When you see people playing guitar on YouTube and they are wearing headphones is this for the backing track and if so how do they hear what they’re actually playing on the guitar.
The sound of the guitar is coming through the headphones as well.
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What @jkahn said. I feed music into the auxiliary input on my amp, and plug the headphones into the headphone jack on my amp (not all amps have headphone jacks) so I hear my guitar and the music I’m playing along with.
Cool Thank you for that I have both jacks on my amp, so I’ll try that. For some reason when I play with the headphones on the sound effects are so much better than without the headphones I actually sound half decent.
Actually, I’ve never played any way but through the headphones, so as not to annoy my wife any more than I normally do. I don’t know what my guitars sound like through the amp speakers.
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I suspect its due to closed in and proximity of the sound or the reverb effect of the room (reflections) when not using them. I am frequently disappointed with my vocal sounds on recordings played back through PC speakers, as the FX is very much reduced compared to when using Cans. I’d turn the reverb up even further but suspect @brianlarsen would soon be banging on the wall. 
No doubt some with greater knowledge of these things ( @Majik ?) may have a technical explanation on why this is so.
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I don’t know for sure, but I suspect it’s due to a number of factors, including:
- With headphones, the stereo separation is far greater than with speakers, which emphasises stereo effects far more
- Headphones tend to block external sounds more, so there’s less background noise masking the music
- Rooms have natural reverb, so effects like reverb and short delays are competing against this natural reverb and don’t sound as “strong” as they do when in an environment like headphones where the impact of the room acoustics is removed
- In general, unless your room is really well acoustically treated, the impact of the room acoustics will tend to mask certain sounds and emphasise others, which might impact your perception of the effects. As a simple example, your listening environment will limit the dynamic range you can hear which means subtle effects may not be so prominent.
- You tend to have music louder in headphones (not always a good thing) but that raises the level of effects which makes them more noticeable.
That’s my guesses, anyway.
Cheers,
Keith
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Wow great answers from everyone thank you so much
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