Never feel it's a dumb question if you don't know the answer. I always use headphones. Like Stoney56 says, it saves your battery life and you can hear the signals better. There are a lot of times that I would have missed targets without them because the tones can be very faint if it's deep. I also like them cause I hunt mostly at the beach, and can ignore, or pretend I don't hear people trying to stop me to ask the same questions!LOL