I was hoping that recording companies sell both versions of the same album. One for speakers and one for headphones.

Your anecdote resonates with my understanding. The music we listened is enginereed to sound good and optimal. For pop/rock music, engineering is part of the creative process. As you mentioned that classical music recordings are supposed to adhere to source but they also get edited. Thanks for shari

I agree that the bigger challenge with reproduction could be at recording. We must still recognize the challenges associated at the speakers to perfectly reproduce the sound.

I don't agree with orchestral music and rock/pop/digital music having the same challenge.

I was actually going to ask what prevents recording companies to produce binaural records. It cannot be technical as production costs for such music cannot be too high. Music consumption is more and more through headphones or Iems, especially for critical audience. Yet there is almost no records coming with binaural recordings. What ama I missing?

I don't quite understand the push back against the multiple drivers. Here are my observations:

• I have never heard a sound reproduction system that can be even closer to the original sound of the orchestra. During reproduction, the timbre of the instruments, the fidelity of the multiple instruments producing the sounds together are lost. As the source of sounds gets more complex, the worst the divergence gets.

• A single driver cannot produce all frequencies at the same magnitude. That's why we have subwoofers. Low frequency sounds from a smaller driver cannot have the same magnitude as the larger driver. Just like a large drum sound louder than small drum for the same frequency.

• A driver cannot immediately changes its movement due to inertia. Now there are techniques like planar drivers, electrostatic drivers to reduce the challenge but each solution comes with its compromise. This is also why we have equalizers to compensate on the physical limitations of the driver.

Now going from a single to multiple drivers introduce more noise as we add more processesing. Yet it also adds more flexibility to reproduce sound by using specialized driver for given target frequency.

We also need to understand the source of the sound. For orchestral sound like classic music, jazz music, the challenge is higher as the goal to reproduce original sound. For pop and rock music, sound is already engineered as there is no original sound but multiple soundtracks that are mixed by an engineer for optimal listening pleasure for target configuration. For the latter, two drivers are sufficient if the sound engineer targeted headphone based listening.

In a world with perfect microphone and perfect driver, yes we only need two drivers but they are not. The music is also not always mixed, prepared for two drivers.