become progressively more available at reasonable prices. Right now the only units that do this that I know of are the Trinnovs. 
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