I just dropped out of one of my favorite threads on Head-Fi, the Discovery Thread. It got pretty toxic when a science crusader showed up and went after a cable-faithful mujaheddin. I can handle the thread when there’s one of those types, but when the two mix, the thread goes straight to Hell.
My problem was bass. I knew that my trophy wife Stellia had enough bass because my iFi Hip Dac 2 with the Xbass pumped it out of her. But for home use it was not happening. I read that to get my monies worth out of her that I needed a headphone amp that has an XLR balanced connection. So I bought a Topping A90 and plugged it into my Marantz CD player, but it did not supply enough bass on older Classical recordings. So then I bought a Lokius EQ. Still not enough bass. So then I bought a Topping D90. But this Topping/Lokius sandwich still did not have enough bass. I was told I should get the iFi Pro Can with the Xbass function. But for that price ($2,300) I thought why not splurge and get my monies worth with one of those beautiful 48 pound Yamaha Integrated amps, the one with the pretty VU meters! Of course then I would be back to a single plug. What to do… what to do…. I bought the Yamaha and my Stellia now has PLENTY of bass. Yes the sound is warmer than the cold, calculating Tops, but I am cozy with that. The point being, I no longer use the XLR cable because the sound got better and I do not seem to be missing anything.
Perhaps you need a speaker – a subwoofer or four to supplement the headphones. 100 db or so concentrated in the 15-50 hz range is so low that it wouldn’t possibly disturb anybody.
A sub speaker and headphones at the same time… I suppose I could try that. I have Polk towers with a matching sub. I also have a giant Paradigm sub and PSB minis.
To show how much I listen to speakers, a couple years ago I decided to listen to my Polks and removed the grills only to find that there was cat vomit running all the way down one of them. About 3 years before that my cat, who likes to sit atop them, had puked and I cleaned the grill but did not realize it was all the way down on the inside too. But those old Polks cleaned up nice and still sound fine. Polk 1 / Vomit zero.
So you see, I only listened to my speakers once in 5 years. And twice more now since I got the Yamaha.
I’m one of those childless cat daddys myself, with a speaker perch for my cat, but I cat-proofed the speakers with metal grilles. I do listen to speakers - particularly at the office as I find that I start concentrating on music more and work less with headphones.
Plus, there is that pesky phone and ZMF doesn’t have a mic in the cable.
There are a fair number of people that do pair subs with headphones, and I’ve even seen ads for under-desk subs.
Note that there’s an outside chance I’m mistaken about 100db of bass not bothering neighbors.
I think neighbors are more likely to be annoyed by vibrations rather than sound, at least in a single structure, i.e. apartment or duplex.