Rex, what brand and model detector are you swinging. Headphones can make a difference, but not always. If it is early morning and there is no wind, I take off my headphones sometimes and let the speaker on my Tesoro Vaquero talk to me. It just depends on your situation, ambient noise levels - and your machine's speaker unit. With headphones on, you can hear the SLIGHTEST disturbance in a threshold, such as a "negative break," when the threshold suddenly goes quiet over a deep target. If you have a machine with no audible threshold then headphones are less useful - but, you may still hear a blip through the headphones you might not hear on the speaker. Get an inexpensive pair and see.