Are headphones better transducers than speakers??

Members. I have a dilemma.  During the early eighties (1982 , i think) i borrowed a set of pioneer  headphones from a friend. When listening to the track "One for the vine"by Genesis, on the Wind and Wuthering" album,  i could discern a clear separation of instruments in the sound. Since then, i have tried to recapture the same experience over the years (even to the extent of buying new copies of the same album when the one i have been using is scratchy)  but have not been able to achieve this, despite the fact that we are now using better components. So does this mean that speakers in general are not as good as headphones?