Much cheaper in absolute terms as well. You can get very good headphones in the $100-200 range (even some under $100), while speaker systems in that range tend to be mediocre.
Ah, but if you are 10 people listening, that's suddenly $10 000 (actually more, as you'd probably need a little more expensive amp to drive 10 good headphones. Nowhere near 10x though).
Er, $1000 for ten people - although this isn't still a small amount it is close to an average mid-range home audio setup. The $10K you mention would be for 100 people, and then you would be looking at audio equipment for small performances and clubs, which can easily cost that much or more.
So, interestingly, the 100 x N formula for cost of audio equipment for N people to listen to, seems to hold. I am curious about N=1000 and above, certainly stadium systems cost over $100K and for 10K listeners I guess $1M is pretty small. Maybe there should be a scaling factor in there, or it might be better modeled by a power-law relationship?
Hah, lol. Yes ofc. But really, what you need for 10 people is ~1000$ worth of stereo equipment, not 10 sets of head phones... Maybe when we get dac's operated into our ears...
