Can headphones ever be as good as high end stereo?

Can be, just depends on whether you enjoy sitting listening to headphones or not.

Another good thing about phones is they are likely to sound much like they did in the store when you get them home, with no room acoustics in the equation. That's assuming similar quality headphone amplification in both cases, to the extent needed.

The sound quality of "Audiophile" type phones like those in TAS review Al cited above will tend to be more dependent on amp than say portable phones designed to require less robust mobile amplification.

Plus the cost threshold of top notch headphone amplification for most any phones also tends to be much lower than similar quality speaker amplification due to teh much smaller scale involved.

Its not hard to imagine it a much easier task to drive very small transducers (ie headphones) located up against or even in your ears optimally than it is much larger ones (speakers) at a distance.

ALso full range type drivers are common in phones and no electronic crossover which gives phones a clear advantage in general in terms of phase coherency.

For me, it's not either/or but both/and.

I enjoy listening to my Spendor speakers, and I also enjoy music through my Sennheiser HD800 headphones.

The HD800s were game-changers for me. Like you, I had mainly owned modest headphones before, some basic Grados, and a more expensive pair of AKG 702 (the 65th Anniversary edition). The AKGs made me realize that headphones can be better than I had thought. And now that I have the HD800s, I thoroughly enjoy listening through headphones.

The HD800s have an actual sense of soundstage, unlike headphones that put everything between your ears. They are comfortable, at least on my head. And they sound superb driven by OTL tubes amps, including a modest little Bottlehead Crack and a Woo WA2.

I mainly listen to classical and jazz, and I do like to turn it up when the music demands. The HD800s remain clean at high volumes. (Not ear-damaging levels, of course.) And I don't find them to be bright, at least not when driven by the tube amps I use.

One caveat -- I don't do vinyl. So, I can't say whether record surface noise or turntable mechanical noise would be exacerbated through headphones.

I haven't tried Stax electrostatics--and am in no rush to do so, given how much I like the HD800s.

I might sound like a salesman for Sennheiser but I have no affiliation -- just an audiophile and music lover happy with a purchase.

My solution to the wife volume problem was to buy a ranch-style house. She goes to the bedroom at one end of the house, my listening room is all the way at the other end.

Sometimes the best way to keep it together is to keep yourselves apart!

My first pair of good headphones were Sennheiser HD424s back in the early 1980's. My most recent pair is the larger Sennheiser Momentum. I've listened to them all over the years. The Sennheiser line always place consistently strongly, at most any price point. Audio Technica as well. I have always wanted to like AKGs, and they can be very good, but I have had many poor auditions of those over the years. My sampling of STAX phones is much smaller, but that is the other long time gold standard line I know of, though marketing of these to US has changed considerably over the years. Hard to find in the US to audition these days.

I've listened to a lot of phones in last few years and have heard most of the leading contenders. Lots of useful headphone reviews availble to sort through. You'll find many well liked ones and little agreement on what is best. There are some nice newer lines out there as well, but I have not heard anything there that clearly knocks out the long term leaders. Just more good stuff to sort through and choose from.

I am NOT a Beats fan. Stay away from trendy new lines for the most part, but some are still quite nice.