Headphones vs full range speakers

Headphones IMO are nothing approaching lifelike, even the most expensive.  There is simply the wrong soundstage and imaging. Like most I use my 3 pairs on the train, in bed or when the rest of the house is asleep. 

It is like comparing Sushi to good Italian.    

Both are excellent when you are experiencing them.

I did experience many moments of "rocking out" with the headphones. They were fun to listen to when cranking them up. The speakers are more emotionally involving with their sense of real performers in the room.

Headphone are useful and can be extraordinary interesting...No doubt here...

My point is only that well implemented speakers will beat them most of the times, if not always. (i dont have OMEGA stax nor the RAAL headphones to compared and to claim my point on an absolute comparison basis for sure).

If then many speakers could beat most headphones, there is a big BUT, by experience now i know that most speakers are not well implemented, electrically, mechanically and acoustically...

Then....They are limited by their bad implementation in the room and in the system...

It is the reason i think , and it is only my opinion here, why some people put them on par with speakers but different...

Why then my 7 pairs are in a drawer?

Because i own a dedicated audio room and my speakers run optimally...It is not all people who could have the luxury of a dedicated audio room...

If not for this fact, i would have prefer to use ONLY headphones...It was my goal 8 years ago to own only headphones... It take less space, dont need a dedicated room with headphones, and i like the sonic relative isolation from the world and the feeling of being elsewhere they give, i miss that sensation a lot...I dont miss the uncomfort though after some hours...😁😊

But for sure listening music is more extraordinary in S.Q. points in near listening or in regular listening in my small room...

After years of many listening experiments i end up with speakers only....

And learning enough acoustic to set my room was very hard and asked for many months of daily experiments with my near hundred homemade acoustic devices....Cost is peanuts but the hours it takes was innumerable almost...Fine tuning a room like i did ask for an incremental listening process it is nowhere like buying acoustic panels and claiming job done... 😊

i take the same pain to improve each one of my headphones before and it is there i begin to think about " embeddings controls in the three working dimensions of any audio system"...

i hope my post clarified my opinion...

i will go headphones perhaps tomorrow if i could afford any headphone superior to my speakers...it is not the case at all with my 7 pairs...

the RAAL perhaps?

I dont know and will never know...My money is restricted anyway....

I have owned both. I used to own what some would call the best headphone available.the abyss AB-1266 PHI TC with a formula s, powerman and dCS Bartok. I upgraded my speakers from Magico S1mkII to a pair of Rockport Atria II with pair of JL F110v2 subs. After that I sold my Abyss and headphone amp. They got no use after I upgraded the speakers. There is just something about a great speaker system that headphones can't match. I still have focal clears and noble kahns with an sp1000 for late night listening. 

It does cost a lot more to get the same level of performance from speakers though.