This isn't a Vinyl vs CD thing where a clearly inferior technology lives on due mainly to sentimental reasons. There are a number of concrete advantages to wired headphones over bluetooth headphones.
- They don't need charging. Charging may seem like a minor inconvenience, and we're used to charging a lot of devices. However, even a minor inconvenience is still an inconvenience.
- They're harder to lose. When Apple almost immediately started selling accessories to connect their airpods together (i.e. Cables), it was pretty obvious that going completely cordless was not entirely superior.
- For an equivalent price point, wired headphones produce higher quality audio, and the top-end is a lot deeper.
- Wired cans don't need to pair, don't glitch out, don't become laggy, pair with the wrong device, etc.. Bluetooth was never really meant for use as an audio connection, and it's never really become 100% foolproof. With Apple's proclivity for proprietary standards, I'm amazed they (or others) haven't rolled their own wireless audio standard by now.
Too many android phones copied Apple and ditched the venerable audio jack, but a few kept it, and I've always insisted on it when buying phones. It's old but far from obsolete.
- they last forever. I still have sennheiser hd380 pro cans from 25 years ago that sound great.
- cannot overstate lack of lag and simplicity. You plug in and it works, perfectly, every time, forever.
- easily switch devices. I use my headphone on my phone, tablet, laptop, Synthesizer, Groovebox etc without a blink. And my phone never stops playing music and connects to our car my wife just started the way bluetooth ones do :-)
- to me, it's like email. Icq, aim, msn messenger come and go, yet email is old and boring but survives.
There's absolutely a time and place for wireless headphones and I probably use them more at this point. But killing 3.5mm from phones has been a Massive annoyance.
I bought the official ear pad replacements for my PXC450 back when those were available, for 1/4 of what the headset cost. They are so terrible that I stopped using the headphones entirely. I lost faith in Sennheiser after that, now I just use cheaper ear buds.
I bought the $21.99 Chinese replacement “Sennheiser” pads from Amazon. Straightforward to replace (though not trivial). Very comfortable. My headset feels as good as new.
I've had to replace the pads on my Sony 7506 cans as well. I was very impressed with the parts that can be replaced on these cans. The packing includes an exploded diagram of the parts.
I love my 7506s. And I have a recurring event on my calendar to remind me to buy new pads every 2 years. That's almost exactly how long they last. I've tried 3 brands and they've all lasted almost exactly 2 years. The original Sony pads also lasted 2 years.
Yeah the sound stage definitely gets impacted. I tend to use leather cups in the winter and fabric ones in the summer. Nothing worse than sweating from your temples while you work.
A friend worked at sennheiser about 15 years ago and I took advantage of his cost-price deal on a pair of HD700. They are, without a doubt, the best sounding and most comforted cans I've ever used. Now, I treated them badly, throwing them into ruck sacks etc, and eventually one of the transducers failed. I contacted Sennheiser who charged me €140 to "repair" them... They sent me a brand new set with the thick silver core cable (I never sent mine back so now I have two, and those cost over 100 bucks by themselves)
Ehh I'm not considering it a dealbreaker. Easy to splice and fix 3.5mm. Donors found at thrift stores or in your drawer (or remaining length of undamaged wire).
> There's absolutely a time and place for wireless headphones and I probably use them more at this point.
I've had a pair of Sony MD-7506s ever since I assisted in an analog recording studio, years ago. 7506s were the standard then, not sure about now. I am on my 5th set of cushion replacements.
A few years ago I bought a high-ish quality bluetooth adapter I can put in my pocket and walk around. The one I bought is the Boltune BT-BA001. Looks like they are only $30 on eBay now, but there may be better ones out there. That little box is probably my most used piece of inexpensive electronics.
I’ve used many pairs of wired headphones over the years, cheap and expensive, and never had ones with a cable that didn’t eventually fail, unless they mostly stay plugged into a single device.
The article prominently highlights mobile usage, in which case wireless headphones easily win on longevity.
I think it’s maybe close to a wash between non-replaceable batteries in wireless headphones dying and cords failing, in my experience at least. The ideal case IMO is over-ear headphones that have a replaceable cord—I have some 14 year old Bose QCs and some newer Beyerdynamics, both of which I’ve replaced the cord on.
Have batteries actually ever FAILED in wireless headphones? Sure, they degrade and charge becomes lower, but I've never had them outright fail. A headphone that lasts my 2-3 hours of commute/daily use is completely useable, even if it's original charge lasted 5 hours.
Cables do fail though, completely. They become unusable.
In my entire life time of using headphones/earbuds since school with the PSP, ALL wired options have failed after 1-2 years for purely mechanical cable reasons. Not a single wireless failed for electronic reasons. The did fail for me dropping them and stepping on them reasons, though.
My sennheiser earbuds are now down to 15 minutes of battery life. Less if it's a cold day. Sure, they're not completely dead yet, but they're effectively useless. And it's not like I can easily replace the batteries. Most wired earbuds or headphones at a similar price point have replaceable cables.
I bought a pair of Philips headphones with a replaceable cord. Instead the jack became loose.
I’ve been using Bluetooth wireless headphones exclusively when I’m portable since 2006 (Sony Ericsson HBH-DS970 represent), with only wired use at a desk and I’ve never looked back.
All my corded headphones lasted at most 2 years of mobile use. My QC35s are still going strong. Wired sucks for mobile use. And if the cord doesn’t go, the 3.5mm socket does. I replaced multiple sockets on my iPod and iPhone 3g. That replacement process sucks.
What are you doing that destroys cables and jacks like that? I use wired earbuds while riding my bike and I've never broken a jack, and the one time I broke the cable was because I made a mistake and dropped them while riding, which got them tangled up in the spokes.
I've used tons of wired as well. Maybe have bad one pair fail at the wire? I'm super active with them too. Snowboarding with them and my Sony g shock in 1998. Lots of cycling and running usage. You've had every single pair of wired headphones fail for you? Every single pair?
What is a "Sony g shock" if you don't mind? I know Casio's G-Shock and Sony's Sports series... did you mix them by chance as I suppose or is there a Sony range I'm not aware of?
Haha whoops, I totally conflated the two! The Sony Atrac3Plus had a feature called "G Protection". It was the only "anti skip" cd player that I tried that actually worked really well back then.
I also exaggerated the year a bit. After looking it up, I think this cd player came out in 2004!
Cord failure is definitely a problem, but if you’re moderately capable with a soldering iron, it’s easy to repair the cord if the failure is away from the headphone side. It’s even fairly easy to replace an 8mm or 0.25” jack.
Your soldering skill (and sense of adventure) would have to be far better than mine to even consider doing that for wireless earbuds.
The few times I've tried to solder headphone wire I've been defeated because the wire isn't wire, it's some kind of copper and synthetic fiber weave, that the solder just won't adhere to.
It's an unbelievably thin stranded wire, but the wires are coated so they can be in contact with each other without shorting. It's all twisted around a thin thread of cotton or nylon to add strength, then then encased in it's sheath.
The trick is to gently scrape the stranded wire with a blade for the solder to stick and to make a good connection.
I've repaired a few headphone wires; theyre usually thin copper wires covered with enamel insulation. Burn off the insulation with a blob of solder, or sand it off, and the solder will stick.
You’re right, the kind of cable often used is not easy to solder. This makes it hard to solder a broken cable together again, or to replace a broken / bent plug. So best replace the entire cable and its plug — it’s still an inexpensive part.
You’ll need to solder it to the contacts inside the can, but that’s quite straightforward.
In case the internal cable that goes from one can to the other breaks, you can replace it with any bit of audio cable so you can use one that’s easy to solder.
I’ve repaired many pairs of wired headphones over the years, as electronic repairs go they’re very simple. The same can’t be said for the wireless ones.
Plus, the more high end ones come with repleceable cables.
Absolutely, As I said, it comes down to personal usage, needs, preferences. I personally never lost a cable (I did need to replace the earpads, but that happened on both Bluetooth and wired:). I do tend to use connected wireless earbuds when I go jogging etc.
There are lots of wired headphones out there with replaceable cables
Honestly though you can get the best of both worlds.
I impulse bought some over-the-ear headphones at the airport when I realized I had forgotten mine that do bluetooth, but can also use an audio cable when the battery dies.
When using wired the audio quality is much better.
Let’s critically think about this for just a second. Your concern doesn’t appear to be with the audio, isn’t it with the connector? That’s a whole different argument than what we’re talking about
Isn’t it the wire that failed, not the audio part of it? So why not do what I did? You put some JB weld across that bend in the wire, which is cheap and could probably be engineered to last a lot longer… now I have headphones that last a really long time. You could also get a better connector and simply put that on there, right?
Yeah for me the main sell of wireless is mobility/freedom of movement.
I can use them while charging my phone or working out. Can play a video while cooking and moving around the kitchen. Or while watching TV/playing a game in the TV where a cable can’t reach.
However when static I used wired. That’s mostly when on the computer, but like many people here I am assuming that’s a good part of the day.
I prefer wired ones, mostly playing devil’s advocate here.
Every pair of cheaper earphones or earbuds I’ve had fail have failed due to the cable.
We switched my oldest to a pair of BT headphones because he seems incapable of keeping track of the cord. It gets caught, he pulls, and something has to give. Longest lasting set he had in 2025 was BT.
I got wired headphones after repeatedly losing airpods falling out of my ears onto the floor of planes. I like to sleep with my headphones in falling asleep to audiobooks, and I'm a side-sleeper so airpods would rub on the pillow and get lost in the seat machinery.
Wired headphones at least if they fall out are still connected to a rope to get them back!
For airplanes, Bose or Sony both have noise-canceling wireless headphones in over-ear format with battery life over 18 hours. I wouldn't try to side-sleep in either one, but the relative quiet on aircraft is wonderful, especially if you find yourself on a turboprop.
Many wired headphones have a little control thingy with buttons on the wire. Four pin aux connectors support control signals. If your headphones have a detachable aux cable I suppose you can just replace it with cable with controls.
The touch functionality is useful until it isn't. My Pixel Buds will activate touch controls randomly and unnecessarily all the time when I'm trying to use them in bed, from the contact with the pillow or sheets. Drives me nuts.
But also, I don't think it's either/or for most people. I use both wired and wireless headphones all the time depending on the use case. Wired sounds far better and is more reliable, wireless is more mobile. Different use cases.
You are right, in the past we never skipped a song or adjusted volume, just went with what came out of the factory and what was playing at the time. Those buttons on the device itself were for show.
Hah, just shows how out of touch I am. Has ANC disappeared as a wired earphone feature? I keep meaning to shop for a new all-purpose pair with ANC, duplex audio, and either USB-C input or an adapter for that. But, I keep procrastinating. I don't have any headphones that work with my phone since the analog port disappeared.
I can point to the shelf with my Sony wired ANC ear buds, which I bought years ago specifically for ANC during air travel, in the era when I would use my iPod and later an iPod Nano. The ones I have are the second pair, bought after the first was accidentally left on a plane. I think they were different product generations, a few years apart. These are so old, they are purely stereo headphones. Microphones for duplex audio hadn't become pervasive yet.
These stick in my ear with little silicon flanges and have a part that sits outside with the microphone. Then there is a small control module sitting at the junction of left and right ear wires, which holds a AAA battery and has a power switch and a pass-through audio button (which always seemed more gimmick than utility to me). In their active mode, they also don't demand much of the source device.
if the phone is in your pants pocket then its fairly trivial to change the volume just by using the buttons on the phone
even some of the cheapest in-line remotes that only have a single button will let you change the track by double tapping it
if you dont have an in-line remote then theres also the option of using a key remapper app (probably not on iphone) to let you change track by long pressing the volume buttons
I bought a tiny lapel clip Bluetooth receiver that has buttons and a headphone socket. Charge over USB, pair with phone, turn any headphones into Bluetooth. If the battery runs out, plug the headphones straight into the phone.
However, the noise cancelling gap is real. I'd kill for wired IEMs with an inline battery + buttons, and noise cancelling mic & circuit in the earpieces.
Closest is the Sony cans, which have wired mode (ie: they have a tiny jack, so you can use them passively) but I don't think they cancel noise when using them that way
I have some Sony headphones from a decade ago with a detachable cable. Noise cancellation works just fine when wired, and you get better battery life since the Bluetooth part isn’t active. The only time you can’t use noise cancellation is when it’s charging (Micro-USB, doesn’t do audio over USB in case you were wondering).
Re: noise canceling... recently got a pair of IEMs (Etymotic ER2XR) with good foam tips and their isolation blows away any ANC I've ever tried. The only thing is noise from touching the cable but that was solved with some ear hooks to put the cables behind my ears.
Probably an exaggeration? But I hope that tapping for pause isn't critical for anyone's daily life.
I use wireless headphones and in fact never use this feature (I have it disabled). Too unreliable when there's a large screen with a big pause and skip button within reach.
Or ever do anything in parallel with listening. I’ve been working in my garden and went to a shed that’s like 15 meters away from my home only to notice that I’ve forgotten to take my phone with me - music never stopped.
Many have a small box on the cord with those controls, and you could argue that's handier since it's closer to where your hands naturally are at any given moment.
100% this. I have had the MDR-7506 since my DJ days about 30 years ago. These are by no means expensive headphones, but compared even to much more higher-end Bluetooth headphones they can easily hold their own. They have good depth and are well balanced. They are just about indestructible, only requiring the occasional pads replacement. Probably one of the best purchases I ever made
I work with a lot of audio in a professional capacity. You're correct if you're saying that neither tech is universally "teh best".
And you're correct that wired phones have a lot of advantages.
Tack on that they don't have latency, though I've never really tried to track vocals on wireless cans. I have a pretty nice collection of what I consider to be quality mid-tier stuff for my studio (hd280, dt770, mdr7506, k240), and I think they mostly sound better and I can use them longer than I can use the various wireless stuff I use.
And the "real" UHF wireless audio I use professionally (well, to collect rather than listen to audio) is very reliable and good sounding but also, like, $1000/ch once it's cased and cabled and properly accessorized.
However, for almost all of my day to day listening I use either airpods or a some bluetooth'd 3M ear muffs. I even went back to airpods after going through both wired and other wireless solutions.
I don't enjoy having my in-ears ripped out along with my pocket. And universally the cord ends and the physical connector on my phone are the weak spots that have had me replace stuff- I haven't bought a phone in the 5 years since I got one that could charge wirelessly and never has phones plugged into it, and I don't intend to get another one any time soon (knock on wood that my case keeps the screen from breaking and needing me to repair it).
I have a bluetooth receiver with an analog out that I keep in my workbox, which I used for program music at a show tonight. It's nice to start my truck and my podcast just starts playing, too, without having to get out my phone and plug it in.
You're right that wired stuff is better for some things. I still find wireless stuff to be superior in a lot of situations.
> Tack on that they don't have latency, though I've never really tried to track vocals on wireless cans
The truth is that the OS usually hides the latency of wireless heapdhones, e.g. airpods, by delaying video to keep it in sync. The real latency is somewhere around 100-400ms if the RF environment is crowded. Even worse is that the latency isn't actually constant, but drifts all the time.
At many IT conferences organized by hackspaces, everything is done by volunteers, including broadcast and video/audio postproduction. And that is actually one of the most common issues: our volunteers use wireless headphones even if we ask them repeatedly not to.
We cut talks in postproduction primarily based on audio, e.g., when does the applause start/end, when does the speaker's introduction start/end, etc. Obviously, that doesn't work reliably if the audio latency is nondeterministic.
Even worse, as different venues have different audio setups, there are sometimes real audio/video sync issues that need to be fixed. But if our volunteers are using wireless headphones, they won't just set the wrong offset, but they end up trying to fix issues that don't even exist.
And then you get complaints from viewers that e.g. the livestream audio/video is out of sync, even though it's not. The issue turns out to be caused by the viewer's laptop and wireless headphones not supporting the latency compensation technique I explained earlier. And there's nothing we can do about that.
Wireless headphones tried to fix something that wasn't broken, and made it worse. In German, we'd call that "verschlimmbessern".
> The truth is that the OS usually hides the latency of wireless heapdhones, e.g. airpods, by delaying video to keep it in sync.
Right, but that only works when you control both. I love my Sony and Shure Bluetooth headphones and have 0 issues watching videos with them; they work great even on Linux.
But when people figure they're gonna use BT headsets for conferencing, it just turns into a shitshow of people waiting for the other to speak, then starting to speak at the same time.
I have an old Jabra headset for my video call needs, and it uses DECT. That thing has so little latency that I can use it to play FPS games without issues (I'm by no means a competitve player, so YMMV). At the same time, its range is huuuge. For the life of me, I cannot understand why nobody makes such headsets anymore: they've all switched to BT for some reason. The only models that seem to still use some form of low-latency transmission are some "gamer" models, but I've never tried one.
ugh the most annoying thing about the conversation clash latency is that the person causing the issue just thinks others are being weirdly rude.
wireless headphones externalize the cost of latency to other conference participants. if you think your airbuds are "perfectly fine" it's because you're not the one paying the cost.
> Wireless headphones tried to fix something that wasn't broken, and made it worse.
I think you are going to far here.
Do wireless headphones have problems? Sure. Did they fix some problems wired headphones had? Yes. Yes, they did.
Simply the ability of moving around without having to worry about the cable getting tangled or dragging the headphones or the phone is phenomenal. My wireless headphones are a lot more reliable than my previous wired ones. Somehow the cable and the connector was always the source of failures.
Do you not like wireless headphones? Don’t buy them. I will keep buying wireless headphones because they have clear benefits to me in my usage.
I find it insulting that you represent your preference as some universal truth.
Most of this thread is already exploring the consumer perspective, and as the previous poster said they couldn't talk about the professional perspective, I chose to only focus on the production/broadcast angle in my comment.
I made my own, but they sucked balls. I have some Plantronic cans which have ~10db nrr, but they are falling apart now, and I'm looking for alternatives with decent NRR
Well, I have had them for about 2 years and would buy them again.
To be clear, these are for noise protection and are heavy. They are big enough that I have another pair of muffs for shooting rifles and some ($$) molded westone earplugs for working on loud stages.
I mostly use the 3m when I am running a chainsaw or driving vehicles with the windows down (I find that too damn loud for my tastes). For a while I'd track drums with them over my shure se215, but I've started playing quieter and have found that something like an HD280 cuts stuff down enough to track drums while feeling more comfortable.
On one hand, they are kind of expensive, bulky, and the mic isn't great. Also their "ambient sound" is not anywhere near as loud or controllable as the muffs I use for shooting. On the other hand, they pair well, sound okay, have a lot of noise reduction, and they seem pretty rugged. They run on AAs and Battery life is pretty good, too.
OTOH, with Bluetooth headphones I can stand from my desk and stretch, or rest my eyes focusing on something while standing next to the window — without interrupting whatever I'm listening to.
I can also freely move around the house while listening to music or any podcast. Carrying my laptop around would hardly be convenient.
I do have a pair of wired headphones which I rarely use. My laptop has ended up on the floor twice due to me standing and forgetting about the cable. I almost broke the plug another time when I stood up and they were still plugged to the desktop. As someone who's grown up with the comfort of wireless headphones, using wired headphones is like wearing headphones with an anchor.
Honestly, I hate dealing with cables, even more having cables wrapped around me. I can't imagine being out on the street and having cables wrapped around me, connected to the phone in my bag or pocket, while trying to move around or use my arms in the usual way.
I think a big part of the reason is that there is only one wireless option -Bluetooth- and it is a terrible product from a user experience perspective. It's 2026 and I still can't move through my world with earbuds in without my audio randomly switching to my wife's car in the driveway or our Bluetooth speaker that is on upstairs.
> only one wireless option -Bluetooth- and it is a terrible product from a user experience perspective
That’s an implementation problem, not a technology problem. iPhone with AirPods here - your scenario just does not happen. There’s even an option for “yes be stupid and connect to my car even when I’m in the middle of a phone call” if you really want to use it…
I have two iPhones and a MBP. I have to keep Bluetooth disabled on the MacBook otherwise it randomly triggers while I'm between podcasts or whatever and squeeze the AirPods to resume, instead it launches Apple Music, or some browser tab starts playing audio.
This is far from solved if you have more than one Apple device.
There is no option for me to say: never use AirPods for anything but podcasts, and absolutely never automatically select them as an audio source for zoom/teams. AirPods microphones just don't work for my vocal range, they sound horrible and underwater. The microphone on my MBP works great, the mic on my iPhones works great.
AirPods are fine if you only ever use one device at a time. If you use more than one at the same time, it becomes extremely annoying.
Let's not even get into the annoying ways which it becomes hard to manage when you have multiple AirPods, multiple iPhones, and multiple MacBooks.
My partner is on a conference call, I hop in the car to go run an errand. Suddenly I'm on a conference call.
My partner is in the kitchen listening to a podcast, I hop in our other car and suddenly I'm listening to a podcast.
My partner is sitting in the car having a driveway moment, I arrive home with the other car and now I'm having her driveway moment.
My partner is on a conference call at her desk and picks up her phone to respond to a message and then you hear "shit shit shit, hold on a moment!" and then frantic typing and clicking.
* They don't need charging, but you will hear static regularly when attaching/detaching/touching things. Also, they pick up RF interference (TBF, BT ones also drop packets in RF-noisy environments, but they seem to be more resistant to it)
* They are harder to lose, but the ones with non-detachable cords need repairing the cord if it rips, which happens frequently. Never happened with BT headsets I own.
* For BT headphones with detachable cord I agree, that BT channel reduces quality slightly, compared to cord on the same device. It's not as bad as vinyl/tape, though. You have a chance to notice it on lossless. but not regular MP3s.
* Wired don't need to pair, but need your awareness of the current relation between the cord and your body and surroundings, otherwise you will be constantly re-attaching them, or ripping cords. They don't glitch or lag, but pick static and RF.
Wireless is really convenient, if you can afford headphones that last a full day, or a pair of them to switch between and don't have many sources of sound to play to the same headset, even at different times. There are own standards that skip BT and use analog RF to skip the lag and drops (with a dongle), but they too have the issue with RF interference. You either can have digital with lag and rare drops, or instantaneous analog with frequent noise without drops.
> (TBF, BT ones also drop packets in RF-noisy environments, but they seem to be more resistant to it)
I've experienced the opposite. The microwave will knock out my bluetooth completely, but the wired headphones are solid but in a decade of using both wired and wireless headphones I've never heard anything weird or staticy through the wired ones. My wired headphones were the Shure SE215, and now after a decade of using those they broke, so I have the Kiwi Ears Belle.
Vinyls are not necessarily the inferior technology. Given the choice, I'd prefer to play vinyl in some cases. In social settings vinyl's short length and need to be flipped creates a dynamic social environment. Someone has to regularly choose new music to play, acting with intent to do so. Someone has to regularly walk to the machine. These create dynamism and flow. CDs are much longer, and less tactile. There's less of the my turn your turn, who is going to flip the thing.
They sound worse, if clarity is your goal. And they are huge and wear out. I agree with you 99%, I just wanted to point out that across some dimensions they are the superior technology.
This is like saying “Candles are superior to lightbulbs because they burn out quicker and thats an advantage in some situations”.
I’m not sure how, its an aesthetic choice but an inferior technology by every metric that counts.
Candles still have a place, we still buy them, but we can’t reasonably call them superior either- even if, candles actually would have a real advantage of not requiring power. Vinyl doesn’t even have that.
I’m sure somebody posted a link to E-Prime here recently (a form of English where all forms of ‘to be’ are forbidden) and this conversation is a wonderful example of the kinds of conflicts that it helps avoid.
The advantages of vinyl are basically making up for lack of self-discipline in humans. (I much prefer vinyl for that precise reason!)
a) Since putting it on becomes more of a ritual - handling the album carefully, brushing off lint, placing the needle &c - I find I make more of an effort to actually _listen_ to the music I put on. I could listen as intently to Spotify or Tidal, too - but, alas, I most often don't.
b) Seeing as you'll get some 20-odd minutes of music before having to make another choice - be it playing the other side or another album entirely - it enforces having to decide on what you'd like to listen to, rather than just letting your streaming service of choice play things it thinks you may like. (That being said, streaming services are a great way to explore new music!)
c) Given the economics of streaming, buying physical media helps both the record stores - a good one is like an excellent library, in which the librarians give you all sorts of curated recommendations for things you may like, in addition to being great social meeting places with like-minded folk - and performing artists alive; I've no idea how many hours I would have to listen to an artist on Spotify before the payout is equal to their takeout from a single vinyl sale...
d) Besides, it is cosy.
That being said, you could easily DSP CDs or streaming to sound like vinyl if that's your idea of fun - just about any playback format is superior sonically to vinyl. However, to many, it is the whole ritual of putting on a record which basically makes it worth the sonic tradeoffs... (Call me a luddite if you like!)
In a similar vein, vinyl records make the unit of music an album, and I like it in situations where the artist has created "an album" rather than "a collection of ten-ish tracks".
I listen to most of my music on phones or computers and when I do, I like to pick out a track at a time or put together a playlist or just shuffle the whole damn thing.
When I purchase or put on a record, it's because I think the album is a cohesive work and I want to listen to it as a piece; the constrained format created the concept of an album, and using it enforces listening to the music as an album.
> In a similar vein, vinyl records make the unit of music an album, and I like it in situations where the artist has created "an album" rather than "a collection of ten-ish tracks".
I don't see how this is different between a record and a CD.
The killer feature of CD players is shuffling and skipping tracks.
Heck, it used to be all the rage to get a three or five CD changer and shuffle the whole thing, comfortable unpredictability, forty or fifty songs you like but never knowing which is next.
You could likewise just listen to an album on your phone, in order, but it's too easy to let your distraction kick in and switch it halfway through.
As someone who grew up during the transition, the killer feature of the CD was amazing audio quality and the lack of degradation from every playback. The period where we started finding albums marked "DDD", for fully digital production, was also amazing.
It saddens me a little that, in spite of all the technology, actual Hi-Fi listening seems to have become less accessible or prevalent. I'm still not sure how much this is really for the commonly stated reason of convenience, and how much that is really cope and denial of a bigger socio-economic decline. I.e. it simply isn't as realistic for regular people to have a Hi-Fi listening space...
Anecdotally, I don't think hi-fi's decline has to do with cost - at least not cost alone. You can still get a more than decent system which will fit most living rooms for quite reasonable money - I just had a look at prices at a national retailer's website here in Norway, and you can get a pair of decent bookshelf speakers and a stereo amp delivering 2x60W into 8 ohms, built-in streaming support and a HDMI input to ease connection to the TV, covering the most common use cases nowadays, for less than $1,000.
For comparison, median income after taxes is approx. $50,000 a year, so we're looking at less than a week's net wages.
I think it is more likely that our media consumption habits have changed - when I was a kid in the eighties, a few - like, the bank branch manager, the dentist and a few others - had a VCR at home. The rest of us had TVs, meaning we watched what was on at the time, or (once in a while) rented a VCR and a movie.
That aside, our media choices were radio, going to the cinema (not very often!) or - drumroll - recorded music.
Hence everybody had stereos. I believe my parents were quite typical - when I was a toddler, they bought a number of LPs with radio dramas for kids on them, music for kids &c - the stereo was basically the entertainment hub.
Today my family and I - wife and three kids aged 10, 12 and 16 - have between us, let's see, 2xTVs, a 40" and an 85", the latter with a 5.1 system attached, both with Apple TVs, a stereo (making us an outlier!), three ipads, three smartphones, two dumbphones, a handful of radios, three - oops, four - laptops, a PlayStation, a couple of Nintendo Switches...
There's basically so many more options to spend our media time on, and at the same time there's way more leisure activities aimed at kids now than when I was a kid, so the kids are barely at home during the week (at least it feels that way!), leaving less time (methinks) for media consumption than only a generation ago, while at the same time having many more options.
So - basically, for many, only a generation ago, the stereo was the entertainment hub and you were kind of expected to have one. Nowadays the entertainment hub is some kind of internet-connected device, and a stereo is a niche product.
There's one (related) difference - an LP can hold approx. 45 minutes of music, a CD can hold 80-ish (The original spec called for 74, but I think the most I've seen on a single disc is 82-ish minutes).
Unless an artist is very disciplined, that means what would be a decent album at 40 minutes worth of music in LP days would be half an album today.
Again, this is a shortcoming in people, not in the medium itself - after all, a stellar 40-minute album can be released on CD, too.
I have heard expressed many times, though, the expectation that a CD should be 'full' in order to be a proper product - or, for that matter, the artist can be less severe in the cutting room, seeing as 'Oh, we've got room for that one, too
...'
I'd much rather have a condensed album which is mostly great than the same songs mixed with as many tunes which ought have been left in the archives pending a 'Collector's edition', 'Complete outtakes' or similar.
Then again (again!), at least a CD lets you skip the filler and listen only to the good stuff - at the risk of losing some of the recording artist's vision. Which, again, is a matter of (lacking) self-discipline. The LP raises the bar for skipping songs, hence forcing us weak souls (I count myself among them!) to listen to the full work, as the artist intended.
Or, at least as the artist intended before 'new release' meant uploading a new song to streaming services, making the album - as a somewhat cohesive collection of songs - a niche product.
Apropos nothing, the latest album I bought is a CD which arrived in the mail today, and it clocks in at 55 minutes and 20 seconds. Picked up a handful of LPs last week, though.
Rather less-succinctly: I never got into vinyl and have never owned a turntable that wasn't built down to a price. I do still have my shelves of CDs, and it keeps slowly expanding. I usually listen to Spotify because it is convenient and portable and -- these days -- lossless.
But my sister and her old man have put together a quite decent stereo system with a mix of vintage and modern gear in recent years, and also started a a rather serious vinyl collection. While there's certainly no romance there on my end, it's a lovely and deeply-involving experience to hang out with them in their tiny little city-dweller living room and spin records into the wee hours; sometimes for just one track, and sometimes for entire albums.
I definitely prefer the way my own stereo, which I've built over the course of decades, sounds. It's detailed and big and it does all the things; it is by all technical measures very superior. But we have a lot more fun listening to vinyl at their place than we have playing CDs and Spotify at my place. The process -- and indeed, the inconvenience -- of playing vinyl makes it all much more visceral.
You have to look beyond the audio engineering on this one.
Using constrained mediums on purpose is often how the best artistic expression is achieved. For example, if the artist knows their channel is noisy and band-limited they can get a lot more liberal with the kinds of samples they use throughout. CD/SACD is kind of like 4K for television. The medium becomes so transparent that it causes upstream shocks in every other part of the process. You can no longer rely on the camera or audio chain to cover it up (unless you hobble yourself intentionally).
> Using constrained mediums on purpose is often how the best artistic expression is achieved
Artistic expression is not technology. Vinyl is strictly inferior as technology. That doesn't imply that it cannot have any advantages at all, but that wasn't the point being made.
Technology is sometimes used by artists to express themselves. Sometimes that means lo-fi recordings of your music on a shit tape recorder when better tools ate around. Sometimes it means pressing vinyls.
With this logic you can argue the best audio medium is dirt because if you made good music with dirt, the music must have been so incredible to have counteracted the flaws of dirt as a medium. Ignore the fact that dirt cannot be used as a music medium. (Vacuous truth)
Yes, but your "IF" is doing the heavy lifting here and it would be your burden to proof how dirt would be a means of artistic expression before anybody could take your argument seriously.
As a musician myself I can assure you that the high stakes releases for any musician are vinyl releases. They also happen to be the ones with which most musicians earn the most money.
Now technologically vinyl isn't superior (and anybody who claims it is is an idiot in the sense of the word), but technology isn't everything. A noisy casette tape can evoke the same (and sometimes more) feelings than the digital recording. A vinyl record with a big cover, an inlay with band info, that you specifically chose to put on the record player while reading the liner notes and examining the design is in a ritualistic sense a thousand times more gratifying than having spotify select a song for you without knowing why, in the background of the daily life. That is like the difference between a candle light bath and getting wet in a rainshower.
Now that doesn't mean people will be binary either 100% vinyl or 100% digital. Vinyl is for the special occasion or for DJ sets, digital is for everything else.
Yes that's my point with the "if"! And in general I largely agree with you.
The parent comment basically argued vinyl is superior because when artists used vinyl the resulting music was creatively better (because of whatever process). Sure, but then you can't selectively ignore the great music that has been made with other recording technologies. I can point to a lot of good music recorded on tape or digital. Unless we are arguing that music back in the vinyl days was broadly better than now? (Different argument then...)
As for artistic choices, I totally agree that vinyl can be a valid choice! Then it's silly to say one thing is "better" than another.
But in terms of raw technology, I say it's just copium to claim vinyl is in any way superior to digital. Digital's recording capabilities are a superset of vinyl's. There is no magic sauce killer feature unique to vinyl.
Music may have been a bigger culturual force during the heights of vinyl record sales. Whether that translated to better music or whether it is some form of survivorship bias: I don't know. In fact I doubt it. But there is something to the music that happened when it was new, e.g. Punk music was better when everybody was still trying to figure out what is punk and what isn't, while today it feels like most bands just copy was has been made in the past. You can extrapolate the same idea to many other genres that developed. So was the music better on average? Probably not. Was it more exiting and had more impact on society, fashion, culture? For sure.
As for vinyl: I agree that digital is superior in terms of sound quality. Nearly every vinyl record is pressed from a digital master nowadays after all. Even those who want "vinyl warmth" could have that easily emulated in digital nowadays. Digital is endlessly flexible, you could theoretically envision (and some have done) a vinyl experience that is purely digital under the hood – or you could do whatever netflix is doing.
But in practise vinyl comes with the experience, forces you to do the ritual, to listen to the whole album, is immensly direct (just the waveform pressed into the material) etc. This is a limitation if vinyl is all you have, but in times where you could listen to 10 nameless streams of sounds at once for the whole day that limitation has become a popular feature. I have friends with pressing plants and all of them have more job offers than they could realistically fulfill for years now.
I'd advice against too easily dismissing the value of the ritual a technological dispositif forces onto the people interacting with said technology. Listening to a vinyl record in a time where people rarely ever sit down and just listen to music in a concentrated way is a thing people look for. Those who say it is because vinyl is technically superior are wrong, but the limitations and the listening habits a technology enforces are unseparably a part of the technology itself. And if you are looking for what vinyl gives you, vinyl is the thing that gives it to you best.
I have huge nostalgia for older analog audio and photo formats for many many reasons. I also don't really miss them. Had a lot of fun and memories with vinyl and processing B&W film in a darkroom--also shot a lot of slides--but you can't go home again and all that.
Not really. Analog electronic instruments are based on non-linear feedbacks loops. Those are pretty much impossible to emulate digitally without emulating actual electric circuits and current flow.
(Yes, I know, irrelevant to the vinyl discussion.)
I used to think that, and indeed a computer can run any equations you want. However with analogue you're getting a bunch of interesting-sounding equations without having to think of them and write them down, and that's the "analogue sound." Analogue circuitry isn't a perfect math processor the way digital is, only an approximation, and the deviations from perfection are useful.
Especially if you get into synths. A digital sine wave oscillator is doing sin(time*frequency)*gain. An analogue one is designed to produce a close to perfect sine wave at a certain set point, but you make it able to be varied around that set point by replacing some of the components with adjustable ones in somewhat ad-hoc ways, and see what it sounds like. The frequency may be set by a 3-stage RC circuit, you replace all the Rs with vactrols and see what happens, now the impedance changes as well as the frequency and it might affect other parts of the circuit. You may one-point calibrate it to 1 volt per octave but it won't be linear.
I'm convinced that at least 90% of "analog sound" can be simulated by taking the ideal block diagram and replacing every link with a parametric EQ->waveshaper->parametric EQ chain. Configuring those added components correctly is left as an exercise for the reader.
Jim Lill's video on guitar amp tone is an interesting demonstration. Hear how close he gets to the original with an even simpler combination of EQ and distortion:
No, you can't argue that the best medium is dirt. Just like you can't argue that the best medium is vinyl.
But you could maybe argue that there are advantages to dirt (at least a hypothetical dirt which can be used as a musical medium somehow) which you lose by going to CD or vinyl. If this hypothetical dirt managed to be constraining in such a way that it produces kinds of musical works which would not have been produced for CD, is that not an advantage?
Reminds me of the Autechre album Tri Repetae which was labelled as “Complete with surface noise” on vinyl and “Incomplete without surface noise” on CD.
If they really wanted to do so, they could take the vinyl, play it with all the surface noise they wanted, and record that to CD so they could have the surface noise there, too.
It would be the same surface noise each time, not getting worse.
Candles are pleasant light, in a way difficult to acquire with other lighting types. That means there's a niche in which that facet is more valuable than the other technologies.
I had candles at my dinner table last Thursday, and am likely to do so date night tonight... but the bulbs I turn off to give the candles reign are LED...
I think we can agree that vinyl sounds different than CD, right? Is it so hard to believe that some people actually prefer the sound of music on vinyl? For such a person, that might be the only metric that matters.
But, another example: when I was growing up (dating myself here), cassette tapes were superior to CDs in the only way that mattered (to me): they didn't skip in my portable music player (walkman) when I took them running.
The sound of vinyl is a subset of the sound of CD. If you take a high quality recording of a vinyl record playback and write it to CD, it will sound identical.
Okay, sure. But if I prefer the subset of CD sound that is the same as vinyl, and my favorite band comes out with a new album... I just buy vinyl, right?
Or are you suggesting that I buy the record, a blank CD, and all of the high quality recording playback equipment I need to write it to that CD?
Vinyl isn't about technology it is about musicality, art and taste. If you try to explain and reduce vinyl to something technically, you are leaving out the most important part, the artful content that will be enjoyed from it.
It was a stretch, so you're right to not take me seriously.
I imagine any large about of RAM in audio equipment would strictly be for devices/functions that buffer large amounts of data as opposed to just decoding it.
An old Akai S1000 sampler I had a long time ago had slots for memory modules (some weird proprietary slot IIRC), but that was a musical instrument, not really a player of any kind.
I would argue that vinyl sounds better thanks to the Loudness War[0]. CD is technically superior and should sound better but it's been compressed to hell and back during mastering in ways that vinyl simply can't be due to physical limitations. All that wonderful technology and they can't simply let it be so we get good sound quality.
But that has nothing to do with the technology per-se. You could recreate this by just having CDs that don’t use all their space for music and having more of them, if the goal is dynamism. It’s a restriction, not a benefit. You could do the same exact thing with an iPod with playlists that are shorter, and not auto playing after the playlist ends.
For me the fact that vinyl discs wear out is their decisive disadvantage.
Many decades ago, those who bought vinyl and desired adequate audio quality never listened to vinyl discs, but they copied them immediately to magnetic tapes and always listened only to the tapes, keeping the vinyl discs only as a master source, to avoid wearing them out.
I mean, yes they do wear out but the rate is pretty slow if you look after them. I have some of my father’s old early LPs and they still sound pretty good.
You can get rid of a surprising amount of surface noise with a static gun and a line contact stylus (where shape is close to that of a cutting head so you get the biggest contact patch).
I think most people only copied to cassette if they want to use a Walkman, play it in the car or give a copy to a friend. It generally wasn’t for sound quality.
He said tape not cassette. Tape would mean real to real tape in this context - cassette doesn't make sense. Tape can be wider than cassette, only two tracks, and run faster - all give you a lot better sound quality. Not as good as a good digital system and it costs more but still very good.
Not trying to argue against your point, but most of the Bluetooth latency comes from the codec, not from it being wireless. Bluetooth LE Audio comes with LC3 which supports a codec latency of as little as 2.5 ms.
This is the big one for me, I hate all that lag with bluetooth, signal interference, and constantly wondering which device my headphones have connected to. So much easier for so many reasons, with a wire!
Real time covers a lot of different things, and have a lot of different solutions.
Do you mean real time like games? “Wireless” headsets are perfectly fine and usable. Real time audio? Wireless transmitters and receivers exist and are used (granted with wireless in-ears but IMO that’s mostly so the don’t fall out) at the absolute highest level of audio production and live events.
You definitely can’t just say wireless isn’t used for real time.
I think we are talking about Bluetooth devices/use cases within the consumer world.
Real time audio exists for sure. But it doesn't use Bluetooth, and nobody here cares about it, not to mention the amount of investment needed for equipment.
Oh absolutely. The wireless for gaming headsets isn’t Bluetooth either. If your argument is Bluetooth isn’t suitable for real time, I’m on board - I’d even go further and say Bluetooth isn’t suitable for anything other than fire and forget.
Gaming headsets are usually 2.4GHz wireless, and pro audio stuff is ~500-800MHz and the proper stuff requires a wireless license to use.
This is it. I have a lot of wireless headphones and every time I need to use one, it isn't charged. It's very exhausting and I don't want to deal with that. So I use them as wired headphone if possible, or dump them in the discard pile if not.
Why do you have a lot? I have one pair of AirPods and I don’t think it’s ever gone flat on me. I have to charge it less than once a week and it gives me a long notice period before.
Not the op but for me - Different headphones for different purposes.
For convenience and casual on the go listening, or to not annoy anybody, I'll use earbuds or light headphones.
If I really want to enjoy music I'll take the big ol' cans (circimaural open-back), lie back, and enjoy the music fully. Etc.
(And I'm extremely not an audiophile! But big roomy headphones are super comfy and sound super nice to me :).
If I'm on zoom calls all day I want something lightweight but with a boom microphone (massive Grrrr! To everybody joining meetings with airpods).
etc. I'm an extreme example but I have a few different boom-mic headsets in my home office for work, gaming headphones, running around headphones, and listening to music headphones. All of that at a teeny fraction of price people used to spend on basic entry level home hifi setup.
I just hate the move to wireless for things that don't need to be wireless and having to constantly keep things charged. I got so frustrated with my $100 magic mouse at work a few weeks ago that its now in a drawer and I'm using a $10 POS Dell mouse. My wireless mac keyboard just has the wire permanantly plugged in. And wireless headphones? I've never gone down that road, and never will. I bought a handfull of the $10 Apple 3.5mm to lightning adapter because I lose them frequently, and when I'm eventually forced to upgrade to a phone with USB-C, I'll buy a handfull of the 3.5mm to USB-C adapters.
Seems that people are buying records not to listen to, but to use an 'art object', or other type of artefact to publicly show their like and support of the artist(s) in question.
I'd say buy a poster instead, but it just now occurs to me that they're likely not displaying them full-time, and the LP has the advantages of being a uniform size and made of stiff cardboard for easy storage and retrieval.
Also you get reliable sound quality. The DACs in the iPhones were always decent. Now you have no idea what kind of quality you're going to get from a given listening device. Plenty of them are noisy POSes; my girlfriend had a Belkin adapter that had automatic gain (!) and would ramp up to blast hiss through the car stereo during quiet segments... and sometimes even during non-quiet ones.
The phones will always have to have DACs in them, to drive their speakers if nothing else. Denying customers a physical connection to them is just a dick move.
Here are some lesser known facts about wired headphones that I wish I had known earlier:
- there are TRS (3 rings) and TRRS (4 rings) connectors
- TRRS has integrated mic, also ofen implements playback control via buttons
- Apple headphones volume controls won't work on non-apple devices, because they implement a proprietary protocol based in an ultrasonic chirp authentication chip[1]
- 1more headphones seem to have implemented this auth protocol, but it does not work reliably
- Headphone remotes on apple devices have tap codes (in my opinion a huge benefit), that can be used to
play/pause (.)
next chapter / track (..)
prev(...)
fast forward (._)
rewind (.._)
even navigate menus (_, then + or -)
---- legend ----
.=click
_=hold
+-=vol
- The same tap codes are also implemented on hardware buttons (e.g. iPod) - while fast forward and rewind only work for devices iPod Nano 6th or later (iPod Classic 2009 only has next and prev)
- Apples USB-C 3.5 Adapters work with Android and iPhones and all headphones, Android does only implement play/pause and volume
- headphones remotes are fundamentally broken on Android because Google reserves longpress (button hold) for voiceover
- there are also balanced (often 4.4mm) outputs for much higher quality, often used in high res daps from fiio or shanling, etc
i use an android app called keymapper (by sds100) that lets you remap the volume buttons so that a long press will change the track.
my wired earbuds only have 1 button on the in-line remote but the app can detect the button being pressed whether its a single, double tap or long press, and you can just assign whatever you want to them
Technically TRS only has one ring (Tip Ring Sleeve) and TRRS only has two rings (Tip Ring Ring Sleeve). It does have four separate contacts though, separated by bands.
I occasionally use wireless, but 90% of the time I prefer wired for this reason. Reliable, simple, harder to lose, no charging, easier to connect. I just done think the wires are a problem for me, sometimes a benefit, sometimes a mild inconvenience.
Longevity! The headphones I have on me are 15 years old. Batteries degrade quickly, especially in consumer products that does everything in their power to boost the spec sheet but sacrifice longevity.
The 3.5mm audio jack is pretty close to engineering perfection on the important dimensions: cheap, fast, and good.
Getting rid of it in favor of Bluetooth-only audio connectivity is creating a problem to sell you a (more expensive, less reliable, less time-tested) solution.
I compared the mic quality of Airpods Pro 2, Airpods 4 ANC (similar), and freebie Apple 3.5mm wired earbuds. The earbuds won. My limited research suggested either 1) compression and transmission take a lot of power, so the Airpods don't do as good of a job as something with a bigger battery can afford to, 2) the mic position is worse, or 3) Bluetooth doesn't have enough bi-directional bandwidth for two good signals.
I tested this and based on my testing it’s (3). The AirPods microphone actually gets (slightly) better in quality if you don’t play something through the speakers while using it. Even then the 3.5mm ones were better tho
4) The Bluetooth standard is just kinda bad. Technically there should be enough bandwidth for better quality audio, but the existing profiles like headset mode drop audio quality down to 8-16 kHz sampling rate in mono, not just for mic but for audio you're listening to as well. It's a huge flaw and it's been bad for decades with seemingly no improvement at all (at least certainly not in a way that could be widespread and commonly used).
It's so bad you'd almost wish for a brand new wireless connectivity or wireless audio standard, or even resort to some proprietary 2.4 GHz nonsense, because it's genuinely so horrid. You could have the best most expensive headphones in the world, but because of Bluetooth and its ancient profiles and mic support it's gonna have baseline absolute garbage mic quality no matter what.
> - They don't need charging. Charging may seem like a minor inconvenience, and we're used to charging a lot of devices. However, even a minor inconvenience is still an inconvenience.
I’ve always found it more convenient to keep the headphones plugged in when I’m not using them then when I am. The cord is not going to get tangled when it’s not attached to my body, and aren’t going to unplug themselves sitting on a shelf. Different strokes though.
I have a AirPods Pro. But I also travel a lot and I have a pair of $60 Beats Flex that have a 12 hour battery life and if they fall out, they just fall around my neck. I also bought a third party pair of double flange ear tips that are better noise cancelling for flights than my AirPods.
Pairing has been a solved problem for decade now with Apple devices. I pair my AirPods Pro or Beats with one Apple device by pressing a button and they are automatically paired with my iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, Mac and AppleTV and switch seamlessly between them.
Bluetooth was never meant to be used as an audio connection? While the original standard didn’t support A2DP, it was a part of the standard in 2003?
All Apple headphones support standard BT protocols.
> I have a pair of $60 Beats Flex that have a 12 hour battery life and if they fall out, they just fall around my neck.
Exactly!! After losing an airpod into the depths of a Polaris seat and another one having to beg the guy behind me to find it on the floor I gave up my airpods for flights it was so annoying how often they fall out.
I agree but stuck with Apple ecosystem. I like the cheap wired lightning headphones they do. The audio quality is acceptable on public transit, they’re cheap enough to lose and the mic is surprisingly good. Weirdly if Apple stopped making these I would jump ship for an Android phone with 3.5mm.
I actually keep an old pair of (good) noise canceling ear buds for travel. Even with retainers I don't really like using my Bluetooth AirPods on a plane. Aha, located them for an upcoming trip.
Wired headphones are infinitely more durable when good. I had a single pair of Sennheiser HD25II for 16 years now and I use them to run 16km a week, often in the rain.
What annoys me the most is that the industry collectively decided that 3.5mm jacks are obselete, removing the option of using wired headphones, for no(?) good reason. We could at least agree that wired and wireless each have their own pros and cons, but no, we're shoehorned into wireless because corporate decided it. Here, you must use <NEW TECH> simply because we said so! It's just the peak of trend following bullshittery and represents a lot of what is wrong with capitalist society.
I am personally a fan of wired headphones with USB-C connectors. I am only ever going to use it with my phone, laptop, or desktop anyways - and all of they have at least one USB-C port.
In theory it could also be the best option for audio quality: if you move the DAC all the way to the headphone itself you minimize the length of the analog chain, which should also reduce the possibility for it to pick up any kind of noise or interference. Additionally, the DAC can be perfectly tuned to compensate for any imperfections in the headset itself, which should result in a better audio output than a random 3.5mm headphone paired with a random external DAC.
The obvious downsides are that you lose any kind of influence on the audio signal itself by forcing you to use a specific DAC, that the integrated DAC is yet another component which can break and be basically impossible to replace, and that a 3.5mm plug is far less likely to break than a USB-C one.
On the absolutely high end you probably want headphone and DAC separate, but for a Teams call or some casual on-the-go Spotify a fully integrated mid-tier headset / headphone seems to be the better option to me.
i have a headset that does all three, 3.5mm, usb-c and bluetooth and i usually go with usb-c when using them with a laptop or desktop.
im not sure using them with a phone would be good in the long run, especially when you are moving around a lot more with the phone in your pocket. the usb-c connection isnt as tight as 3.5mm so its going to put a lot of strain on the usb-c port. if that goes on a phone youre in big trouble
i don't know what i'm doing wrong but my mac has terrible time recognizing any USB-C headphones. First, it takes a while to recognize, then it never switches over by default so i often end up blasting on speakers if i forget that it's oh, USB-C headphones. Same confusion on Zoom. At the same time, Mac's 3.5mm just works, instantly.
But i realize that it might be hard to have 3.5mm on phones due to insane amount of size optimizations on these sophisticated devices we kind of take for granted by now.
JBL Tune is what I have. I wouldn't call them amazing, but the USB-C connection is super useful. You never pair, you never charge, you can't lose them, and even if you did, they are cheap.
The only real downside is lack of ANC, and the wires can transmit some mechanical noise if it rubs on your clothing. I just have a little lapel clip (from my old Etymotics) to stop them moving.
The newer Beyerdynamic models have detachable cables. They sell USB-C cables which i have not used but i am very content with the three out of the four pairs of cans i own by them. The pair i dislike are wireless ones. If you want em for music on the go i'd recommend the DT 700 Pro X.
> that the integrated DAC is yet another component which can break and be basically impossible to replace
Meh. If you want your headphones to last for ages, you could go just a bit higher end and get a pair with a replaceable cable. Then you can just swap the cable with the integrated DAC, regular 3.5 mm jack, or whatever.
I used to have a lightning cable for my Shure IEMs, worked great until the cable developed the usual problems around the connector, just like your regular analog cables. I then bought a BT adapter for the same headphones and never looked back. I've had them for 15-16 years now, still work as good as new. The BT dongle is something like 6 years old, and the battery still holds a good charge.
My adapter is a bit of a pain nowadays since it's the last thing I have that uses micro-USB for charging. I hear Shure has released newer adapters with USB C and no wires at all. But that's too expensive to replace something that still just works.
> Here, you must use <NEW TECH> simply because we said so!
Because the integrated battery adds an expiration date to a device that could otherwise last decades if maintained properly.
Same as Apple tightly coupling the iMac screen with the Mac's software support cycle even though nothing would stop them from just adding, say, a USB-C port that can act as video input.
With the trend of computing devices getting more baseline capable but the functionality/usability not improving at the same rate, I do wonder what the endgame will look like. Will we have a reversion to more efficient, durable designs? Or will we end up with absurdly large computing power in every device to counteract the horrible software rot? Phones with 100+ CPUs? Smart fridges with 1TB RAM? (The latter is kinda scary, imagine rewriting all software in Python - we could easily piss away 1000x hardware performance for no functionality gained.)
Macs overall are only 10% of Apple’s revenue and with 70-80% of those being laptops and the other 20% being split among Mac Mini’s, iMacs and Mac Studios, what does you think are the chances of Apple spending time optimizing iMac sells?
"Only" $43 billion in revenue is more than 95% of corporations achieved.
Apple is pretending to be eco-friendly and using that as excuse to ship fewer chargers, for example. If they can optimize the same Mac's packaging to use paper that's folded in all kinds of fancy ways, they can add a tiny bit of functionality to an existing port. You can't tell me Apple isn't able to care about small details, because they absolutely do when they want and not only when it's about revenue.
Apples revenue was $416 billion. Let’s say $41 billion came from Macs and assume 20% of that was from all of the desktops that’s $8.2 billion from iMacs, Mac Studios (more expensive), and Mac Minis (more popular). It’s not too far fetched to estimate about $2 billion from iMac sales or less
What's interesting is that Apple was the one responsible for removing the jack from their phones but they've stubbornly kept them on all their computers.
The only port in common between a 2015 Intel Macbook Pro and a 2026 Macbook Neo is the 3.5mm headphone jack. But also, the only port in common between a 2015 Intel Macbook Pro and a 1991 Powerbook 100 is the 3.5mm headphone jack.
Because the MacBook isn’t particularly short on space. The MacBook neo appears to have massive blank space blocks where the speakers are.
The 3.5mm jack is fine, there isn’t any need to replace it on the MacBook where you can afford to have both. On the iPhone it makes more sense to use the usb c for audio.
I'm guessing there are some key "user journeys" for scientific / industrial customer base, that involve using 3.5mm jack for something other than audio signal, and said customers would probably sooner change hardware suppliers than deal with dongles and all the problems of introducing USB into the signal path.
There is an adapter 3.5mm jack to USB-C which works great, so from my perspective there is no option removed.
I keep the adapter with my wired headphones (which I bought many years ago), and I did not encounter any issue (falling, heavy, etc.), it's just a slightly longer wire and a couple of euros spent to buy it.
When the internal non replaceable battery dies the product dies; that's also one reason to prefer wired over wireless. I wrote product instead of headphones because the principle is applicable to every product whose battery can't be replaced by design. All those discarded single use vapes are a good example of that, and... surprise! All of them actually contain rechargeable cells but no recharging circuitry and port, the reason being that rechargeable Lithium cells are much cheaper than primary non rechargeable ones because of economies of scale. Just another example of greed being so damn efficient at producing e-waste.
it will be interesting to see what the consensus is 50 years from now when people have more hindsight on this. how long will a wireless headset last until the battery no longer holds a charge, and if its only something like 10 years then that means someone is having to buy 4 or 5 headsets over the course of their whole life instead of 1 or 2 cheaper wired headsets
theres also the issue of whether the wireless protocols that are in use now will still be supported in 50 years. removing the headphone jack from phones was mostly just a money grab to force people to buy wireless headsets so i wouldnt be surprised to see other tactics in the future where support is dropped for older versions of bluetooth, or whatever gives them a slight uptick in sales
All valid points, but I don’t miss having a tangle of wire in my pocket or that wire failing after a couple of months meaning I have to get a new set of headphones.
Anything from Etymotic never failed me. The current ER3 SE has been going for 7 years, and the cable is replaceable (when/if it fails — they're still on the original cable).
All Etys have a peculiar love/hate neutral sound profile, so you should try them before committing to them. I exclusively listen to podcasts, so they're a perfect match.
I also have a pair of Shure IEMs, some 15-16 years old. They still work great, but I've been through at least 2 cables with them, plus an additional 3rd party Lightning cable. I've then switched to BT and couldn't be happier.
Yeah, paying a tad bit more for earphones with replaceable cables pays dividends. A cable doesn't cost much, and you also get much better sound quality (which has to count, right? Since BT sound quality often comes as an argument).
I also have a pair of these and they sound really good. Then I received a pair of the Shure Aonic 4s for Christmas one year and those sound amazing. As an added bonus, the passive noise isolation with proper fitting eartips beats any noise cancellation I've ever seen.
> However, even a minor inconvenience is still an inconvenience.
I do not miss spending 30 seconds untangling my headphones every time I used them nor do I miss trying to find clever ways to wind my headphones back up so as to minimize the likelihood of them becoming tangled. If someone solved this problem well I would use them, but putting my airpods on a charger once a week is a much lesser inconvenience IMHO.
>"Too many android phones copied Apple and ditched the venerable audio jack, but a few kept it, and I've always insisted on it when buying phones. It's old but far from obsolete"
Same here but I did not have a single phone that after a while did not develop a problem with quality of contact leading to problems with sound starting from mild and going to awful. It is better now after I started to use USB-C based headphones.
Wireless - way too much overhead for me to manage. The only wireless audio I really use is Cardo headset when riding my EUC
I live this site - down votes even though it’s 100% true. There are TONS of old recordings that don’t even have masters anymore and the digital versions are ripped from a vinyl copy. There’s entire communities around this.
FWIW, Bluetooth LE Audio [0] solves most of these problems in my experience. Battery life is way better, pairing is almost instant, you can connect to multiple devices simultaneously, the latency is almost imperceptible, etc. The sound quality is still worse than wired, but it's close enough that it doesn't bother me personally.
Very few headphones support BLE Audio, and you need to enable some experimental Bluez flags for it to work on Linux, but both of these should improve with time. But it makes such a huge difference that I'd argue that it's worth the effort, even right now.
Just to be clear the parent is still 100% correct that wired headphones:
* Do not need charging
* Are hard to lose.
* Offer better audio
* Never glitch out with pairing.
BLE Audio offers lower need for charging and better (but not equivalent) audio. So 2/4 are not as bad with BLE Audio (and arguably only 1 since you still need to charge). The other two 2/4 are related to the form factor. Wireless headphones have advantages but they are not the decisive winner.
Right, my point was just that "Bluetooth sucks" does not necessarily mean "wireless headphones suck", but since nearly all wireless headphones use Bluetooth Classic (or some proprietary analogue protocol), it can be hard to disentangle the two. But yeah, I agree no matter how good the protocol improvements are, wired is still better for some use cases.
Is BLE the only way for Bluetooth to have multiple connections? I'm no audiophile but in my experience, the audio quality noticeably drops when multiple devices are connected (I've only ever had at most two at a time). I reasoned out that the bits were being divided so `quality /= 2` as well. I've only ever done this accidentally so I can't be certain the connection was really over BLE.
Granted, I've only ever done multiple connections on Linux so maybe it's a Linux problem.
> Is BLE the only way for Bluetooth to have multiple connections?
I think (?) that it's possible with Classic Bluetooth too, but like everything else with Classic Bluetooth, it's kinda buggy and unreliable.
> I'm no audiophile but in my experience, the audio quality noticeably drops when multiple devices are connected (I've only ever had at most two at a time).
I haven't personally noticed any audio quality difference with two devices connected over BLE, but I've never tried to play audio simultaneously from two sources. My phone and my laptop both auto-connect to my headphones, so I usually have two devices connected simultaneously, but I only ever play audio from one at a time.
> you can connect to multiple devices simultaneously
I don't want to connect to multiple devices. I want to select one device and be 100% certain that it's switched to that device as a source. Even with 100% Apple devices this is not perfectly reliable with bluetooth.
Putting the cable in another audio jack makes it physically impossible that the audio comes from the wrong source or to the wrong output device. And it is a lot more convenient than untangling the mess once the bluetooth devices get confused about what to do and requiring you to manually disable bluetooth at some devices just so it gets the message.
Yes, you can simultaneously use full-quality source and sink (speaker and microphone) streams [0]. And from personal experience, this works exactly as you would expect.
As you've seen, the documentation on LE Audio is rather horrible. The Android documentation [1] is semi-useful even on other platforms, and the official book [2] is also helpful if you're willing to wade through a ton of dense technical details, but there's not really much else available on the internet. I've had to spend an annoying amount of time tracing stuff with Wireshark and reading through the specifications [3] (which are thankfully free) and the BlueZ source code [4] to figure stuff out.
(The poor documentation mostly only matters if you're trying to do something specific; LE Audio mostly "just works" on Android out-of-the-box and Linux after you change the single config setting from [0])
In my experience, it's a significant improvement, but I wouldn't call it a solution. If non-LE drop in quality is like 1/10, with LE it's like 6/10.
I should point out that unlike the other reply I haven't really bothered researching it at all, I just upgraded from a non-LE pair to a LE pair recently.
> "Too many android phones copied Apple and ditched the venerable audio jack"
I understand this is a personal preference, but I never understood the anger some people had over the removal when it's as easy as just using a small USB-C to 3.5mm audio jack converter to use wired headphones.
>when it's as easy as just using a small USB-C to 3.5mm audio jack converter to use wired headphones.
As someone who uses wired earphones exclusively and must use those USB-C adapters you suggest, it's not quite "just as easy" because there are several problems:
- it's an extra $10 dongle to buy and potentially lose. I've lost several of them over the years
- adds more mechanical stress to the USB-C jack. The office Apple USB-C 3.5mm adapter protrudes out from the phone and I've had several close calls with the wire getting snagged on a door knob which can damage the USB-C port. I've never been comfortable with this Rube-Goldberg dongle contraption that adds more risk to damaging a $1000 phone. It's a fear I never had with the built-in 3.5mm jack on my old iPhone 5. There are 3rd-party right-angle USB-C to 3.5mm on Amazon (including magnetic ones) but the ones I tried interfere with phone cases and they don't sound as good. (Apparently Apple uses a more premium DAC chip in their USB-C adapter.)
- can't simultaneously charge the phone while listening unless you buy a different USB-C adapter that has both 3.5mm input and a USB-C passthrough charging port. These are bulkier.
- it's an extra dongle that's easy to forget. I once got on a transatlantic flight and realized that I forgot my USB-C earphone adapter at home. I panicked and dreaded the idea of nothing to listen to for 8 hours but I was luckily saved by a friend that didn't need to use hers and let me borrow it. Why can't I just leave the USB-C dongle connected to the 3.5mm 100% of the time so there's nothing to forget?!? Because I often need to connect the earphones to things that don't need the adapter.
With all those drawbacks, I still use the USB-C adapters because I have to. But it has definitely made life more complicated.
Because that small audio jack converter cannot drive my wired headphones, so now it's not a small dongle but another smartphone-sized gadget with usually another rechargeable battery, and at that point I might as well use my laptop as portable music player.
And if you ever held e.g. Apple's adapter in your hand you'll know how incredibly flimsy its cable is, and how such adapters easily act as levers to mechanically strain the USB-C port.
There's a reason headphone jacks are robust - they were actually designed for use with audio devices in mind.
You really cannot see? The experience is vastly inferior: the required dongles have a huge list of annoyances, and you either cannot charge at the same time or have to use an ever more finicky splitting dongle.
We know as a matter of fact that Android does NOT handle your audio properly when you transmit audio over USB-C then converter. It used to work fine with 3.5mm.
I tried the Apple one for a while but it’s badly shielded and picks up interference a lot. I mean really obvious buzzing sounds if near certain sources of RF. Switched to wired ear buds with a lightning connector and no interference issues. So I’m sad I can’t plug in my high quality headphones or hook up my phone to my mixer when I want without having noise.
I have bought probably two or three dozen different kinds of USB-C adaptors over the past few years, for old USB peripherals, for HDMI and display port, etc. They always last a few months then develop unreliable connectors and begin failing on any computer I try them with unless I baby the exact angle of the cable. There's something about USB-C that makes them particularly vulnerable to strain relief issues. Never had these kind of problems before with anything other than apple magsafe connectors. Certainly not from trusty old analogue jacks.
Curiously, I have had the exact opposite experience. Over the years I tried dozens of earbuds and headphones with a jack connection and all of them after a few months of use started getting unreliable connections unless I kept them at the right angle. The pair which lasted longer without issues costs around 180€ but still started showing problems after 2-3 years, though to be fair I left them almost always plugged in my pc. If I had used them with my phone I would've likely started experiencing connection issues much sooner.
The only other connection type I found to be even worse is microusb. I lost count over how many cables I had to change, some even after just a few months.
On the other hand I neved had any problem with usb-c cables or peripherals.
It's just one more thing to buy and lose. I know I own both Apple's lightning-to-3.5mm adapter and the USB-C-to-3.5mm. Right now, I know where my nice big-cans headphones are, but it's not with either adapter. I'm pretty such I know where my cheap wireless buds are. The lightning adapter should live in the same travel pouch, but I'm not 100% sure if it's there because I frequently use those with devices that have a 3.5mm jack, so they might have been separated. I know for a fact my USB-C-to-3.5mm adapter has been separated, and I've not seen it for over a year. I know it's in the house somewhere, so I certainly wouldn't buy another one (especially considering how infrequently I used it before), but I have no idea where it is and so if I did want to use my iPad with my nice headphones, I can't.
Contrast that to the simplicity with devices that still have a 3.5mm phone - my daily Android phone, my Macbook Air - I can just plug any old headphones in and not have to go searching for the adapter.
And despite the fact that I also own two bluetooth headphones, my wired big-cans headphones have far superior sound quality to either of them. I know it's not a fair comparison because they were well over $100 compared to $10 for the others, but I'm still limited to what I can use them with - which in my case is absolutely everything except my Apple kit (laptop excepted).
I've done that for years and it's a 'tax' for being allowed to use my actual headphones. Every single converter I've used will shit the bed after 6-12 months thanks to shitty cabling, and I've used both the official converters as well as third party ones. Eventually it becomes a fucking pain in the ass when it dies at an inconvenient time.
In comparison the headphones I've been using have lasted me for over 10+ years with no issue, and any decent high quality set of cans makes the 3.5mm cable easily replaceable.
> With Apple's proclivity for proprietary standards, I'm amazed they (or others) haven't rolled their own wireless audio standard by now.
Can you imagine Europe's reaction? They'd fine Apple to the moon -- no innovation allowed unless it interoperates with other products that don't exist yet.
And they'd be right to do so. The correct approach to creating a new standard is plan interoperability from the start. If a vendor plans lock in by introducing a new standard, they should get shut down immediately and told to do better.
That sounds like a way to not get any progress. The way I'm used to this sort of thing happening is some company brings in a new proprietary standard, makes bank, then all the competition bands together to form an open standard to try and stop them. There is a bit of a tick-tock feeling as consortiums use more open and accessible standards to slowly lever power away from incumbents.
It is interesting to just glance at the history of USB [0] through that lens was originally developed, and it is interesting to see that as I would have predicted the group of companies that developed USB (MS, IBM, Compaq, etc) seem to be disjoint from the companies listed as precursor technologies (looks like that was especially an Apple-led consortium of hardware manufacturers organised around firewire [1]).
As your link shows, even if the IEEE 1394 promoted by Apple was technically superior to USB (mainly because IEEE 1394 had been derived from SCSI), it was killed by patents.
Many superior technologies have been killed by patents and the greediness of the patent owners has been futile and they gained very little from their patents, because people have always preferred something cheaper, even if less good, so the inferior USB has easily won against IEEE 1394.
The patent owners that hope to gain too much from their patents always forget that instead of paying a too big royalty it is always possible to circumvent the patent by using an alternative solution, even if that is inferior.
> The way I'm used to this sort of thing happening is some company brings in a new proprietary standard, makes bank, then all the competition bands together to form an open standard to try and stop them. There is a bit of a tick-tock feeling as consortiums use more open and accessible standards to slowly lever power away from incumbents.
And that leaves you with two standards (at least), non interoperable between them. In the case of hardware this can be really annoying, constraining and inefficient both for consumers and at large.
How likely is it that that can be avoided if, as in this context, the starting point is the current standard not being that great? It pretty much has to end in 2 different competing standards. Or there can be 2 different flavours of the existing standard which are quite likely to break interoperability and make reusing the name an annoyance rather than a help.
A downside of existing standards is it means it is quite hard to innovate on them.
It really is a damn shame that my Lightning connectors are all dead and useless despite being the empirically better connector because of Vestager's whinging and stupidity across the entire EU mobile ecosystem.
Lightning is not a better connector. It maxed out at USB 2 speeds and I needed separate bespoke adapters and chargers. I can now use standard USB C cords with everything, standard USB C headphones, connect my iPhone to my portable external monitor with the same USB C cable I use for my computer…
That would implement Apple's proprietary protocol. He thinks Europe would think Apple is creating a monopoly for themselves for iPhone headphones since no other company could implement the protocol without Apple's approval.
This trend story about wired headphones is possibly a "submarine" story as Paul Graham calls it[1], like a headline that "Suits make a corporate comeback":
"The suit is back," it begins. Trend articles like this are almost always the work of PR firms. Once you know how to read them, it's straightforward to figure out who the client is. With trend stories, PR firms usually line up one or more "experts" to talk about the industry generally. In this case we get three: the NPD Group, the creative director of GQ, and a research director at Smith Barney. When you get to the end of the experts, look for the client. And bingo, there it is: The Men's Wearhouse.
Possibly it's a paid for ad. But the trend is real, at least among Gen Z/Alphas. I recently modded an iPod Mini 2nd gen for my daughter and put Rockbox on it. The thing is amazing, and I am thinking about buying an iPod classic myself. The touch wheel interface is one of my favourite interfaces ever.
First off, you're a kickass parent, that's an awesome thing to do for your daughter. How easy is it to sync with music she wants to listen to? I haven't touched Rockbox in quite a while, but I imagine it's still expecting DRM-free audio files of some sort right? Other than bandcamp I can't think of any good source for finding some beyond ripping audio streams and organizing it yourself.
So who is the client? In all of the article’s photos of celebrities, they’re wearing Apple EarPods. Is Apple trying to convince people to buy their $19 EarPods instead of their $250 AirPods?
I agree. At the very least it's vastly overstating a real trend.
> Sales are through the roof in recent months.
OK, I'll follow the link here. It goes to an article titled "Wired Headphones Growth Is a Throwback to 2016"[1], already a far cry from "through the roof".
From that article we have this:
> After 5 years of sales declines, which culminated in a $42M drop in 2024, wired headphones rebounded in 2025, growing 3% (about $15M).
OK, great. So wired headphones are a little bit trendy after years of decline. And of course they have some real advantages as many people here are testifying.
But c'mon, "sales are exploding", "sales are through the roof". They're not through the roof, they did a little bounce when they hit the floor. OK, to be fair it also says "the trend really gained momentum in the second half of 2025, with sales surging 10% between July and December", so maybe it's getting some momentum, but let's not get so far ahead of ourselves.
This hyperbole is not really necessary on hackernews. Apple alone makes 20 billion on a single product: airpods.
This article notes 2025 saw a 3% increase of 15m. That means total sales are 0.5b, or 2.5% of Apple's airpods product.
In other words: tiny market with a growth in line with inflation after years of decline? Let's call that 'exploding sales' and farm some clicks.
Yes perhaps there is some newfound interest, but since bluetooth headsets took off they keep getting cheaper to buy, easier to pair and connect, longer lasting batteries, easier to find, smaller to pocket, more varied, more comfortable to wear, and with better noise-cancelling. Plus every year fewer devices carry the headphone jack.
It's on the way out, though it'll be a slow death. I have a pair of wired headphones, I prefer them on corporate laptops for meetings because corporate laptops suck with pairing. But that's about it.
Wired and wireless will always co-exist. Your casual consumer prefers wireless. Professional audio equipment for mixing and critical listening will never favor wireless over wired. For pros, $20-50 wired IEMs beat $250 Airpods every time.
The same applies to pro gamers. Latency and empty batteries are a big no-no.
> It's on the way out, though it'll be a slow death
At the very most, it's on its way out in the same way normal computers are on their way out for non-IT professionals. There are situations where wired is a must, not a preference (studios being the most obvious).
Aside from that, wired offers the highest sound quality possible, plug-and-play, and all at a lower price. Wireless headphones don't appear to even be trying to catch up.
Wired were deliberately killed by Apple in order for them to make that $20 billion. We should not celebrate billionaires making the world worse so they can make more money.
"Bluetooth does not work," Kravitz said in a recent interview, and it's not just headphones, but Bluetooth connections in general. "It's ruining important moments. Imagine the amount of times that you're with someone on a date, you're trying to set a vibe, and then you have to forget the network. On a date!"
The quote above makes absolutely zero sense to me, it's like ChatGPT 0.3a decided to write something about Bluetooth.
The quote resonates with me, even though I haven't experienced the exact "set a vibe on a date" scenario.
I have multiple bluetooth headsets that I use with multiple devices. I have collected a series of tricks that I use when I can't get bluetooth to operate the way I want it to: turning bluetooth on/off, restarting the bluetooth device. "Forget the network" is not one of those tricks, but I wouldn't be surprised if others have learned to use it.
Agreed. What network are they forgetting here? Pretty sure I've only ever seen that apply to wifi. Are they trying to say you might need to re-pair a bluetooth speaker on a date? I don't get it.
It’s poorly written but painfully familiar. Even if it’s two devices that have never known any connection but the single one between them… Bluetooth aomeyimes just inexplicably fails, requiring forgetting the previous connection, and reconnecting.”
> After 5 years of sales declines, which culminated in a $42M drop in 2024, wired headphones rebounded in 2025, growing 3% (about $15M). The trend really gained momentum in the second half of 2025, with sales surging 10% between July and December. Multiple brands and price points are seeing sales growth, a signal the trend is widespread. In the first six weeks of 2026, wired headphones revenue is up a whopping 20%!
This is a Circana Retail Tracking Service content-marketing piece. Like the x% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck is a LendingClub content-marketing piece. 3% being $15m indicates this is a $500m market. Airpods themselves are a $25 b revenue product.
I'm the trendsetter. I've never stopped using wired headphones and, after being made fun of for years despite much better audio quality, cost, simplicity and reliability, the rich finally decided to imitate me. Never let go of your convictions!
I've almost caved and bought bluetooth because most stores stopped stocking wired headphones above crap-grade. But maybe I can just wait this out, if wired really is making a comeback.
Same. I've been using the same apple earbuds since like 2005(?). I still have the original plastic case for them and use it to store them in my backpack.
I'm with you! After I lost my gen 1 AirPods a couple years ago, I paid $20 for a pair of Apple's corded EarPods and used them until they failed (1) a few months ago. They had a good mic + music controls, sounded fine, and didn't need a dongle.
Now I'm down to my Shure IEMs (via an Apple lighting-to-3.5mm dongle) and a borrowed pair of old Galaxy buds - wanted to give wireless buds a try, since it's been so long. I don't like them.
1: emitting an earsplitting screech as they did so - the cable must have gone.
AirPods Pro 2 went through a washing machine cycle and still works. Having cables it’s a pain, need to pass behind your clothes or outside dangling. Can’t charge phone while using wired headphones
Phones used to have a 3.5mm port for a reason: sturdier, simpler and independent. Having dangling cable is offset by wireless having to be charged charged, for some only in a case with a charger.
> That's why I had kept my pixel 4a for years until is finally kicked the bucket 2 years ago.
RIP I'm sure it was a noble device. My Pixel 3a is currently my wireless router for very German reasons. I worry this will kill off the still-decent battery life, as has happened with my OG Pixel.
I have since allied myself with what I personally consider the devil of consumer electronics just to stay on this boat.
I recently upgraded my 4a to a 10 two months ago. Besides getting security updates again, it feels like a downgrade in every way that matters to me.
Can't lie flat due to camera bulge. No headphone jack. Fingerprint sensor on the front that screen protectors interfere with. No sim slot. Ai bullshit triggers if i keep my thumb to close to where you touch to switch apps. Ai bullshit also replaces the old power menu, which now requires a combo button press.
I bought a nice pair of sony studio monitors (MDR-7506), uh, 30 years ago now, and they're still my daily driver. I've had to replace the earpads, but that's it, they're still fabulous headphones.
Actually, they're so good, they're still making and selling the exact same model.
Setting aside debates about which is “better”, this article appears to be based on crap. The link to the supporting analysis uses the words “through the roof”, but here’s what it says:
“ wired headphones rebounded in 2025, growing 3% (about $15M).”
So now a 3% growth in sales is “exploding” and “through the roof”? No, I don’t think so…
This is the BBC. I've been reading their site every day for many years now. They're mostly good, but at times they have a way of steering their audience towards an agenda through bunk articles like this. It was especially evident with the remote work hit-pieces they published regularly during the RTO movement a couple of years ago. It was clear someone was pulling strings at the BBC to generate negative headlines about remote work, but when you dug into their sources, you'd see data to suggest the complete opposite.
I'm not sure what the agenda would be in this case and maybe there is no agenda, but it's something to be aware of. It could be simply one of their contributors has a bone to pick with manufacturers over the lack of reliability in Bluetooth audio technology.
And a 30% increase in sales across a cherrypicked 6wk time window. This is one of those articles that's more wishful thinking than real news, even though I have the same wish.
I have three teenage kids and they’ve all switched to wired. Many of their friends have as well.
It has nothing to do with fashion or retro vibes, as far as I can tell.
They’ve all lost too many AirPods through the years. AirPods just too easy to lose, and at their school, too easy to be stolen by someone else. And they’re expensive. Yes you can buy cheaper Bluetooth headsets but those often don’t sound as good and get lost just as easily.
So you’re either on a subscription basis relationship wih Bluetooth headsets, or you use wired headphones, which are actually harder to lose and less desirable to steal.
Sound wise they are exactly the same. This is what bewildered me at the time with the airpods. Everyone is raving about the sound. Same chinsy crappy earppod sound they always had. Might as well use one of the five pairs of those you've accumulated.
And then also everyone I know who was heavy into airpods has also over time moved off them because, the battery. Everyone uses over ears from Sony now. Like look at what the walkers in your neighborhood are doing, everyone has overears now with actual battery life that isn't going to be ewaste in 18 months.
Heavy usage on these is just killing the battery. It is worst case for battery health: people just draining these down in one session constantly. In like 1 year maybe 2 your battery life has sunk like a stone and apple wants $50 out of you. 10 years half a grand spend on $5 sound quality.
It's a growing trend in the "alternative" health scene. I have a few friends who should absolutely know better do silly stuff like use wired headphones due to RF, and even as much as turning Wifi off at night for health reasons. Nevermind they just switch to 5G in bed on their phones.
Probably the usual "RF is bad for your head" quackery that has been floating around ever since the first mobile phones, and for athletes, wired devices aren't in danger of getting damaged when they fall out of your ear.
Lots of good theories here, but none saying "TikTok", which I think is the answer.
TikTok is a big reason wired headphones are popular. AirPod microphone quality is spotty and improving the quality is non-deterministic. With wired earpods, people put the mic next to their mouth and get above-average audio quality.
Like the article says, wired headphones have also become a fashion statement akin to vinyl culture.
I dunno; IME many people who could barely be called a ‘creator’ seem to invest in a standalone microphone already, and many of these (the portable ones anyway) aren’t wired.
This is why I use wired for longer calls or video conferences. I've tried so many wireless in-ear things and all of them are more sensitive to surrounding noise and I have to repeat myself more due to dropouts or spotty quality.
It's just much harder to get good sound quality when the mikes are by your ear rather than on a wire near your mouth
Not to mention that it completely removes the risk of running low on headphone battery mid-call
I used to think Bluetooth was nearly unusable both in audio quality and annoyingness.
Then I moved to the Apple ecosystem including iPhone, Airpods, and MacOS. It Just Works(tm) 99% of the time. The last 1% is a little annoying, and almost always has to do with device switching.
I also haven't had a problem with third party devices for many years now. My car does wireless Carplay just fine, and before that worked nearly as well with Android Auto. Rental cars the past few years even work - although pairing them the first time is roughly as annoying as digging through my bag for USB cable I suppose.
I've lost more pairs of wired earbuds than I have Airpods so far. I thought for sure I'd lose Airpods once every few months due to how often I forget things, but for whatever reason I find them to be easier to keep track of - the case fits perfectly in the "key pocket" in jeans, and it's become third nature to pat that pocket whenever I leave just like I do for keys/phone/wallet.
Not dealing with the annoying cable is great. I get a phone call, and I just grab the earbuds out of the case from my pocket within 10 seconds and I'm good to go.
For at-home PC use it's a different story, although I don't really find myself using my wired high-end cans much anymore. It's either airpods for day to day Zoom calls, or full on high-end speaker setups if I actually want to listen to something or game. Even high end cans cannot hold a candle against moderately decent speakers. The difference is night and day.
Audio engineer originally and a current audio software.
In the pro audio, wireless was never a thing with an exception of live shows where you’d might want to be free on stage but avoid stage monitors.
Notice that while Apple made everyone ditch the lovely 3.5”, on the MacBook Pros they’ve actually kept it and *improved* it.
As this is HN, I’ll focus on technical aspects I didn’t notice in the article.
- Active Noise reduction
While the article suggested the battery free magic of analog headsets. Flights are where the active noise reduction headsets shines. Active cancellation isn’t needed for studio environment but on the go it can certainly make your listening more pleasant.
- Hybrid devices
There are several manufacturers with classical headset designs that also includes wired support with all modern features. This is a good balance in my opinion for benefiting from both worlds.
- Latency
Especially Bluetooth, our current consumer wireless is buffered and this latency is too much for creating music. Products such as GarageBand, Logic or FL Studio won’t be that useful for tracking with Bluetooth.
- Quality
Indeed, analog 3.5” audio is uncompressed vs Bluetooth. But it doesn’t mean the audio is superior for listening just because of that transition.
Our modern devices are still mostly digital those days so there is DAC that takes those bits and converts them to analog (most of it today is done well as those chips are common) and the other step is the analog amplification. Audiophiles usually invest a lot in the headphones amplifier. Most android devices in the past were mediocre in that sense.
So while wired is a trend, the “dongle” of USB-C to convert the audio is still a major part of the quality we end with.
- Sharing is caring (my personal take)
The biggest frustration I feel with Bluetooth is that it’s now nearly impossible to use multiple headphones for listening. In the old days, you had a simple splitter and as long as both headsets were the same impedance, you can even have 4 people listening to the same content easily.
With Bluetooth, only Apple addresses this in a very limited manner with a lock in to specific models and up to 2 devices and no video calls or live audio support.
Active noise reduction isn't unique to wired models any more though - in fact I find it better on the wireless earphones I use now than my old similar wired model (same brand) because the microphones are right there in the ear, not bashed around or muffled by clothing halfway down the cable.
"With Bluetooth, only Apple addresses this in a very limited manner with a lock in to specific models and up to 2 devices and no video calls or live audio support."
The Bose mobile app also allows me to use two pairs of Bose headphones on a single device, but still only 2 devices and AFAICT only for media consumption.
Tangential - The funny thing is, broadcasting Bluetooth to multiple devices isn't a new thing at all. Back in 2017, Motorola did it on their phone [1]. No extra hardware afaik, it was purely a software solution.
Of course, the company disappeared, and now in 2026, we have lesser tech than we had back in 2017.
If you're wondering "Well, how did a company disappear?!", feel free to take the most corpo/capitalist-dystopian guess.
If you guessed "They got bought out by Google - presumably for IP - with the founders joining Big G, and Google of course promptly shelved it and did absolutely diddly squat with it", congratulations, you win... frustration and disappointment, I suppose!
I bought a bunch of wired cables as switching devices and making sure Teams is able to work with the device never worked smoothly with Bluetooth. I only miss wireless when i get snagged or the wires are entangled but both are easy to prevent and all the benefits of wired far outweigh the wireless setbacks
"The dangling cables of wired headphones are a must-have fashion accessory in 2026"
Gee, is that the kind of stuff that makes people want this, rather than actual usefulness related reasons?
I want it because I don't want yet another thing to have to charge, and because I'd want to be able to throw some cheap headphones in my backpack that I can use the one time in a month that I actually need them in combination with a phone (which of course isn't possible anymore today)
Also, why are ANC headphones today worse for gaming than in the year 2018 when they supported aptx that had less lag? Technology is going backwards?
Actually, a week ahead of the BBC, my sister informed me wired headphones are making a comeback. With a smug grin I told her, "Comeback? It never left my side."
I've had to ally myself with a brand I've once sworn off just to get a flagship model Android with a headphone jack. Killing Reader is a greedy betrayal (they were pushing us onto Plus, the whole social web thing) but removing headphone jacks from Pixels is a cowardly betrayal! Eyeing you too there, Samsung. You and Google both have made it extremely difficult to maintain a modicum of principle in today's consumer landscape! You made me justify my purchase with a utilitarian "Better the jacked devil than the blue-toothed one".
(And before you ask, I only generally buy flagships because I upgrade my phone like, every five years, and in my experience flagships are just more bang for buck. YMMV tho.)
Anyway, honestly, wired is not perfect. Wired and wireless each have their inconveniences it's just that I'm more willing to put up with the inconveniences of wired. Wired connections have known failure modes, something which I really value in tech. I have a Sony WH-1000XM3 which can work both as wired and wireless and I love it for that.
Long live wired connections! Here's to a future with cheaper flagship models with a headphone jack!
Maybe I am just old, but I have absolutely no idea what this passage is about -- why would people be fiddling with Bluetooth on a date and why would it cause them to forget their network?
>"Bluetooth does not work," Kravitz said in a recent interview, and it's not just headphones, but Bluetooth connections in general. "It's ruining important moments. Imagine the amount of times that you're with someone on a date, you're trying to set a vibe, and then you have to forget the network. On a date!"
Picnic date with a Bluetooth speaker for some background music, perhaps? I often see that in parks/beaches/etc, and as long as volume is reasonable I don’t think anyone minds.
I followed the link through to the video interview; it's not a lot clearer, except that she's definitely talking about trying to play a song (and it not working, ruining/frustrating the moment). Follows with the example 'or you're in a car, you have to pull the car over. To play a song?! On a date!'
One segment I wish came back are bluetooth inear headphones wired together (untrue wireless, i guess).
There are some models but none really explore their possible advantages (battery, ux, single signal source).
I lost single wireless earpiece multiple times making the rest useless. This won't happen with wire. With wire its also so much easier and quicker to take them off they will just hang around your neck. There is reason why many workers in loud environments prefer earplugs wired together.
My impression is that apple hyped the airpods so well that people forgot about other possibilities. And when Google included cool headphones with cables people thought they have to cut them… that was when industry decided its dead segment.
This is very true. Especially for sport, they are just great. I always found wired headphones annoying when running, because I need to take care of the wire somehow. Wired-together bluetooth in-ears like the Bose SoundSport kind of fill that niche, as I don't need to worry about one of them falling out. Looks like they don't make them anymore.
Yeah sport is main reason companies are making them.
I also have to say i haven't checked this for two years but there seem to be some new models now (under banner of neckband earbuds). So maybe there is something nicer now.
All that, plus with wires, I can run the cable under my shirt and up through the neck hole. When someone starts to talk to me, I can just pop them out of my ears and let them dangle across my chest without having to hold them in my hands. I also don't have to worry about dropping them on the floor.
This was common for kids in the 00s. Having just one bud in while talking to someone was common. There was also this type that instead of having two equal length wires, one to each bud, was asymmetrical and you would wrap the longer wire around you neck so you could easily "unbud". Sony invented this, I think. In fact there were some pretty crazy designs before Apple made the simple but conspicuous earbuds popular again.
All that and they cost a fraction of the price! Wireless headphones are a strictly inferior product to wired, and it astonishes me that Apple convinced anyone to buy them. They're a total rip off.
I can leave my phone on the charger or propped up with a recipe on the counter while I cook and still get signal. Wired headphones cannot let me walk between rooms without picking up my phone.
Wireless headphones take up much less space. I can put them in my pocket trivially.
Wireless headphones can tell me where they are and if I've left them behind.
Wireless headphones don't have a piece of plastic that dangles on my neck, shoulders, and face. As someone with sensory issues, this is genuinely important.
I've never had to spend five minutes untangling the cords for my wireless headphones.
I've never accidentally snagged the cable on my wireless headphones, causing them to snap off.
I can put my phone in a waterproof case in my backpack and protect it while walking. I don't have to do cable management to route the wire.
It's fine to prefer the wired headphones. I fully endorse that for you. Maybe drop the hyperbole about how wired headphones are strictly better?
It's weird, because I absolutely agree in principle, but 90% of my headphone use is wireless now.
And I hate it: latency, glitches, randomly just deciding not to connect anymore, deciding to connect in the lower-quality headset mode when I want to listen to music, and refusing to switch to the high-quality mode, battery running out at inconvenient times, the cat knocking them off my nightstand and under the bed where I cant reach them. So many reasons to be annoyed by them!
But I hardly ever take out my wired headphones anymore, and I'm not sure why. Back when I got my first phone without a 3.5mm jack, I just kept a little USB-C adapter in the little pouch/case that held my wired IEMs, and it was fine. But at some point I bought a new phone, and there was a deal on cheap (or free?) wireless earbuds with it, and I really just stopped using wired headphones for the most part since then, even though the wireless ones really annoy me for so many reasons.
Similar story here, I love wired headphones but have to admit that, after being gifted my first set of AirPods, my actual use of any sort of personal speaker device went up like 20x or more. It’s exactly that factor of being able to get up and walk around without a thought that does it. That’s the reason I’ll often not put wired headphones on in the first place, but no such concern with wireless.
(I actually don’t like 3.5mm jacks as much as some people do, though, as my experience has been the ports get janky over time if they’re under any strain at all, which they will be on a mobile device and which is always a back-of-my-mind source of stress when using them, but quarter-inch jacks are awesome)
For me, all of my wired headphones and earbuds have died the same way: audio cutting out or completely lost due to cable damage due to storage and use cycles. Wireless has completely fixed this for me.
Wireless is more comfortable. I don't have to deal with cables brushing against my ears or sitting on my neck.
Wireless can't get caught on doorknobs or other protrusions.
I don't have to plug them in. I put them in my ears and they work.
They automatically work with multiple devices. I put them in and make a phone call. I put them in and take a video meeting on my computer.
There certainly are advantages to wired headphones and more power to you if you prefer those tradeoffs. But it's bizarre to call wireless "strictly inferior." It should not be difficult to find at least one thing about them that someone might find to be superior.
I bought two pairs of premium wireless headphones about 10 years ago. These failed gradually, I patched them up with tape and kept them going. One of them had the Bluetooth electronics fail but still works wired, the electronics are fine on the other one but physically it is a jumbled mess that I can't really tape together anymore but it kinda sits on my head.
I went looking for the state of the art in headphones and bought (1) a set of AirPod Pros and (2) a recent Sony headset.
My feelings about the AirPods are terribly mixed.
10 years ago I think the best reason to spend $250 instead of $25 on a set of Bluetooth headphones was that the $250 device would pair properly with multiple devices whereas it might take you 15 minutes of screwing around to unpair and repair the $25 headphones every time you need them. But hey they are so cheap maybe you can pack one for each device you have and not worry about it.
Today it is the other way around, somehow $25 headphones "just work" with Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, Steam Deck, whatever. After I disabled the microphone and switched to the microphone on my camera, the AirPods got reliable with Windows. Inside Apple's ecosystem it tries really hard and almost works, yet the $25 headphones "just work" and don't seem to be trying so hard. I don't get messages warning me that somebody else's $25 headphones are following me around but my iPhone tells me that about my AirPods all the time but I think it is a KPI for somebody in Cupertino that I see the word "AirPods" as much as possible.
Now the sound quality of the AirPods is just great, I'll grant that, but I'm not going to be one of those annoying youngsters who is as hard as hearing as the oldest oldsters because I have some genetic polymorphism that makes me produce copious amount of earwax that eject the AirPods from my ears if I move too much. My doc says one of these days my ears are going to plug up and I shouldn't get so excited about it.
I got myself a plastic welder - the thing that melts little pieces of metal to strengthen plastic joints - now I can keep old plastic things in shape almost indefinitely. Cost like 10 usd or so and has prolonged the life of all manner of things.
If you still want to make the old headphones work these welders are a godsend, and with some small amount of diy work of cleaning, sanding and buffing you can easily hide these welds.
I personally like to leave them though since they accent that something that was once broken is whole again, and that it has a long history!
For whatever reason, in my experience, the 1st gen Airpods Pro seem to pair much more easily to non-Apple devices than the 2nd gen. I have a 1st gen pair more or less dedicated to my Linux PC, and they auto-pair 99% of the time within a few seconds.
Mine do. The phone's lightning connector socket has become "flaky" (from age, or lint..), and at this point I must hold the phone in hand rather than in pocket while walking, for uninterrupted playback.
Same here. And also unlike airpods, you can't easily lose one that you can't replace. Which also renders the one left useless because you can't pair it with another orphan, what a waste.
Back when I still thought all headphones were basically the same, I was writing some music and I could not understand why the cello lines sounded so much louder than the violin lines at the same dynamic. It was only years later that I found out that mainstream headphones are tuned to boost the bass, which is supposedly the mainstream taste.
If your tastes in music are not mainstream (and mine definitely is not), mainstream headphones will ruin your music more than you realize - for years I just thought that was how recorded music is supposed to sound, and it wasn't very good. Trying a neutrally-tuned headphone can change your (musical) life. Unfortunately, very few wireless headphones are tuned that way.
Edit: Part of why I never looked into it sooner, I had heard so much about "audiophile snake oil" over the years, I thought that was all there was. That exists, but there plenty of headphones marketed to "audiophiles" that are legitimate.
Please let this mean that they'll start bringing back the headphone jacks to phones. usb-c is too unstable, and I prefer not having to deal with charging more devices and with pairing shenanigans when switching devices.
You can get phones with headphone jacks still. You have to shop carefully, because it eliminates a lot of options. My current phone is a moto g stylus 5g 2023... to get a headphone jack, snapdragon cpu, and reasonable cost, I had to also accept a stylus that I only use to fidget.
Probably need to start shopping again soon cause updates stop in June.
The moto g stylus 2025 is reasonable. It has some bloatware you have to go through and disable, and it is a bit bigger than I'd like. But it's about the best you can do in today's market.
At this point, I'm mostly just praying that the motorola + grapheneos collab will have a headphone jack. I probably won't purchase anything until I at least see what's cooking over there.
Right now, since I buy audio files anyways, I've mostly been relying on a tiny audio player that can also act as a Bluetooth receiver for my phone.
It'll never happen but I'd love to see a new analog audio connector designed with portable audio and extreme durability in mind make a debut. The old 1.44mm connector is nice for its ubiquitous nature, but its internal footprint is large and it's prone to contact issues over time (I'm sure most of us have had a device/headphone pair where the jack had to be rotated into a "sweet spot".
I'm not well versed in the world of port design, but what comes to mind is a little shallow magnetic nub with a couple of contacts on it. Easy to clean, impossible to break by accidental torquing, not deep enough to get stuff stuck in it.
The cool thing is that whatever the new design is, making adapters for 1.44mm to the new thing is dirt cheap since it's still just an analog connection.
Since you mentioned 4.4mm, thought I would chime in and mention pentaconn (the trade name) which is a TRRRS connection (which does include a ground connection as well as L+/L-/R+/R-. I still do not understand the purpose of the ground connection in these plugs since there's nothing to ground on the other end.
Isn’t it the only common variant of 4.4mm? Since portable balanced audio is audiophile-adjacent, no wonder it includes the common ground of dubious utility.
I'm talking about this specific context, rather than in general. I find that for usb-c earphones and small dongles/dacs, they disconnect more when I'm walking around with phone in pocket. They also tend to wear down with use much faster than normal aux cables. Usually, they last a few months for me before I start having issues.
And when usb-c phones disconnect just a little, usually the phone will pause the music completely and disconnect, whereas the aux headphones will just keep playing. So if the connection isn't perfect, the usb-c cable becomes unlistenable because I can't walk 20 steps without it pausing.
edit: I've tried many cables and dongles, so if you don't have this problem, it might be just that I move around more? Biggest problem for me is commutes and walking around.
That problem might be considered a software problem, not a hardware or physical problem. The instant pausing of the music is the real problem. Software developers probably don't move around as much as you do, and I'd bet if they did, this problem would be fixed quickly with a simple timeout setting or something.
I gave up on USBC headphones because if your port becomes full of lint (say by being in your pocket all day), it doesn’t take much to disturb a USBC connection and cause it to go through the whole handshake all over again for a few seconds.
Compared to 3.5mm where the frustrations I remember were usually limited to sometimes getting a bit of a crackle or one of the audio channels dropping out and worst case scenario you just unplugged it and put it back in and it usually worked. With USBC you have to wait to see.
Are there recommendations on USB-C to 3.5mm adapters, preferably ones with input and output?
My biggest complain with Bluetooth headphones is the astonishingly bad quality when doing voice calls.
I am hesitant to buy Apple accessories like these as I am having quality concerns. Specifically the macbook chargers I've encountered are far less rigid than Lenovo Thinkpad chargers (at least before they switched to USB-C). I never felt Apple did a particularly good job with cables and connectors when it comes to longevity.
Some years ago I commuted to work by subway in a city that had turnstiles at all transit stops. Having earbuds unceremoneously ripped out of my ears by spinning metal arms sent me straight to bluetooth and I have never looked back.
A wire sitting on a table does not suck.
2 people can gather around that table and still, the wire does not suck.
As soon as 1 person picks up the wire and starts doing something with it....now an interaction with a wire sucks.
was listening to music while coming with groceries and simultaneously juggling stuff to open the doors and change the track with Siri (the only use for Siri I have)
yeah I don't have this issue with airpods pro. charge them maybe every other week and never had issues pairing. The case charge should last for ~30-40 hrs of listening.
The auto switching between laptop and phone is pretty great too for taking calls or walking away and not having to fiddle around with repairing
Agree they’re great but it does fascinate me when there are weird edge cases that Apple mess up.
For example if I have my phone and laptop running, and I’m listening to something on my phone, I pause with my AirPods, and then I unpause with my AirPods, instead of what was playing on my phone resuming through my AirPods, a video that I’ll have forgotten about will instead play through my laptop speakers, and pressing pause on my AirPods will do nothing and I have to interrupt whatever I’m doing to pause on the laptop. Possible they’ve fixed this specific issue though since I’ve learned to not have anything that has media controls open on my laptop.
The cross platform control stuff is probably very hard and usually works though.
While using wired headphones, my spouse's car never steals my audio when it starts or pulls into the driveway. Also, I can join a meeting seconds before it starts without spending a few minutes scrambling to verify that my BT headset will allow me to hear/be heard.
This experience of different devices competing for a BT headphone is really the most annoying aspect of BT to me. I pair my headphones regularly with my work laptop, my phone and my private laptop, and when working from home and walking around in my apartment, the headphones sometimes just randomly pick another device, even if the current device has audio going, and the other does nothing. Sometimes the Macbook does that when it's on standby, which is bizarre. I always wondered if that is an implementation bug on one of the sides. I fixed it by forcing the Macbook to shut off BT when going on standby.
A good bluetooth experience requires that both the headset and the audio source device implement bluetooth well, which is hard. That said, I have zero problems with my AirPods Pro pairing with my Mac or iPhone ever, it's pretty nice.
it requires that you only have a single pair of headphones, and a single device capable of connecting to it.
with my bluetooth headphones, every time I use them in my house it's a hunt. First find my phone and disconnect them on it since thats what connected automatically. Then, go to the tv and disable bluetooth since that was the second thing it connected to. Then put the headphones in the case and back since they won't pair for some reason. Then go to settings in my PC. Realize my PC connected to my speakers, disconnect them, then connect to the headphones.
Someone then calls me on the phone, I pick up and their voice comes booming from the speakers.
Bluetooth would be infinitely better if it didn't connect automatically. Just press a button on the device you want to use. Instead it connects to everything but the thing I want to use.
Recently I bought some cheap $10 wired Sony earbuds. I was surprised they sound much better than my $150 bluetooth earbuds.
AirPods seem pretty nice; but if you use them primarily with Android and connect them to Find My, they will claim to be lost all the time. Seems like you have to choose between annoyance or not being able to find them if you drop them.
I personally prefer wired headphones... they're always charged and ready, even if I only use them with my phone once in a while.
Tbh it may be the host that's causing the problems, not the headphones. I'm using pretty cheap JBLs with a mbpro and iphone and also never have any problems.
A few companies have demoed wireless cases with screens, and I would be very easy to tap connect on the case while I'm putting in the buds. My earbud was loose in my case yesterday, and it kept stealing the audio of a very important call. I almost threw them across the parking lot.
I have some generic Bluetooth dongle and some anker over the ear headphones and can turn the headphones on after initiating a call and not really have problems. Sometimes Windows doesn't find the microphone right away.
I like to do walking meetings or meetings where I'm cleaning/emptying dishwasher/etc. It sounds strange, but I'm a lot more present than when I'm at my computer.
Anyway. Somewhat ironically, I use a wired set of headphones for this. It's not just the speakers that are better. I often get people remarking how much better the audio is on their end too... i.e. the cheap inline microphone.
With a 0$ Bluetooth-3.5mm jack dongle from AliExpress one can have best of both worlds, or at least continue using wired cans with a phone where the charging port stopped working.
Sony WH1000XM5 headphones are my daily driver, mainly Zoom calls and music. I'm generally pretty happy with them, but one big gripe I have is when I'm on a call and briefly take off my headphones to e.g. chat with someone in the room, there is like a 90% chance they stop working and I have to reconnect them.
It happens so often I even wrote a script to switch to the MacBook internal speakers then back to the headphones.
I've used wired headphones before (and the Sony even has a wired option), but I didn't like how the cord was constantly getting the the way of my arms.
edit: Another big gripe is with the Bluetooth codec itself, and how the quality changes depending on if the mic is active.
Thank you, this brings me a feeling of relief because after constantly dealing with various wireless bt headphone issues when using linux it frequented my mind that surely on the other side of the fence people don't have this kind of problems.
You don't need the proprietary and data-collecting app. I'm using GadgetBridge to configure the 1000XM5 (along with my Garmin Forerunner) and it works great!
Headphones were a solved problem. I had 20 years ago some high end IEM that i used back in the days on on so called mp3 players - those were pocket sized music players - and since apple released the airpods and bluetooth headphones were the new standard audio quality never recovered to the state we had two decades ago
It wasn't a solved issue because 3.5mm is too anemic to power modern ANC. Remember when headphones like QC15 had a single AAA battery to power that? Maybe it's not an important feature to everyone, but ANC is critical to my experience on long distance transportation.
Multipoint is also cool too. I like listening to music, taking a call, going to the toilet, and coming back to music all without doing anything.
If there's a silver lining to the last 15 years, it's that replaceable cables became a standard feature and that there are IEMs with direct USB C cables now. If/when Moondrop/KZ/Linsoul release IEMs that can be used like wireless earbuds with ANC, and can also connect and recharge via USB C, they can just take my money.
iPod Shuffle + Shure SE215 was the pinnacle of portable audio. The ritual of maintaining a separate playlist that would actually fit made it intentional. Allowing Spotify to slip into an infinite stream of slop is so easy these days.
I'm also team USB-C wired earbuds (the Apple ones are cheap and solid, mic is also nice for calls) for podcasts and commute.
I never stopped using wired headphones at home but also had BT ones on the go. When they started showing signs of age I got a cheap BT receiver instead of replacing them. It's not quite as practical but for many people it's something to consider, they work surprisingly well!
I'm firmly on team "dual USB port" for this problem. We do this on computers, which can then perfectly well charge and play audio at the same time. Why not phones? It seems like there's plenty of space for a second port.
the usb port is much more complicated than a 3.5mm port. It is more expensive, it takes more space. Do you add another real port or a built in hub? (they would go with the latter, probably)
Anecdote, I like wired headphones for important online calls. I use earpods[1], I started using them back when they came with a phone, I'm happy that it's still possible to buy replacements. I like having a reliable wired connection that works and disconnects predictably.
I guess a lot of that is nostalgia. My laptop model no longer has a webcam cover or a physical network switch; connecting and disconnecting the trrs[2] cable reminds me of these.
But some of that is still practical needs. I have AirPods and Bose wireless headphones, both praised for reliable connections. Every now and then they take a bit longer to connect or the volume changes unpredictably, or they need to be charged, etc - when wired headphones just work.
I very much appreciate it when people use wired headphones with a decent mic for calls. Speech clarity is just so much better even with Earpods compared to tws earplugs.
Can someone recommend USBC earbuds with good ANC? Sometimes I’d love to avoid battery and interference concerns of Bluetooth, but noise cancellation became a must-have for me.
I'm not seeing anyone mention that there is a recent social media trend of people touting that AirPods emits "harmful" radiation. I only mention this because otherwise intelligent health-nut friends were trying to convince me of the same.
Apple Earbuds cost $19 while AirPods Pro 3 cost $250. If one of the pods flies out of your ear on the Fremont Bridge, it's a pretty bad day. I should get over it.
You can also load your hearing test results (from either an audiologist or a hearing test app like https://mimi.io/products/mimi-hearing-test-app) into Apple Health and then use them with your Earbuds.
It's funny how this coincides with a time when BT headphones have finally become cheap, reliable and capable enough. I recently bought two different sets from Lidl: one for €8 and the other for around €12. Both have ANC and a battery life of around 5 hours, and the sound quality is quite respectable. I've been using headphones all the time since I was 11, so that's 37 years with many different kinds of headphones. Even now, I have more than ten headphones that work. IMHO, Bluetooth headphones have never been closer to becoming a natural counterpart to mobile phones for everyone.
My main ones are Sony MDR-V6s which I've had for 10 years. They are the best headphones I've ever owned and they sound just as good today as they did a decade ago. They were originally made in 1985 and the wire never tangles.
The other are crappy $8 earbuds / mic combo that are maybe 7 years old and work just fine.
I have wireless earbuds that I occasionally use since the Pixel 9a has no 3.5mm jack. They are worse in every way that I care about. I have to babysit them to make sure they are charged.
Sure the wired earbuds get tangled sometimes but it's not a big deal to address that. I also think wired is an advantage for portable usage. For example, for running or doing any activity the wire ensures if they fall out of your ear you won't lose them. They also don't need a case so you can stuff them anywhere without a bulge.
I never understood the appeal of AirPods. To me, it just seemed like an inferior product at a much higher price. You now have to worry about charging them (not to mention charging the case), you have three things that are easy to lose vs one that is hard to lose, and finally, to my taste, they are somehow gross to look at - like hearing aids from the 1950s. The product just seems like a manifestation of complexity for the sake of complexity.
> The noise cancellation is also great. I’ll use them if it gets noisier than my closed headphones can block.
You can get the Seinhensser Momentum 4, wireless optional, but closed over-ear and still work without battery, for less than 200. Way better sound quality than the in-ears.
I hate untangling wires. The noise cancellation (including passive for the pros) is great. Easier to switch between devices. I can use them with the Apple TV when my wife goes to sleep (she's an early riser).
The downsides you list don't apply to me personally. I don't have to "worry" about charging them; I just charge them. I have never lost them, I keep them in the same spot. I also personally think they look better than wired, but that's a fashion thing.
I think it's fine to have a different preference, but I find it odd people can't even understand the appeal of them. I don't like wired, but I can understand why people have different preferences.
Apart from all the other things everyone mentioned, wired headphones never really become technically obsolete.
I can still connect my 15-year-old pair of headphones to a laptop, and they work just fine. Sure, I swapped cushions a couple of times, and the headband is all new leather, but the sound is great.
A pair of BT headphones from 15 years ago, even if they worked (which in my experience, they don't), would use an outdated audio codec- no one in their right mind want to listen to an SBC now
It's amazing how people will jump to something new just because it's there and it's being promoted.
When wireless headphones came out, I looked at my wired ones and asked the simple question: is a tangling cable worse than bluetoth pairing and having to keep yet another thing charged? My answer was no, so I kept using cheap wired ones.
A few years later, now that makes me look rich. Or something.
Bluetooth pairing hasn’t been an issue with the iPhone in a decade. As far as charging, at night is it really a pain for me to stick my AirPods on the same charging pad my iPhone and watch are on anyway
There is no way I’m going back to wired headphones. I always hated them. Cables lasted a few years at best leaving the headphones unrepairable. And when using them while moving I could only here my own steps. Plain awful.
This seems backwards to me, mostly. A decade ago, quality sound on the go meant a pocket headphone amp wired to deep-seated inner-ear earphones or clunky over-the-ear cans.
Today? Airpods Pro do the trick: the second- and third-generation models rival or exceed most wired options. And that makes sense: Apple's R&D spending and engineering capabilities for a product like Airpods dwarf the resources of traditional audio companies--the built-in DSP alone is a staggering achievement. So they ought to sound great, and they really do.
And that's before you even consider all the other capabilities, like taking calls, etc. My pocket amps and wired 'phones (Etymotic, Shure, B&O, a few others I'm forgetting) have been gathering dust since the Airpods Pro came to market. I do not miss de-tangling the cables.
Of course, it is possible to do better, but not easy or inexpensive. On my desks at home and at the office are dedicated headphone rigs: DACs, amps, and wired open-backed cans (Focal, HifiMan). Those set-ups sound great--although not nearly so great as my two-channel speaker systems. But that's what it takes to get appreciably better sound than Apple's Bluetooth sets, and forget about portability.
I never gave up on my wired headphones. I'm so bad I have to use a stretchy cord (ahla old phone cord) to tie my phone to my body just so I don't drop it. There is no way I can go wireless headphones just so I can lose half my sound. When my Pixel finally abandoned the headphone jack I was forced to get USBC headphones and I just don't like them as much, probably because of the ear shape more than the port but I feel like USBC port plug doesn't stay as secure as the old headphone jack.
Perhaps not related to the article but I find it puzzling that Bluetooth in 2026 still sounds like a fax machine when you use the mic too. That and a much too high latency in general.
Using the mic requires the device to drop to a much older protocol for headsets designed for an old, obsolete Bluetooth generation.
Afaik that's one big reason why BT is such a mess. Many different use-cases are dictated by different protocols, many of which are outdated, and two paired devices can only use a protocol supported by both. So the headphone can't just reuse the same nice connection and add a mic, it has to start pretending like it's some Bluetooth 2.0 device from 2005 or something.
- Small-but-not-zero fire risk inside your backpack or your ear
- Pairing woes
- Expensive
- No user-replaceable batteries
Someone's going to come and say how much they like them, but you need to remember that "needing to deal with a cable sometimes" does not actually qualify as inconvenience. When the washing machine was invented, 10s of hours of labor were freed up from people so they could either get more work done or pursue leisure and enjoy life. What did wireless headphones do for people? Prevent them from needing to exercise the tiny amount of impulse control necessary to to run your cable?
I have good wired earbuds and over ear headphones, but I still almost always go back to bluetooth. If I'm vacuuming, mowing the lawn, etc. I use my Airpods Pro. If I'm practicing drums or working with loud tools, I use my bluetooth 3M Worktunes.
Being able to get my phone out of my pocket and not have to worry about the cable is worth all the tradeoffs. At my desk, I have studio monitors, which I prefer over any headphones. For video calls, I use just the right Airpod to prevent echos, and so I can still hear myself.
It is not an either-or. Many bluetooth headphones (not earbuds) also have an audio jack to be used wired. I use my bluetooth headphones (sony wh-1000xm3) through bluetooth when I am on the go, and wired when I am at home, especially if I want low latency. If anything, I would rather be able to replace a simple jack cable if it breaks, as it would consistently happen back when I was using wired earphones.
I find using all these cables when I am on the go inconvenient, and I cannot imagine going back there. Especially with earbuds, I have probably changed over 10 or sth over the years due to cables failing (but I hate earbuds now anyway regardless). On the other hand, eg when gaming I definitely notice latency issues, especially if I compare them with wired, so I prefer to use them wired.
I used wired headphones not only because Bluetooth can be a pain but because I hate noise cancellation and all bluetooth headphones seem to have it (even when it is turned off, it does “something” that messes with my ears)
I am convinced noise cancellation is causing me tinitus and I don’t seem to get it when I use normal headphones
I do wonder if this is in part to Spotify educating people with their very much in your face notifications when you set your player to lossless quality mode. They inform you bluetooth won't pass the signal with enough fidelity and to go wired.
I don't think many people thought their expensive Airpods/Bose/Sony were not capable of handling lossless and may feel left out or missing something.
For phones, I think it's just the Sony and Asus and Chinese brands that support it. Pixels and Samsungs generally don't since they use Tensor/Exynos instead of Qualcomm/Snapdragon SoCs, and definitely not Apple.
Story is even more bleak on the headphones side, Sony prefers their own LDAC codec so they support that instead of AptX Lossless, a pattern shared by many Asian headphones manufactuers. Many western brands only support up to AptX HD and AAC because Apple/Samsung devices have the majority marketshare. Qualcomm's own site only shows 12 headphones that support AptX Lossless.
Now my opinion is LDAC is close enough to lossless that it's probably good enough for Sony and most people (the 1411kbps for uncompressed 16/44.1 CD quality generally compresses to under 900kbps which is below the 990kbps max of LDAC). Bose does have a headphone that supports AptX Lossless. It's just the Airpods that are far behind the competition.
For me AirPods are one of the greatest products I’ve ever owned. I resisted them for years and recited the usual tropes about wired being better. But after being gifted a pair years ago, I realized how wrong I was.
I spend a lot of time at the gym or walking with headphones in and music, podcasts, or audiobooks on. It’s so much better not having any wires when you’re moving. I can’t imagine doing these actives anymore with wired headphones.
Battery life, pairing, charging, audio quality, and other complains are all non issues for me, but I’m also no audiophile. They work incredibly seamlessly inside the Apple ecosystem.
I've got a fairly cheap pair of Soundcores and I use an Android phone. Never really had a problem. Pair them once and they reconnect flawlessly, I only have to charge the battery case like once a month, and the earbuds themselves last more then an entire day. Mine get a lot of use, and I've never had an earbud die on me.
There are a couple of minor annoyances for sure, like the car grabbing my phone when it turns on, but that's not a huge deal. And the annoyance of having a cord dangle around while I'm walking the dog or doing dishes or whatever the hell I'm doing far outweighs it.
All of that said, if I wanted audio quality to sit and actively listen to music, I'd go wired no question. But I don't really care when 95% of my listening is audiobooks and podcasts.
I use Bluetooth every day however, playing games on Bluetooth is some mistake. Quality is noticeably worse, stuttering happen, and cable is the fallback when my BT headphones' battery die. So I really do not understand why the jack has been removed from major brands of phones
This is a more Reddit comment section than I’ve seen on r/headphones in ages. It’s almost nostalgic!
I use my wired Sundara (which have dropped in price greatly since I got them years ago!) at my desk with DAC/AMP all the time, of course, and have a very nice set of Etymotic IEMs with a USB-C dongle permanently attached (once I stopped using it for my PC*). For use with my phone I haven’t actually reached for those Etys over my AirPods Pro 2 in years as the latter are significantly more convenient. They also work fine with Windows 11 (which supports AAC over Bluetooth, as can Linux IIRC) if I want to use them there for whatever reason. Maybe I’m blessed in that I don’t require my phone to be a critical listening device?
* If you have hissing/interference/etc when plugging headphones into your PC, the Apple USB-C dongle is very good and only 9 USD.
Here's a standard-structure, VC-funded, exit-oriented startup to consider: make video calls reliable. As in, you provide a guarantee and pay the customer if the call didn't work.
Wired headphones could be one part of the solution. They're just far more reliable (if they don't break, which they will). But if the reliability of video calls can be improved so that it's literally as reliable as talking to someone next to you in a quiet room, I bet lots of people would pay for it. There is so much latent frustration about unreliable calls, even with the best setup, even in NASA, in DoD, corporations, zoom and other platforms fail to perform reliably in so many cases.
Funny you mention it; I actually have been thinking of this as a startup/solution for ages (especially since covid). I realized that it's likely a fair bit more difficult (you'd need significant control of both software as well as hardware stacks.)
If you or anyone's seriously interested in pursuing it, feel free to reach out to the email address in my profile page.
> make video calls reliable. As in, you provide a guarantee and pay the customer if the call didn't work.
Microsoft would be ruined, haha. Over the past week, I had about a 30% chance of the call not working and a a 80% chance of the screenshare not working
I wonder what percentage of the people driving this trend have either only had AirPods (they make me dizzy, and I think the sound quality is terrible), Beats (even worse) or no-name $20 bluetooth headsets.
I have a nice high-end set of Sennheisers that cost ~ $150, and they're much better than my old wired set (both in-ear, both noise isolating, similar prices).
The bluetooth ones win because they eliminate cable noise. I can actually jog with them. In quiet rooms, they're very comparable, except the bluetooth set has a built in EQ, which works around the fact that iOS / Android still inexplicably do not let you adjust treble and bass.
The bluetooth headset market has been stuck in this weird spot where fashion mostly dictates. I guess I shouldn't be surprised that fashion now dictates wired headsets.
totally agree with you, though I have 3 sets of $20 bluetooth sets that I rotate on various devices and have no complaints whatsoever. Also use a DAC and $300 set of can on PC, so I know what good audio sounds like.
I picked up a Sony MDR-Z7 and Z1 and an iFi headphone amp and threw out my wireless Apple headphones. Of course comparing them to the expensive Sony's isn't fair but once you experience the soundstage in the wired headphones you will never look back. You don't need to even buy the expensive headphones, you can even get something like a V6 or a 7506.
The difference is the battery dies in the wireless models in 2-3 years irrespective of the brand but these wired headphones live on for ever.
Yes, this is a trend, but it doesn't seem like just a fad; a lot of people are choosing to return to "outmoded" things to embrace ritual and intentionality. As others have commented, it doesn't have to make sense to you; having options hurts nobody.
Both wired and wireless headphones of all types fail for me between 10-13 months. Something breaks no matter the price or brand.
The only wireless headphones worth the hassle of using Bluetooth (which never connects on the first try, disconnects randomly all the time, and is generally far too unreliable for daily use) are shockz bone conducting.
This is a you thing. I had the same pair of Sony wireless headphones for years and I only replaced them because the ear cups started disintegrating. Their replacements (also Sony) have already lasted me a couple of years with no issues. I also have absolutely no problems with Bluetooth either, the headphones are paired with maybe 6 devices across iOS and Linux and they never fail to connect.
So what are some recommendations for good wired headphones?
The Sony MDR-J10s I used to buy stopped being manufactured, and old stock is showing up online less often for more money. They were also never the most durable model, which wasn't a problem when they were easier to replace.
So what are some good, durable wired headphones? Suitable for active use, cords not going to snap with a light tug, don't fall off when running, plug/wire connection doesn't wear out and need to be held just so?
I wonder how much of the "it sounds better" argument is just a fashionable make-believe, like the gold-plated HDMI cables that, for the most part, don't really make a difference but somehow people believed it does.
Or like people who think that brown-shell eggs are better quality than white-shell eggs.
I wonder how much of this has to do with the popularity of the MacBook Air and now, potentially, the Neo. My current desktop setup is a MacBook Air and a big 4K monitor. I considered getting an outboard DAC/amp for headphones but the headphone jack on the MacBook Air sounds pretty great to me through my mid-price Hifiman cans.
I use wireless almost exclusively. ANC in the office is a must. I also know that a good pair of wired headphones will have way more fidelity than AirPods. But I do have some nice wired headphones and I pair them to my iPhone with the Fiio BTR5. It’s been a good mix of the two. I’m of the mindset to go back to an mp3 player and use the fiio to connect to my car Bluetooth
I've considered the move to wired not for quality but for the sad state that Bluetooth pairing headphones has become. Theycan't just be headphones anymore; They require their own app and pairing protocol. They want 19 different touch points and permissions to implement a handful of never used features I get people being frustrated at why they can't just do what copper did for the last century.
I have two wireless sony headphones for handling the battery issue. So yesterday before 5mins to my meeting, I plugged in one and it was out of juice. I plugged in the second one and it was also out of juice. Mind you, I was travelling and hence didn't follow the usual charging cadence I follow.
I charged my wireless headphone for 5 mins and took the call and it went out of juice mid way through the call. I had to run to find a free conference room in the office which was present since it was friday.
I also often connect my wireless headphone through the weekend and not know that it is still connected since friday with my work mac. Wired solves all of this.
Thanks to this article, I just ordered a Apple Earpods USB-C 5 mins ago in Blinkit. It is going to be delivered in another 5-10mins. Good bye wireless. I will use it for work with my Mac and my personal Samsung phone.
Same here, I can't imagine adding 2 to 3 (earphones + case) batteries to my life, batteries that most likely aren't user replaceable, most likely will be cycled at least once a day and will inevitable die and take the whole device with them in a matter of years.
As other comment suggests, FiiO does adapters like that, also Qudelix. Depends on what you mean by 'like AirPod Pros'. You won't get ANC, mic is so-so I believe and you still have wires, but you get LDAC/aptX HD codec, it can still act as USB DAC if you forgot to charge it, it has very capable DSP EQ that allows loading headphone profiles.
I use AirPods Pro as muffs on transit and concerts which is a killer feature for me, but use Qudelix dongle with IEMs for music.
I'm not rough, but don't handle them with white gloves either. I usually tend to roll them up in a ball in some pocket when not in use.
The model I have, BT2, is "semi-wired", meaning that the Bluetooth and battery are common to the two earbuds, linked by a cable. And, outside the big heavy cables some big heavy headphones have, this one is the one that has held up best – I'm pretty sure I got it before Covid. They now have a newer model with no wires, which houses the BT and battery in some over-ear clips [0]. I have no experience with these. In any case, I expect other manufacturers to have similar options.
Before this, I would have to change the (old-school) wire on these IEMs seemingly every other year. But at least it was changeable, as opposed to other cheaper IEMs which would require to break out the soldering iron at best, or end up in the trash at worst if they were a glue fest.
I have the Shure TW2 adapters and they work great. No connection issues, great battery life, and the passive isolation I get with the right ear tips is better than any ANC I've ever used. As an added bonus, if you order when they're on sale, you can get the TW2 adapters with a pair of SE 215 buds for the same price as the plain adapters.
so many replies here on HN, this post also have the vibe of AI generate comments. medium-long format, try to cover too much of the pectrum, miss a punch line or a main idea. just my 2c
For me, wired multi-driver armature IEMs (in-ear monitors) are the best thing to happen in the audio field since the arrival of neodymium magnets.
For a fraction of price of professional monitor speakers, you get the closest thing to direct hardware-to-brain audio transmission. It's precise and fast transient-wise.
No reflections, no phase problems, nada. You can choose exactly the type of frequency response you need: flat, V-shaped, U-shaped, bassy, bright, whatever. There are even models with switchable curves.
No need to invest much more money than your speakers cost in your listening room, installing wool/foam pads/draping/soft furniture/bass traps/carpets etc to reduce the amount of reflections and bring frequency responce to anything resembling flat.
That said, there is a huge number of IEMs produced these days and they range from absolute trash to stellar. And to navigate this vast ocean, I find Crinnacle's resourses utterly useful:
I refurbished a pair of old Sennheiser HD-25s I’ve had since 1998ish recently.
They work just like new and there is something really satisfying about bringing old tech back to a useful life.
I’m using them for monitoring things that don’t have Bluetooth.
I still use AirPods day to day though because it’s so useful to always have something in your pocket that can block unpleasant noise. Bluetooth works fine for me.
Bluetooth headphone has one disadvantage —- if it “sleeps” then I have to put them back to the charger container to wake them up. I don’t need to charge it, just need to put it in and take them out. But this is a hassle as I need to bring the container around with me. Other than that, it’s better than wired headphones.
I am still waiting for a wired AirPod 4 ANC equivalent. Wired, earbud but not silicon in-ear style. Still using my normal wired headphones never switched to wireless so far but longing for an ANC version.
For me, using Bluetooth headphones with my (Samsung) phone is smooth and trouble-free. The experience is miles better than wired headphones, and I would never go back. Meanwhile, connecting to my TV with Bluetooth is an exercise in pure frustration.
So it seems to me like the problem isn't Bluetooth, it's shitty implementations of it.
And it's not just cheap devices. My TV is a fancy LG OLED. For the price I paid it should handle Bluetooth just fine.
It's a real shame. When Bluetooth works, it's awesome, but a lot of people have had their opinions tainted by bad devices.
Yeah, I'm reading these comments and I would have agreed 10 years ago, but I'm regularly using three different pairs of wireless headphones plus a Bluetooth speaker and have literally zero issues. My Bose headphones are usually even paired with two phones.
Yeah, charging is a bit annoying, but the added comfort is worth it to me and I can't tell that the audio quality is any different.
It's super inconsistent across devices and implementations. I've had so many issues with it over the years.
I've had headphones where a slight change in the environment around me while walking would disconnect audio. Or IEMs not syncing properly the L and R channels.
Even in the best of cases using headphones with multiple devices is just terrible. Also syncing audio to picture rarely works as it should.
> So it seems to me like the problem isn't Bluetooth, it's shitty implementations of it.
Perhaps, but it kinda seems to me that there must be some inherent limitation of the standard which make it particular hard to create a high-quality experience?
The latency for instance - in my (somewhat limited) experience audio over BT does not sync perfectly with video.
The channels/codecs is/was so limited in bandwidth that until recently (few years back IIRC) headsets couldn't even send and receive decent quality audio at the same time. Even recent headsets like the Shokz Openrun Pro 2 has this limitation. (Which you could argue is an instance of "shitty implementation" since it was released after the availability of necessary tech (LE/LC3))
>So it seems to me like the problem isn't Bluetooth, it's shitty implementations of it.
Yep, but this is a problem that is present everywhere. For example, electric cars are supposed to be simpler, because its one moving part. In reality, you get essentially vertical integration of all the components like battery management, motor controllers, infotainment, gauge cluster and the software that connects all of that, and when bugs are present you can't even get into your car.
I still use AirPods for listening but if I’m ever taking a call, I always use EarPods (USB-C). The microphone quality is multiple times better and that’s important to me. Especially for work. It only took me a few times to hear other people will AirPods to be tainted. It just seems unprofessional now because of how bad it sounds.
A few years ago I was looking for my favorite Headphones for my synth (some AKG ones, I dont remember the concrete model name by heart) - prices went to the roof...
I prefer Bluetooth for mobile applications, as my sockets respectively wire got defected after a few months...
You can get cheap wired earphone splitters and share what you're listening to on long bus rides or flights. I miss that. Maybe one wants something between needing to be on and conversing and the isolation of separate bluetooth listening.
My Bluetooth headphones are great and very rarely have any glitches. I use wired headphones only when listening to high-resolution lossless music (using the right hardware). I would guess the fact that some streaming platforms have these now is also a contributing factor to the rise in popularity of wired headphones.
I've had a set of Etymotic SR4s for years, I just replace the cable every 1-2 years. I love them to death, they're extremely flat though, so they make a version with bumped bass if that's your thing.
If someone made a cable with a mic on it for them I'd probably buy 10--it's pretty annoying to switch to Apple earbuds for calls, but whatever.
So the fact, that I recently bought used iPod, replaced the battery and storage and use it now with pair of IEMs make me some sort of a... trendsetter?
I've never had a pair of headphones with a cable connection that survived more than 2 years. Can't say that about the Airpods Max.
Like, I have opinions about high-end headphones based on how easy the cords are to replace. That shouldn't be the case.
I was a discrete headphone amp guy, just to situate myself in this market. I didn't expect to get good wireless headphones and think "I'm never going back", but that's precisely what happened.
I'm sure that there can be situations where it's better to sacrifice sound quality and reliability for the convenience of wireless but I think the ability to replace cables is a huge advantage and not a pain point at all. The only problem I've ever had was with an old pair from Sony where by the time I needed a new cable they'd stopped selling a replacement cable but I knew I was rolling the dice when I got that pair because the cable wasn't standard.
Even in the extreme case where you're replacing them every other year you could buy a handful of spares right away so you have them on hand when you need them and your headphones will outlast the batteries in your airpods
Many pro wired comments here about quality which can be classed under the category “most people cannot tell the difference”.
You simply cannot compare the considerably greater convenience of wireless to wired when on the go.
Also, any decent wireless over the ear headset allows for wired use when out of battery. That’s hardly a game changer
Not everybody is using their headphones on the go. 99% of my headphone use is at my desk while I work. Wired is more convenient than wireless since it's one less lithium battery to charge.
It's true that humans are not particularly sensitive to audio quality, but they are very sensitive to audio latency. If all you do is listen to buffered audio sources then latency is not important but the moment you need to use your headphones in an input loop then wired is the superior technology as it offers close to zero variance in latency.
Love my JBL in-ear wired headphones but I can only use them when sitting still. When I walk with them they 'rustle' like crazy (don't know how else to describe the sound)
I think strictly speaking, this isn't actually microphonics, because that means that mechanical noise causes electrical noise, which then results in audible noise, whereas what is happening is just transmission of vibrations up the cable into the ear.
Anyway, it can be fixed with better cables. They don't have to be fancy (they don't have to be the 349 euro cables that site is selling!) - i have a pair of KZ ZS10 Pro X earphones, and using the stock cables, i don't get rustling through those.
(more generally, i have an embarrassing number of Chi-Fi earphones, and don't get rustling with any of them)
Well, those KZ ZS10 Pro X are still fairly cheap (40 euros), and i really like them. But there is a huge range of amazing value for money earphones out there. You just have to wade through dozens of pages of forum posts and Reddit threads to find them.
The elephant in the room is "chi-fi". There's been a huge growth in small Chinese companies with unusual names making amazingly cheap, yet great-sounding over-ear headphones, IEMs, and earbuds within the past few years, and the vast majority of these are wired.
I’m by no means an audiophile and it had been years since I owned a pair of wired headphones, but I picked up a pair of Linsoul 7HZ x Crinacle Zero:2 (yes that is actually the name) IEMs after seeing some glowing reviews online and I was absolutely blown away by how they sounded despite costing only 240 SEK (around 25 USD). Back in the early 2010s when I was more interested in hi-fi audio you definitely couldn’t get as great sounding IEMs around this price.
I still find it hard to justify buying Chi-Fi. My HD650 still has no competitor in terms of style and cost efficiency, I wish I could afford HD800 but they sound very different. My IE80 from 2012 is very outdated, but IEMs are technologically inferior, and even the Chinese ones are not cheap. So I just put a USB-C cable on it and use it occasionally.
An alternative to a wired dongle is a high-quality bluetooth amp, e.g. from Fiio. It's reliable, keeps your phone free from cables, but you can keep using your high quality wired headphones.
That seems a ~~wired~~ weird compromise to me: you get the downsides of Bluetooth (inherent latency, potential codec quality loss, spectrum congestion — I occasionally experience interference and dropouts in crowded areas) but still have a wire hanging from your head and another battery to keep charged. :/
I can attest to this. I gave away my Sony WH-1000MX and my €80 Soundcore earbuds stopped charging. Headphone emergency! I got myself €30 AKG USB-c IEMs off a local shop. The sound quality is far, far superior to even the €350 wireless Sony headphones. I'm not even an audiophile, it's just noticably better. I had forgotten all the little details from the music I regularly listned to.
With your popular wireless headphones, you're really paying for the computer with ANC (and branding, packaging, depending on which version of the series the latest model is on).
The wired IEMs don't have an ANC but I realised I don't need it as often as I thought. I'm certainly going to look for Wired over-the-ear ANC cans next, but honestly I'm not sure if I need them.
You are lucky to get lo-bat. I get no-bat. Working perfectly one moment, not responding the next. Not so much as a popup telling me why my PC just got unresponsive.
It's simple, I can buy some IEMs that sound better, cost less than a third of a barely-even-comparable wireless earbud, and roughly conforms to market standards so I can swap out the cable and tips. And I never have to charge them.
I have a pair of Airpod Pros that I use solely for audiobooks and podcasts when I'm doing chores or shopping, but the audio quality is so garbage that's all they're really good for.
The problem with earbuds is that to have good quality, you need to create a seal, like IEMs do. Most professionals who use IEMs have them custom molded to their ears.
If you are lucky and have a good ear shape, then airpods sound good. Still not as good as IEM because IEMs have more space for better drivers without needing a battery or bluetooth hardware.
But if you are a person like me who has very hard time with any earbud staying in, then its gonna sound like garbage because you are never going to get a perfect seal.
The measure of audio is what comes out of the speakers not what is written on the web.
My Airpod Pros are the most convenient personal audio device I have ever used. Sound wise they pale in comparison to my Sony MDR-ZX100 which I bought on sale for $9.99 at Best Buy...unfortunately the new model is about $15 regular price and maybe not as good (but I doubt it).
Sure the Airpod Pros sound better than ordinary Airpods or the wired Airbuds, but that's a really low bar for an audio device.
Yes, objectively Airpods Pro audio quality is not good if you're comparing it to a high-end IEM setup that uses multiple driver types, balanced armatures, electrostatics, etc. Also the tuning on the 3 vs. the 2 is worse.
Airpods Pro have great audio quality considering they are wireless bluetooth earbuds. Remove that qualifier, and if you're sitting at a desk all day and wired becomes an option, you can get far better sound quality/longevity for a fraction of the price.
For my recent middle class Android phone, I got a USB-C dongle that I keep in my wallet since phones with headphone jacks have moved to the lowest end of the market and almost disappeared entirely. Doesn't seem worth it anymore.
The dongle is tiny and seems to be of good mechanical quality.
here's hoping that someday headphones without pressure (e.g. active/passive noise cancelling) will make a comeback, too. But then again I think there still exist cheap wired ones without such "advanced" technology. As one woman in the article said best: "'I don't like how this feels' and we're all kind of returning to the last place we were comfortable."
For wireless headphones I've gone to bone conduction and open-ear. Started with some cheap models from Ali-Express to see how I liked it. I did.
Shokz had a black friday deal on Open-Run Pros and those are my goto. Admittedly, they are not as convenient as my Airpods were, but my ears appreciate not being bombarded with noise canceling.
Bose QuietComfort Ultra 2 at least just allows varying levels of passthrough. You can have noise cancelling or noise cancelling + sound from the outside mike. You cannot have noise-cancelling off for better battery life or to cope with windy conditions
They're awful in several other ways too, which is sad for what should be their flagship model
I avoid noise cancelling as well; I find that it very rapidly gives me a headache. I prefer a nice set of headphones that physically block outside sound.
I got a pair of AirPods Pro, paid for by a past employer, and it's the only Apple product I like. I'd even give some of my own money to Apple if I had to buy another pair.
When I'm wearing wired earbuds, the feeling of getting the cord caught on something and having the earbuds violently yanked from my ears is one of the most annoying things, like a slap in the face.
Plus I like being able to put my phone wherever I want, when I'm listening to podcasts while doing yard work. The phone stays in the house, or on a patio table, not in my pocket where pruning shears or dirt will get to it.
There are various other situations where having wires going to my ears is annoying or impossible.
Article explains it's being partially driven from people following celebrities who believe they're using it as countersignaling, demonstrating economic class via things that could be perceived as the opposite.
"Wearing wireless 24/7 tells me you don't own any land."
I wonder how much is being driven by such lead following.
I started seeing this trend nearly a year go in Seoul. I think it is just a sort of fashion trend. I like wired experience when I am alone in a silent place listening to classical or instrumental music. But it’s hard to beat convenience of Bluetooth elsewhere.
I find them the opposite of convenient ("where are they? are they charged? are they paired? did they lose pairing? did I just pair to my downstairs neighbor's TV? did he just pair to mine?")
I would love to hear the Bluetooth engineers battle it out. I know BT isn't the only reason people want wired, but it's got to be one of the aggravating factors.
Is it the specs fault? Hard to believe if they have gone through at least 5 major revisions. Is it those stupid engineers that didn't implement the spec? Is it the chipsets? I want to see a "who made Bluetooth suck?" Showdown
My daily headphones are the Google Pixel USB-C earbuds, but they seem to be no longer made. Anyone have good recommendations for similar style USB-C headphones w/mic?
Except on the go, I don’t see the point for Bluetooth headphones. Due to the built in batteries that are uneconomical to replace they are essentially consumables, even high end ones like AirPods Max. Pairing and (re) connecting is a never ending pain. For less than $200 you can get a set of wired open back headphones that sound so good that unless you are in the audiophile niche they are your forever headphones. Models like Beyer Dynamic DT990 are built to last and very repairable, it just makes sense.
The DACs in most bluethooth earbuds are absolute garbage, but I think the bigger issue is people are tired of both having to charge them and having to keep track of where they are.
Good luck finding a phone with a headphone jack anymore though :(
I love my wired headphones though. They support BT but I've used that maybe twice. Ever. Obviously was only because I was using my phone with them, which again don't have a port for the cord.
Audio delay for most Bluetooth headphones is downright atrocious. Yes, there are some out there which support low delay modes (under 40ms), but the vast majority of them do not.
I have never bought a wireless headphones and I never will. I bought a bluetooth adapter for wired headphones instead, for when I need that. The only thing I feel like I am missing is noise cancellation.
The drivers or whatever can influence the wireless experience a lot. Apple has the best bluetooth reliability of any manufacturer I've experienced. I can be out in a field next to my house and somehow the half-asleep laptop finds my headphones instantly unless I remember to switch its bluetooth off. On my windows machine sometimes, for seemingly no reason, you will be left standing around waiting and waiting for it to find the device right next to it.
The convenience of being able to get up and walk around the house, or got out with the phone without wires getting caught makes it worthwhile though. On the other hand for stationary peripherals like mice I would never go wireless. I hate that feeling of complete helplessness to the pairing/connection lottery and the time waste of it.
Personally I use wired headphone at home, either open back or closed back depending on the situation and Bluetooth outside when I don't want to be bothered by a cable.
I think it gets the best of both worlds. Couldn't care less if I look 'cheap' because I have Bluetooth headphone.
Another underrated simplicity with wired headphones is - you don’t need to charge it. It just works. Sound quality for sure is one of the biggest advantages of wired phones.
I've listened to hundreds of audiobooks using Sony and Bose bluetooth ear buds. But when I'm sitting at a computer I use wired headphones so I don't have to worry about charging and latency. The bluetooth latency is noticeable during video calls
This article makes an elephant out of a fly. The explonation is much simpler...
The microphone and communication protocols on Bluetooth is shit. Everyone that talks alot on the phone knows that the microphone one a wired headset is sooo much better than Bluetooth, simple as that. You hear better and they hear you better. That is it
For me it's cost. I used to be able to get those JVC gummy earbuds wired, for nine dollars. Now I have to spend upwards of $20 for Bluetooth. And of course, when the battery can't be recharged anymore, I'm supposed to throw them away. Much prefer the wired headphones. Sometimes Bluetooth makes sense, But economically wired makes more sense.
If they want to take them away, they'll have to rip my Sennheiser HD600 from my skull.
Legendary for their neutral, correct and pleasant sound, comfort, effectively forever durability, and being affordable to boot.
I can plug them to current or 40 year old hardware, and they do work. I use them with Topping DX3 Pro+[0] today.
It is no wonder they want us to instead adopt something active, crippled with bluetooth latency and dependent on lossy codecs, with a non-serviceable battery built-in.
Because it's a freaking pain to connect them, obviously! In my experience they work well enough once you have, but consider the experience of "plugging them into a different device".
Barely any devices support being paired with more than one central. So you have to tediously disconnect with the first device in some shitty menu (e.g. on Android the UI is not at all clear), then maybe put it into pairing mode (again usually though some terrible UI because manufacturers think pairing is a rare operation) and then finally pair it on the other device.
Absolutely ridiculous. Oh and what's the Bluetooth equivalent of a headphone splitter? Auracast? It's taken decades to get that and basically nothing supports it.
I do use Bluetooth things and I think the sound quality and reliability can be very good (if you're lucky), but the connection process is miles worse than plugging in a wire.
I mean yeah - generally wired devices are better in every way… except for the inconvenience of needing to be tethered to your device during use.
My default is always to buy wired devices, and only consider wireless in situations where the convenience specifically outweighs the downsides - wireless earbuds while exercising or working outside, or while traveling light to listen to a podcast or work at a cafe.
The rest of the time? Wired keyboard, wired mouse, wired headphones, wired controller, wire microphone, etc etc etc.
There's a much simpler explanation. I regularly see boomers with wireless "earpod" type earphones out and about. They're not cool any more.
Fashion is fickle and it's best to not pay any attention to it. Choose the right tool for the job. Sometimes wireless is better, like when running, sometimes wired is better, like doing serious listening in a quiet environment.
It's fashionable. Some famous people have been seen with visible wires, therefore everyone needs wires.
All these arguments here about technological superiority are quaint but miss the point. People in the wider world don't have the same concerns the people of HN have here, they're following icons.
As soon as they started talking about celebrities and it being a fashion statement they lost me on this being a real resurgence.
For about a month we had videos of people getting in fist fights over fucking Stanley tumblers of all things, those stupid Labubus popped off too, and God knows how many other things come and go in like a month. Unless theirs a sustained long term resurgence in the market, it's probably just another tiktok fad.
There are two tiers of bluetooth devices. There are the Apple and Samsung devices (and Bose and other high-end brands), which just work. Then there are the rest, which are terrible.
This isn't a Vinyl vs CD thing where a clearly inferior technology lives on due mainly to sentimental reasons. There are a number of concrete advantages to wired headphones over bluetooth headphones.
- They don't need charging. Charging may seem like a minor inconvenience, and we're used to charging a lot of devices. However, even a minor inconvenience is still an inconvenience.
- They're harder to lose. When Apple almost immediately started selling accessories to connect their airpods together (i.e. Cables), it was pretty obvious that going completely cordless was not entirely superior.
- For an equivalent price point, wired headphones produce higher quality audio, and the top-end is a lot deeper.
- Wired cans don't need to pair, don't glitch out, don't become laggy, pair with the wrong device, etc.. Bluetooth was never really meant for use as an audio connection, and it's never really become 100% foolproof. With Apple's proclivity for proprietary standards, I'm amazed they (or others) haven't rolled their own wireless audio standard by now.
Too many android phones copied Apple and ditched the venerable audio jack, but a few kept it, and I've always insisted on it when buying phones. It's old but far from obsolete.
- they last forever. I still have sennheiser hd380 pro cans from 25 years ago that sound great.
- cannot overstate lack of lag and simplicity. You plug in and it works, perfectly, every time, forever.
- easily switch devices. I use my headphone on my phone, tablet, laptop, Synthesizer, Groovebox etc without a blink. And my phone never stops playing music and connects to our car my wife just started the way bluetooth ones do :-)
- to me, it's like email. Icq, aim, msn messenger come and go, yet email is old and boring but survives.
There's absolutely a time and place for wireless headphones and I probably use them more at this point. But killing 3.5mm from phones has been a Massive annoyance.
It is worth pointing out that not all parts age equally well. The cushions especially are not that durable and should be considered consumables.
Sennheiser provides replacements should you need them. The effect they have on the sound is much bigger than you might think.
> Sennheiser provides replacements should you need them.
Not anymore for my old 380 pro. Had to settle for aftermarket versions that feel a little softer but also sound a bit different.
I bought the official ear pad replacements for my PXC450 back when those were available, for 1/4 of what the headset cost. They are so terrible that I stopped using the headphones entirely. I lost faith in Sennheiser after that, now I just use cheaper ear buds.
I bought the $21.99 Chinese replacement “Sennheiser” pads from Amazon. Straightforward to replace (though not trivial). Very comfortable. My headset feels as good as new.
I've had to replace the pads on my Sony 7506 cans as well. I was very impressed with the parts that can be replaced on these cans. The packing includes an exploded diagram of the parts.
I love my 7506s. And I have a recurring event on my calendar to remind me to buy new pads every 2 years. That's almost exactly how long they last. I've tried 3 brands and they've all lasted almost exactly 2 years. The original Sony pads also lasted 2 years.
I have some Sony cans that have lasted for over a decade and multiple third party suppliers have made the foam pieces easy to procure.
Yeah the sound stage definitely gets impacted. I tend to use leather cups in the winter and fabric ones in the summer. Nothing worse than sweating from your temples while you work.
A friend worked at sennheiser about 15 years ago and I took advantage of his cost-price deal on a pair of HD700. They are, without a doubt, the best sounding and most comforted cans I've ever used. Now, I treated them badly, throwing them into ruck sacks etc, and eventually one of the transducers failed. I contacted Sennheiser who charged me €140 to "repair" them... They sent me a brand new set with the thick silver core cable (I never sent mine back so now I have two, and those cost over 100 bucks by themselves)
How do they compare to Bose QuietComfort?
- sorry just kidding. I couldn‘t resist.
> they last forever
Until my cat finds them.
Any serious set of wired headphones better have replaceable wires because apparently they are delicious
Any cable, I tell you ... any cable. Ruined multiple USB cables, and almost went through two Laptop charger cable.
Replaceable cables have always been a high priority for me. I've been using SHURE SE215 for almost 2 decades at this point.
Ehh I'm not considering it a dealbreaker. Easy to splice and fix 3.5mm. Donors found at thrift stores or in your drawer (or remaining length of undamaged wire).
> There's absolutely a time and place for wireless headphones and I probably use them more at this point.
I've had a pair of Sony MD-7506s ever since I assisted in an analog recording studio, years ago. 7506s were the standard then, not sure about now. I am on my 5th set of cushion replacements.
A few years ago I bought a high-ish quality bluetooth adapter I can put in my pocket and walk around. The one I bought is the Boltune BT-BA001. Looks like they are only $30 on eBay now, but there may be better ones out there. That little box is probably my most used piece of inexpensive electronics.
I’ve used many pairs of wired headphones over the years, cheap and expensive, and never had ones with a cable that didn’t eventually fail, unless they mostly stay plugged into a single device.
The article prominently highlights mobile usage, in which case wireless headphones easily win on longevity.
I think it’s maybe close to a wash between non-replaceable batteries in wireless headphones dying and cords failing, in my experience at least. The ideal case IMO is over-ear headphones that have a replaceable cord—I have some 14 year old Bose QCs and some newer Beyerdynamics, both of which I’ve replaced the cord on.
Have batteries actually ever FAILED in wireless headphones? Sure, they degrade and charge becomes lower, but I've never had them outright fail. A headphone that lasts my 2-3 hours of commute/daily use is completely useable, even if it's original charge lasted 5 hours.
Cables do fail though, completely. They become unusable.
In my entire life time of using headphones/earbuds since school with the PSP, ALL wired options have failed after 1-2 years for purely mechanical cable reasons. Not a single wireless failed for electronic reasons. The did fail for me dropping them and stepping on them reasons, though.
My sennheiser earbuds are now down to 15 minutes of battery life. Less if it's a cold day. Sure, they're not completely dead yet, but they're effectively useless. And it's not like I can easily replace the batteries. Most wired earbuds or headphones at a similar price point have replaceable cables.
My daughter had to replace the LiPo battery in her headphones twice after they would not charge at all.
I bought a pair of Philips headphones with a replaceable cord. Instead the jack became loose.
I’ve been using Bluetooth wireless headphones exclusively when I’m portable since 2006 (Sony Ericsson HBH-DS970 represent), with only wired use at a desk and I’ve never looked back.
All my corded headphones lasted at most 2 years of mobile use. My QC35s are still going strong. Wired sucks for mobile use. And if the cord doesn’t go, the 3.5mm socket does. I replaced multiple sockets on my iPod and iPhone 3g. That replacement process sucks.
What are you doing that destroys cables and jacks like that? I use wired earbuds while riding my bike and I've never broken a jack, and the one time I broke the cable was because I made a mistake and dropped them while riding, which got them tangled up in the spokes.
The difference is I can easily fix a broken cable.
Of course you can get the Fairbuds which have replaceable batteries.
Hopefully more Bluetooth headphone companies follow suit. Maybe we can even get a standardized battery.
I've used tons of wired as well. Maybe have bad one pair fail at the wire? I'm super active with them too. Snowboarding with them and my Sony g shock in 1998. Lots of cycling and running usage. You've had every single pair of wired headphones fail for you? Every single pair?
> my Sony g shock
What is a "Sony g shock" if you don't mind? I know Casio's G-Shock and Sony's Sports series... did you mix them by chance as I suppose or is there a Sony range I'm not aware of?
Haha whoops, I totally conflated the two! The Sony Atrac3Plus had a feature called "G Protection". It was the only "anti skip" cd player that I tried that actually worked really well back then.
I also exaggerated the year a bit. After looking it up, I think this cd player came out in 2004!
Most high end headphones have a replaceable cable. What have you tried on the expensive end of the spectrum?
Not even high-end nowadays, you really have to scrape the bottom of the barrel for something with a nonreplaceable cable. Even for iems.
Same here. Wired headphones never lasted anywhere near as long for me as wireless ones. Any with inline controls were especially prone to failure.
It depends on how you treat them. Some people burn through them like nothing. I have some 20 year old earpods still.
or in my experience active use can damage the headphone jack, which is much, much worse
Cord failure is definitely a problem, but if you’re moderately capable with a soldering iron, it’s easy to repair the cord if the failure is away from the headphone side. It’s even fairly easy to replace an 8mm or 0.25” jack.
Your soldering skill (and sense of adventure) would have to be far better than mine to even consider doing that for wireless earbuds.
The few times I've tried to solder headphone wire I've been defeated because the wire isn't wire, it's some kind of copper and synthetic fiber weave, that the solder just won't adhere to.
It's an unbelievably thin stranded wire, but the wires are coated so they can be in contact with each other without shorting. It's all twisted around a thin thread of cotton or nylon to add strength, then then encased in it's sheath.
The trick is to gently scrape the stranded wire with a blade for the solder to stick and to make a good connection.
I've repaired a few headphone wires; theyre usually thin copper wires covered with enamel insulation. Burn off the insulation with a blob of solder, or sand it off, and the solder will stick.
You’re right, the kind of cable often used is not easy to solder. This makes it hard to solder a broken cable together again, or to replace a broken / bent plug. So best replace the entire cable and its plug — it’s still an inexpensive part.
You’ll need to solder it to the contacts inside the can, but that’s quite straightforward.
In case the internal cable that goes from one can to the other breaks, you can replace it with any bit of audio cable so you can use one that’s easy to solder.
I’ve repaired many pairs of wired headphones over the years, as electronic repairs go they’re very simple. The same can’t be said for the wireless ones.
Plus, the more high end ones come with repleceable cables.
Absolutely, As I said, it comes down to personal usage, needs, preferences. I personally never lost a cable (I did need to replace the earpads, but that happened on both Bluetooth and wired:). I do tend to use connected wireless earbuds when I go jogging etc.
For me it was worse, the headphone port on my phones always eventually failed. Maybe these rich people replace phones too quickly to experience that.
I use wired at home, where I'm not cycling the connection very much.
One of the key features (for me) of my Sennheiser HD 600 was the replaceable cables. Plugs at both ends of the cable.
I LOVED my Grado headphones but destroyed three pairs of them and was soldering my own ends on the cables over and over.
I have not had an issue with any wires wearing out anywhere since my walkman headphones in the 90s.
There are lots of wired headphones out there with replaceable cables
Honestly though you can get the best of both worlds.
I impulse bought some over-the-ear headphones at the airport when I realized I had forgotten mine that do bluetooth, but can also use an audio cable when the battery dies.
When using wired the audio quality is much better.
Let’s critically think about this for just a second. Your concern doesn’t appear to be with the audio, isn’t it with the connector? That’s a whole different argument than what we’re talking about
Isn’t it the wire that failed, not the audio part of it? So why not do what I did? You put some JB weld across that bend in the wire, which is cheap and could probably be engineered to last a lot longer… now I have headphones that last a really long time. You could also get a better connector and simply put that on there, right?
Yeah for me the main sell of wireless is mobility/freedom of movement.
I can use them while charging my phone or working out. Can play a video while cooking and moving around the kitchen. Or while watching TV/playing a game in the TV where a cable can’t reach.
However when static I used wired. That’s mostly when on the computer, but like many people here I am assuming that’s a good part of the day.
I prefer wired ones, mostly playing devil’s advocate here.
Every pair of cheaper earphones or earbuds I’ve had fail have failed due to the cable.
We switched my oldest to a pair of BT headphones because he seems incapable of keeping track of the cord. It gets caught, he pulls, and something has to give. Longest lasting set he had in 2025 was BT.
Going cheap is the problem here, good earbuds and headphones have replaceable cables.
I'm the same way as your oldest, if I'm up and moving around while wearing earbuds/IEMs I run the cable through my shirt.
Expensive headphones have much higher quality cables...
Same. Either the jack fails or the one of the buds stops working or the cable on one side of the buds gets cut somehow.
I got wired headphones after repeatedly losing airpods falling out of my ears onto the floor of planes. I like to sleep with my headphones in falling asleep to audiobooks, and I'm a side-sleeper so airpods would rub on the pillow and get lost in the seat machinery.
Wired headphones at least if they fall out are still connected to a rope to get them back!
For sleep a wired pillow speaker works great, the advantage being there is nothing to fall out of your ears, and you can isolate the sound so only you hear it through the pillow: https://www.amazon.com/Crane-Company-PS2-SoftSpeaker-Speaker...
For airplanes, Bose or Sony both have noise-canceling wireless headphones in over-ear format with battery life over 18 hours. I wouldn't try to side-sleep in either one, but the relative quiet on aircraft is wonderful, especially if you find yourself on a turboprop.
They also lack any and all useful features. Even just the ability to tap for pause is critical to my daily life.
I just wonder if wired fans just never skip forward a song, or adjust the volume. Or even use active noise canceling.
Many wired headphones have a little control thingy with buttons on the wire. Four pin aux connectors support control signals. If your headphones have a detachable aux cable I suppose you can just replace it with cable with controls.
The touch functionality is useful until it isn't. My Pixel Buds will activate touch controls randomly and unnecessarily all the time when I'm trying to use them in bed, from the contact with the pillow or sheets. Drives me nuts.
But also, I don't think it's either/or for most people. I use both wired and wireless headphones all the time depending on the use case. Wired sounds far better and is more reliable, wireless is more mobile. Different use cases.
You are right, in the past we never skipped a song or adjusted volume, just went with what came out of the factory and what was playing at the time. Those buttons on the device itself were for show.
Hah, just shows how out of touch I am. Has ANC disappeared as a wired earphone feature? I keep meaning to shop for a new all-purpose pair with ANC, duplex audio, and either USB-C input or an adapter for that. But, I keep procrastinating. I don't have any headphones that work with my phone since the analog port disappeared.
I can point to the shelf with my Sony wired ANC ear buds, which I bought years ago specifically for ANC during air travel, in the era when I would use my iPod and later an iPod Nano. The ones I have are the second pair, bought after the first was accidentally left on a plane. I think they were different product generations, a few years apart. These are so old, they are purely stereo headphones. Microphones for duplex audio hadn't become pervasive yet.
These stick in my ear with little silicon flanges and have a part that sits outside with the microphone. Then there is a small control module sitting at the junction of left and right ear wires, which holds a AAA battery and has a power switch and a pass-through audio button (which always seemed more gimmick than utility to me). In their active mode, they also don't demand much of the source device.
Tons of wired headphones have little controllers on them to change songs and pause.
> I just wonder if wired fans just never skip forward a song, or adjust the volume.
This has been a thing in wired headphones since at least 2007 lol
Other advantages: for music production, wired studio headphones don't have lag - also wired with mic is crucial for video games for same reason
by definition you're literally within 2 feet of the device playing the music; how hard is it to use your device to do any of that and more?
if the phone is in your pants pocket then its fairly trivial to change the volume just by using the buttons on the phone
even some of the cheapest in-line remotes that only have a single button will let you change the track by double tapping it
if you dont have an in-line remote then theres also the option of using a key remapper app (probably not on iphone) to let you change track by long pressing the volume buttons
I bought a tiny lapel clip Bluetooth receiver that has buttons and a headphone socket. Charge over USB, pair with phone, turn any headphones into Bluetooth. If the battery runs out, plug the headphones straight into the phone.
However, the noise cancelling gap is real. I'd kill for wired IEMs with an inline battery + buttons, and noise cancelling mic & circuit in the earpieces.
Closest is the Sony cans, which have wired mode (ie: they have a tiny jack, so you can use them passively) but I don't think they cancel noise when using them that way
I have some Sony headphones from a decade ago with a detachable cable. Noise cancellation works just fine when wired, and you get better battery life since the Bluetooth part isn’t active. The only time you can’t use noise cancellation is when it’s charging (Micro-USB, doesn’t do audio over USB in case you were wondering).
Re: noise canceling... recently got a pair of IEMs (Etymotic ER2XR) with good foam tips and their isolation blows away any ANC I've ever tried. The only thing is noise from touching the cable but that was solved with some ear hooks to put the cables behind my ears.
Yeah, Etymotic headphones were my go-to for probably a decade. Passive noise suppression was wonderful for public transport.
The utility has dropped tremendously though, now that headphone jacks have disappeared.
Would love to have a pair of "direct-USB-C" Etymotics.
Qudelix 5k (portable dac/amp) has weak anc / passthrough mode, only in Bluetooth mode.
Probably an exaggeration? But I hope that tapping for pause isn't critical for anyone's daily life.
I use wireless headphones and in fact never use this feature (I have it disabled). Too unreliable when there's a large screen with a big pause and skip button within reach.
Or ever do anything in parallel with listening. I’ve been working in my garden and went to a shed that’s like 15 meters away from my home only to notice that I’ve forgotten to take my phone with me - music never stopped.
I use a pocket for this scenario.
but it WILL cut out if you go far enough. wired headsets wont
That was solved long ago with invention of pockets.
I just tap a button on the thing the headphones are plugged into. The cable isn't so long that it's ever out of reach.
Many wired headphones have buttons and wheels too. We've been adjusting things via them for so long lol.
Many have a small box on the cord with those controls, and you could argue that's handier since it's closer to where your hands naturally are at any given moment.
> they last forever
Sadly have to disagree. I use Beyerdynamic though where you can order parts to repair em yourself, which i already did.
[edit] cannot recommend their wireless stuff produced in China, the worst i ever had. The big corded cans are still manufactured in Germany.
Those hd380’s will last your lifetime. Almost like Sony’s MDR-7506 if you can keep it from getting sat on.
100% this. I have had the MDR-7506 since my DJ days about 30 years ago. These are by no means expensive headphones, but compared even to much more higher-end Bluetooth headphones they can easily hold their own. They have good depth and are well balanced. They are just about indestructible, only requiring the occasional pads replacement. Probably one of the best purchases I ever made
Relationships come and go but MDR-7605’s are for life!
I work with a lot of audio in a professional capacity. You're correct if you're saying that neither tech is universally "teh best".
And you're correct that wired phones have a lot of advantages.
Tack on that they don't have latency, though I've never really tried to track vocals on wireless cans. I have a pretty nice collection of what I consider to be quality mid-tier stuff for my studio (hd280, dt770, mdr7506, k240), and I think they mostly sound better and I can use them longer than I can use the various wireless stuff I use.
And the "real" UHF wireless audio I use professionally (well, to collect rather than listen to audio) is very reliable and good sounding but also, like, $1000/ch once it's cased and cabled and properly accessorized.
However, for almost all of my day to day listening I use either airpods or a some bluetooth'd 3M ear muffs. I even went back to airpods after going through both wired and other wireless solutions.
I don't enjoy having my in-ears ripped out along with my pocket. And universally the cord ends and the physical connector on my phone are the weak spots that have had me replace stuff- I haven't bought a phone in the 5 years since I got one that could charge wirelessly and never has phones plugged into it, and I don't intend to get another one any time soon (knock on wood that my case keeps the screen from breaking and needing me to repair it).
I have a bluetooth receiver with an analog out that I keep in my workbox, which I used for program music at a show tonight. It's nice to start my truck and my podcast just starts playing, too, without having to get out my phone and plug it in.
You're right that wired stuff is better for some things. I still find wireless stuff to be superior in a lot of situations.
> Tack on that they don't have latency, though I've never really tried to track vocals on wireless cans
The truth is that the OS usually hides the latency of wireless heapdhones, e.g. airpods, by delaying video to keep it in sync. The real latency is somewhere around 100-400ms if the RF environment is crowded. Even worse is that the latency isn't actually constant, but drifts all the time.
At many IT conferences organized by hackspaces, everything is done by volunteers, including broadcast and video/audio postproduction. And that is actually one of the most common issues: our volunteers use wireless headphones even if we ask them repeatedly not to.
We cut talks in postproduction primarily based on audio, e.g., when does the applause start/end, when does the speaker's introduction start/end, etc. Obviously, that doesn't work reliably if the audio latency is nondeterministic.
Even worse, as different venues have different audio setups, there are sometimes real audio/video sync issues that need to be fixed. But if our volunteers are using wireless headphones, they won't just set the wrong offset, but they end up trying to fix issues that don't even exist.
And then you get complaints from viewers that e.g. the livestream audio/video is out of sync, even though it's not. The issue turns out to be caused by the viewer's laptop and wireless headphones not supporting the latency compensation technique I explained earlier. And there's nothing we can do about that.
Wireless headphones tried to fix something that wasn't broken, and made it worse. In German, we'd call that "verschlimmbessern".
> The truth is that the OS usually hides the latency of wireless heapdhones, e.g. airpods, by delaying video to keep it in sync.
Right, but that only works when you control both. I love my Sony and Shure Bluetooth headphones and have 0 issues watching videos with them; they work great even on Linux.
But when people figure they're gonna use BT headsets for conferencing, it just turns into a shitshow of people waiting for the other to speak, then starting to speak at the same time.
I have an old Jabra headset for my video call needs, and it uses DECT. That thing has so little latency that I can use it to play FPS games without issues (I'm by no means a competitve player, so YMMV). At the same time, its range is huuuge. For the life of me, I cannot understand why nobody makes such headsets anymore: they've all switched to BT for some reason. The only models that seem to still use some form of low-latency transmission are some "gamer" models, but I've never tried one.
ugh the most annoying thing about the conversation clash latency is that the person causing the issue just thinks others are being weirdly rude.
wireless headphones externalize the cost of latency to other conference participants. if you think your airbuds are "perfectly fine" it's because you're not the one paying the cost.
I have some Asus gamer earbuds with a dongle for a proprietary BT alternative: zero perceptible latency.
> Wireless headphones tried to fix something that wasn't broken, and made it worse.
I think you are going to far here.
Do wireless headphones have problems? Sure. Did they fix some problems wired headphones had? Yes. Yes, they did.
Simply the ability of moving around without having to worry about the cable getting tangled or dragging the headphones or the phone is phenomenal. My wireless headphones are a lot more reliable than my previous wired ones. Somehow the cable and the connector was always the source of failures.
Do you not like wireless headphones? Don’t buy them. I will keep buying wireless headphones because they have clear benefits to me in my usage.
I find it insulting that you represent your preference as some universal truth.
Do you have a German word for ignoring the things the person you’re replying to liked about a given thing?
Most of this thread is already exploring the consumer perspective, and as the previous poster said they couldn't talk about the professional perspective, I chose to only focus on the production/broadcast angle in my comment.
Fair enough. There are plenty of reasons why I don't have professional experience monitoring over BT wireless, which you lay out well.
Though I've been working with writing software for esp32 and so that might change in the next month or so.
Produktivegesprach
> bluetooth'd 3M ear muffs.
How do you rate those?
I made my own, but they sucked balls. I have some Plantronic cans which have ~10db nrr, but they are falling apart now, and I'm looking for alternatives with decent NRR
Well, I have had them for about 2 years and would buy them again.
To be clear, these are for noise protection and are heavy. They are big enough that I have another pair of muffs for shooting rifles and some ($$) molded westone earplugs for working on loud stages.
I mostly use the 3m when I am running a chainsaw or driving vehicles with the windows down (I find that too damn loud for my tastes). For a while I'd track drums with them over my shure se215, but I've started playing quieter and have found that something like an HD280 cuts stuff down enough to track drums while feeling more comfortable.
On one hand, they are kind of expensive, bulky, and the mic isn't great. Also their "ambient sound" is not anywhere near as loud or controllable as the muffs I use for shooting. On the other hand, they pair well, sound okay, have a lot of noise reduction, and they seem pretty rugged. They run on AAs and Battery life is pretty good, too.
Oooo AA batteries? fuckyeah
Nothing like two weeks of my podcasts getting interruped every half hour by a voice saying "battery low"... :D
OTOH, with Bluetooth headphones I can stand from my desk and stretch, or rest my eyes focusing on something while standing next to the window — without interrupting whatever I'm listening to.
I can also freely move around the house while listening to music or any podcast. Carrying my laptop around would hardly be convenient.
I do have a pair of wired headphones which I rarely use. My laptop has ended up on the floor twice due to me standing and forgetting about the cable. I almost broke the plug another time when I stood up and they were still plugged to the desktop. As someone who's grown up with the comfort of wireless headphones, using wired headphones is like wearing headphones with an anchor.
Honestly, I hate dealing with cables, even more having cables wrapped around me. I can't imagine being out on the street and having cables wrapped around me, connected to the phone in my bag or pocket, while trying to move around or use my arms in the usual way.
I think a big part of the reason is that there is only one wireless option -Bluetooth- and it is a terrible product from a user experience perspective. It's 2026 and I still can't move through my world with earbuds in without my audio randomly switching to my wife's car in the driveway or our Bluetooth speaker that is on upstairs.
> only one wireless option -Bluetooth- and it is a terrible product from a user experience perspective
That’s an implementation problem, not a technology problem. iPhone with AirPods here - your scenario just does not happen. There’s even an option for “yes be stupid and connect to my car even when I’m in the middle of a phone call” if you really want to use it…
No, it happens even with AirPods Pro/Pro2.
I have two iPhones and a MBP. I have to keep Bluetooth disabled on the MacBook otherwise it randomly triggers while I'm between podcasts or whatever and squeeze the AirPods to resume, instead it launches Apple Music, or some browser tab starts playing audio.
This is far from solved if you have more than one Apple device.
There is no option for me to say: never use AirPods for anything but podcasts, and absolutely never automatically select them as an audio source for zoom/teams. AirPods microphones just don't work for my vocal range, they sound horrible and underwater. The microphone on my MBP works great, the mic on my iPhones works great.
AirPods are fine if you only ever use one device at a time. If you use more than one at the same time, it becomes extremely annoying.
Let's not even get into the annoying ways which it becomes hard to manage when you have multiple AirPods, multiple iPhones, and multiple MacBooks.
If a spec is regularly implement poorly, the spec is the problem.
> ...your scenario just does not happen.
It happens to us all of the time.
My partner is on a conference call, I hop in the car to go run an errand. Suddenly I'm on a conference call.
My partner is in the kitchen listening to a podcast, I hop in our other car and suddenly I'm listening to a podcast.
My partner is sitting in the car having a driveway moment, I arrive home with the other car and now I'm having her driveway moment.
My partner is on a conference call at her desk and picks up her phone to respond to a message and then you hear "shit shit shit, hold on a moment!" and then frantic typing and clicking.
* They don't need charging, but you will hear static regularly when attaching/detaching/touching things. Also, they pick up RF interference (TBF, BT ones also drop packets in RF-noisy environments, but they seem to be more resistant to it)
* They are harder to lose, but the ones with non-detachable cords need repairing the cord if it rips, which happens frequently. Never happened with BT headsets I own.
* For BT headphones with detachable cord I agree, that BT channel reduces quality slightly, compared to cord on the same device. It's not as bad as vinyl/tape, though. You have a chance to notice it on lossless. but not regular MP3s.
* Wired don't need to pair, but need your awareness of the current relation between the cord and your body and surroundings, otherwise you will be constantly re-attaching them, or ripping cords. They don't glitch or lag, but pick static and RF.
Wireless is really convenient, if you can afford headphones that last a full day, or a pair of them to switch between and don't have many sources of sound to play to the same headset, even at different times. There are own standards that skip BT and use analog RF to skip the lag and drops (with a dongle), but they too have the issue with RF interference. You either can have digital with lag and rare drops, or instantaneous analog with frequent noise without drops.
> (TBF, BT ones also drop packets in RF-noisy environments, but they seem to be more resistant to it)
I've experienced the opposite. The microwave will knock out my bluetooth completely, but the wired headphones are solid but in a decade of using both wired and wireless headphones I've never heard anything weird or staticy through the wired ones. My wired headphones were the Shure SE215, and now after a decade of using those they broke, so I have the Kiwi Ears Belle.
Vinyls are not necessarily the inferior technology. Given the choice, I'd prefer to play vinyl in some cases. In social settings vinyl's short length and need to be flipped creates a dynamic social environment. Someone has to regularly choose new music to play, acting with intent to do so. Someone has to regularly walk to the machine. These create dynamism and flow. CDs are much longer, and less tactile. There's less of the my turn your turn, who is going to flip the thing.
They sound worse, if clarity is your goal. And they are huge and wear out. I agree with you 99%, I just wanted to point out that across some dimensions they are the superior technology.
This is like saying “Candles are superior to lightbulbs because they burn out quicker and thats an advantage in some situations”.
I’m not sure how, its an aesthetic choice but an inferior technology by every metric that counts.
Candles still have a place, we still buy them, but we can’t reasonably call them superior either- even if, candles actually would have a real advantage of not requiring power. Vinyl doesn’t even have that.
Instead of "Candles are a superior way to light a room" you can say "Candles are a superior way to create a romantic vibe in a room".
Candles/Vinyl can be superior if you clarify the metric you're optimizing for.
I’m sure somebody posted a link to E-Prime here recently (a form of English where all forms of ‘to be’ are forbidden) and this conversation is a wonderful example of the kinds of conflicts that it helps avoid.
Just so.
The advantages of vinyl are basically making up for lack of self-discipline in humans. (I much prefer vinyl for that precise reason!)
a) Since putting it on becomes more of a ritual - handling the album carefully, brushing off lint, placing the needle &c - I find I make more of an effort to actually _listen_ to the music I put on. I could listen as intently to Spotify or Tidal, too - but, alas, I most often don't.
b) Seeing as you'll get some 20-odd minutes of music before having to make another choice - be it playing the other side or another album entirely - it enforces having to decide on what you'd like to listen to, rather than just letting your streaming service of choice play things it thinks you may like. (That being said, streaming services are a great way to explore new music!)
c) Given the economics of streaming, buying physical media helps both the record stores - a good one is like an excellent library, in which the librarians give you all sorts of curated recommendations for things you may like, in addition to being great social meeting places with like-minded folk - and performing artists alive; I've no idea how many hours I would have to listen to an artist on Spotify before the payout is equal to their takeout from a single vinyl sale...
d) Besides, it is cosy.
That being said, you could easily DSP CDs or streaming to sound like vinyl if that's your idea of fun - just about any playback format is superior sonically to vinyl. However, to many, it is the whole ritual of putting on a record which basically makes it worth the sonic tradeoffs... (Call me a luddite if you like!)
In a similar vein, vinyl records make the unit of music an album, and I like it in situations where the artist has created "an album" rather than "a collection of ten-ish tracks".
I listen to most of my music on phones or computers and when I do, I like to pick out a track at a time or put together a playlist or just shuffle the whole damn thing.
When I purchase or put on a record, it's because I think the album is a cohesive work and I want to listen to it as a piece; the constrained format created the concept of an album, and using it enforces listening to the music as an album.
> In a similar vein, vinyl records make the unit of music an album, and I like it in situations where the artist has created "an album" rather than "a collection of ten-ish tracks".
I don't see how this is different between a record and a CD.
The killer feature of CD players is shuffling and skipping tracks.
Heck, it used to be all the rage to get a three or five CD changer and shuffle the whole thing, comfortable unpredictability, forty or fifty songs you like but never knowing which is next.
You could likewise just listen to an album on your phone, in order, but it's too easy to let your distraction kick in and switch it halfway through.
As someone who grew up during the transition, the killer feature of the CD was amazing audio quality and the lack of degradation from every playback. The period where we started finding albums marked "DDD", for fully digital production, was also amazing.
It saddens me a little that, in spite of all the technology, actual Hi-Fi listening seems to have become less accessible or prevalent. I'm still not sure how much this is really for the commonly stated reason of convenience, and how much that is really cope and denial of a bigger socio-economic decline. I.e. it simply isn't as realistic for regular people to have a Hi-Fi listening space...
Anecdotally, I don't think hi-fi's decline has to do with cost - at least not cost alone. You can still get a more than decent system which will fit most living rooms for quite reasonable money - I just had a look at prices at a national retailer's website here in Norway, and you can get a pair of decent bookshelf speakers and a stereo amp delivering 2x60W into 8 ohms, built-in streaming support and a HDMI input to ease connection to the TV, covering the most common use cases nowadays, for less than $1,000.
For comparison, median income after taxes is approx. $50,000 a year, so we're looking at less than a week's net wages.
I think it is more likely that our media consumption habits have changed - when I was a kid in the eighties, a few - like, the bank branch manager, the dentist and a few others - had a VCR at home. The rest of us had TVs, meaning we watched what was on at the time, or (once in a while) rented a VCR and a movie.
That aside, our media choices were radio, going to the cinema (not very often!) or - drumroll - recorded music.
Hence everybody had stereos. I believe my parents were quite typical - when I was a toddler, they bought a number of LPs with radio dramas for kids on them, music for kids &c - the stereo was basically the entertainment hub.
Today my family and I - wife and three kids aged 10, 12 and 16 - have between us, let's see, 2xTVs, a 40" and an 85", the latter with a 5.1 system attached, both with Apple TVs, a stereo (making us an outlier!), three ipads, three smartphones, two dumbphones, a handful of radios, three - oops, four - laptops, a PlayStation, a couple of Nintendo Switches...
There's basically so many more options to spend our media time on, and at the same time there's way more leisure activities aimed at kids now than when I was a kid, so the kids are barely at home during the week (at least it feels that way!), leaving less time (methinks) for media consumption than only a generation ago, while at the same time having many more options.
So - basically, for many, only a generation ago, the stereo was the entertainment hub and you were kind of expected to have one. Nowadays the entertainment hub is some kind of internet-connected device, and a stereo is a niche product.
There's one (related) difference - an LP can hold approx. 45 minutes of music, a CD can hold 80-ish (The original spec called for 74, but I think the most I've seen on a single disc is 82-ish minutes).
Unless an artist is very disciplined, that means what would be a decent album at 40 minutes worth of music in LP days would be half an album today.
Again, this is a shortcoming in people, not in the medium itself - after all, a stellar 40-minute album can be released on CD, too.
I have heard expressed many times, though, the expectation that a CD should be 'full' in order to be a proper product - or, for that matter, the artist can be less severe in the cutting room, seeing as 'Oh, we've got room for that one, too ...'
I'd much rather have a condensed album which is mostly great than the same songs mixed with as many tunes which ought have been left in the archives pending a 'Collector's edition', 'Complete outtakes' or similar.
Then again (again!), at least a CD lets you skip the filler and listen only to the good stuff - at the risk of losing some of the recording artist's vision. Which, again, is a matter of (lacking) self-discipline. The LP raises the bar for skipping songs, hence forcing us weak souls (I count myself among them!) to listen to the full work, as the artist intended.
Or, at least as the artist intended before 'new release' meant uploading a new song to streaming services, making the album - as a somewhat cohesive collection of songs - a niche product.
Apropos nothing, the latest album I bought is a CD which arrived in the mail today, and it clocks in at 55 minutes and 20 seconds. Picked up a handful of LPs last week, though.
Additionally, vinyl has two sides. So you get this lead in and end track on both sides. The flow is different.
That's very succinctly-put. Well done.
Rather less-succinctly: I never got into vinyl and have never owned a turntable that wasn't built down to a price. I do still have my shelves of CDs, and it keeps slowly expanding. I usually listen to Spotify because it is convenient and portable and -- these days -- lossless.
But my sister and her old man have put together a quite decent stereo system with a mix of vintage and modern gear in recent years, and also started a a rather serious vinyl collection. While there's certainly no romance there on my end, it's a lovely and deeply-involving experience to hang out with them in their tiny little city-dweller living room and spin records into the wee hours; sometimes for just one track, and sometimes for entire albums.
I definitely prefer the way my own stereo, which I've built over the course of decades, sounds. It's detailed and big and it does all the things; it is by all technical measures very superior. But we have a lot more fun listening to vinyl at their place than we have playing CDs and Spotify at my place. The process -- and indeed, the inconvenience -- of playing vinyl makes it all much more visceral.
The metric being house fires
You have to look beyond the audio engineering on this one.
Using constrained mediums on purpose is often how the best artistic expression is achieved. For example, if the artist knows their channel is noisy and band-limited they can get a lot more liberal with the kinds of samples they use throughout. CD/SACD is kind of like 4K for television. The medium becomes so transparent that it causes upstream shocks in every other part of the process. You can no longer rely on the camera or audio chain to cover it up (unless you hobble yourself intentionally).
> Using constrained mediums on purpose is often how the best artistic expression is achieved
Artistic expression is not technology. Vinyl is strictly inferior as technology. That doesn't imply that it cannot have any advantages at all, but that wasn't the point being made.
> Artistic expression is not technology.
Technology is sometimes used by artists to express themselves. Sometimes that means lo-fi recordings of your music on a shit tape recorder when better tools ate around. Sometimes it means pressing vinyls.
With this logic you can argue the best audio medium is dirt because if you made good music with dirt, the music must have been so incredible to have counteracted the flaws of dirt as a medium. Ignore the fact that dirt cannot be used as a music medium. (Vacuous truth)
Early Motown records were tracked in a room which had a dirt floor.
Yes, but your "IF" is doing the heavy lifting here and it would be your burden to proof how dirt would be a means of artistic expression before anybody could take your argument seriously.
As a musician myself I can assure you that the high stakes releases for any musician are vinyl releases. They also happen to be the ones with which most musicians earn the most money.
Now technologically vinyl isn't superior (and anybody who claims it is is an idiot in the sense of the word), but technology isn't everything. A noisy casette tape can evoke the same (and sometimes more) feelings than the digital recording. A vinyl record with a big cover, an inlay with band info, that you specifically chose to put on the record player while reading the liner notes and examining the design is in a ritualistic sense a thousand times more gratifying than having spotify select a song for you without knowing why, in the background of the daily life. That is like the difference between a candle light bath and getting wet in a rainshower.
Now that doesn't mean people will be binary either 100% vinyl or 100% digital. Vinyl is for the special occasion or for DJ sets, digital is for everything else.
Yes that's my point with the "if"! And in general I largely agree with you.
The parent comment basically argued vinyl is superior because when artists used vinyl the resulting music was creatively better (because of whatever process). Sure, but then you can't selectively ignore the great music that has been made with other recording technologies. I can point to a lot of good music recorded on tape or digital. Unless we are arguing that music back in the vinyl days was broadly better than now? (Different argument then...)
As for artistic choices, I totally agree that vinyl can be a valid choice! Then it's silly to say one thing is "better" than another.
But in terms of raw technology, I say it's just copium to claim vinyl is in any way superior to digital. Digital's recording capabilities are a superset of vinyl's. There is no magic sauce killer feature unique to vinyl.
> There is no magic sauce killer feature unique to vinyl.
Old-school DJing! Imagine carefully positioning the laser on a CD...
Adressing your points:
Music may have been a bigger culturual force during the heights of vinyl record sales. Whether that translated to better music or whether it is some form of survivorship bias: I don't know. In fact I doubt it. But there is something to the music that happened when it was new, e.g. Punk music was better when everybody was still trying to figure out what is punk and what isn't, while today it feels like most bands just copy was has been made in the past. You can extrapolate the same idea to many other genres that developed. So was the music better on average? Probably not. Was it more exiting and had more impact on society, fashion, culture? For sure.
As for vinyl: I agree that digital is superior in terms of sound quality. Nearly every vinyl record is pressed from a digital master nowadays after all. Even those who want "vinyl warmth" could have that easily emulated in digital nowadays. Digital is endlessly flexible, you could theoretically envision (and some have done) a vinyl experience that is purely digital under the hood – or you could do whatever netflix is doing.
But in practise vinyl comes with the experience, forces you to do the ritual, to listen to the whole album, is immensly direct (just the waveform pressed into the material) etc. This is a limitation if vinyl is all you have, but in times where you could listen to 10 nameless streams of sounds at once for the whole day that limitation has become a popular feature. I have friends with pressing plants and all of them have more job offers than they could realistically fulfill for years now.
I'd advice against too easily dismissing the value of the ritual a technological dispositif forces onto the people interacting with said technology. Listening to a vinyl record in a time where people rarely ever sit down and just listen to music in a concentrated way is a thing people look for. Those who say it is because vinyl is technically superior are wrong, but the limitations and the listening habits a technology enforces are unseparably a part of the technology itself. And if you are looking for what vinyl gives you, vinyl is the thing that gives it to you best.
I have huge nostalgia for older analog audio and photo formats for many many reasons. I also don't really miss them. Had a lot of fun and memories with vinyl and processing B&W film in a darkroom--also shot a lot of slides--but you can't go home again and all that.
> Digital is endlessly flexible
Not really. Analog electronic instruments are based on non-linear feedbacks loops. Those are pretty much impossible to emulate digitally without emulating actual electric circuits and current flow.
(Yes, I know, irrelevant to the vinyl discussion.)
I used to think that, and indeed a computer can run any equations you want. However with analogue you're getting a bunch of interesting-sounding equations without having to think of them and write them down, and that's the "analogue sound." Analogue circuitry isn't a perfect math processor the way digital is, only an approximation, and the deviations from perfection are useful.
Especially if you get into synths. A digital sine wave oscillator is doing sin(time*frequency)*gain. An analogue one is designed to produce a close to perfect sine wave at a certain set point, but you make it able to be varied around that set point by replacing some of the components with adjustable ones in somewhat ad-hoc ways, and see what it sounds like. The frequency may be set by a 3-stage RC circuit, you replace all the Rs with vactrols and see what happens, now the impedance changes as well as the frequency and it might affect other parts of the circuit. You may one-point calibrate it to 1 volt per octave but it won't be linear.
I'm convinced that at least 90% of "analog sound" can be simulated by taking the ideal block diagram and replacing every link with a parametric EQ->waveshaper->parametric EQ chain. Configuring those added components correctly is left as an exercise for the reader.
Jim Lill's video on guitar amp tone is an interesting demonstration. Hear how close he gets to the original with an even simpler combination of EQ and distortion:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcBEOcPtlYk
No, you can't argue that the best medium is dirt. Just like you can't argue that the best medium is vinyl.
But you could maybe argue that there are advantages to dirt (at least a hypothetical dirt which can be used as a musical medium somehow) which you lose by going to CD or vinyl. If this hypothetical dirt managed to be constraining in such a way that it produces kinds of musical works which would not have been produced for CD, is that not an advantage?
A CD is 100% technologically capable of having the duration and physical size of a vinyl.
A return to laserdiscs (with CD or BluRay technology and information density) would be wild.
> CD/SACD is kind of like 4K for television.
In theory. In practice most stuff is distorted and compressed to death and might as well be 12-bit ;)
Reminds me of the Autechre album Tri Repetae which was labelled as “Complete with surface noise” on vinyl and “Incomplete without surface noise” on CD.
If they really wanted to do so, they could take the vinyl, play it with all the surface noise they wanted, and record that to CD so they could have the surface noise there, too.
It would be the same surface noise each time, not getting worse.
We need a new consumer audio format with the ability to contain playback algorithms! :P
> It would be the same surface noise each time, not getting worse.
Interestingly, not always getting "worse".
A large portion of vinyl surface noise comes from static rather than groove wear.
So you can zap it with a little petzo-electric gun and it goes away again. At least for a little while.
Candles are pleasant light, in a way difficult to acquire with other lighting types. That means there's a niche in which that facet is more valuable than the other technologies.
I had candles at my dinner table last Thursday, and am likely to do so date night tonight... but the bulbs I turn off to give the candles reign are LED...
I think we can agree that vinyl sounds different than CD, right? Is it so hard to believe that some people actually prefer the sound of music on vinyl? For such a person, that might be the only metric that matters.
But, another example: when I was growing up (dating myself here), cassette tapes were superior to CDs in the only way that mattered (to me): they didn't skip in my portable music player (walkman) when I took them running.
The sound of vinyl is a subset of the sound of CD. If you take a high quality recording of a vinyl record playback and write it to CD, it will sound identical.
Okay, sure. But if I prefer the subset of CD sound that is the same as vinyl, and my favorite band comes out with a new album... I just buy vinyl, right?
Or are you suggesting that I buy the record, a blank CD, and all of the high quality recording playback equipment I need to write it to that CD?
Really deep bassnotes can't be reproced by vinyl. The grooves would get too wide IIRC, it's a physical limitation.
Vinyl isn't about technology it is about musicality, art and taste. If you try to explain and reduce vinyl to something technically, you are leaving out the most important part, the artful content that will be enjoyed from it.
RAM shortages will never make vinyl more expensive. Anything digital requires a CPU to work.
AMPs: am I a joke to you?
RAM prices are such an infinitesimally small component cost of digital audio equipment that I can’t take you seriously here.
It was a stretch, so you're right to not take me seriously.
I imagine any large about of RAM in audio equipment would strictly be for devices/functions that buffer large amounts of data as opposed to just decoding it.
An old Akai S1000 sampler I had a long time ago had slots for memory modules (some weird proprietary slot IIRC), but that was a musical instrument, not really a player of any kind.
Candles are better than lightbulbs at melting the ends of frayed nylon strings and ropes. :)
And at PM2.5 and VOC output.
> advantage of not requiring power. Vinyl doesn’t even have that.
well actually...
Really good analogy!
I would argue that vinyl sounds better thanks to the Loudness War[0]. CD is technically superior and should sound better but it's been compressed to hell and back during mastering in ways that vinyl simply can't be due to physical limitations. All that wonderful technology and they can't simply let it be so we get good sound quality.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war
But that has nothing to do with the technology per-se. You could recreate this by just having CDs that don’t use all their space for music and having more of them, if the goal is dynamism. It’s a restriction, not a benefit. You could do the same exact thing with an iPod with playlists that are shorter, and not auto playing after the playlist ends.
For me the fact that vinyl discs wear out is their decisive disadvantage.
Many decades ago, those who bought vinyl and desired adequate audio quality never listened to vinyl discs, but they copied them immediately to magnetic tapes and always listened only to the tapes, keeping the vinyl discs only as a master source, to avoid wearing them out.
I mean, yes they do wear out but the rate is pretty slow if you look after them. I have some of my father’s old early LPs and they still sound pretty good.
You can get rid of a surprising amount of surface noise with a static gun and a line contact stylus (where shape is close to that of a cutting head so you get the biggest contact patch).
I think most people only copied to cassette if they want to use a Walkman, play it in the car or give a copy to a friend. It generally wasn’t for sound quality.
He said tape not cassette. Tape would mean real to real tape in this context - cassette doesn't make sense. Tape can be wider than cassette, only two tracks, and run faster - all give you a lot better sound quality. Not as good as a good digital system and it costs more but still very good.
I actually still have an old Grundig reel to reel somewhere, although I can't claim it as ever really hifi.
I would stand by recording to reel to reel tape for quality being even less common recording to cassette tape.
Quality domestic reel to reel decks were just not that widely owned here. Maybe it was different where you lived.
Vinyl is for plebs, hiring troubadours for your party is the way.
Please recommend a troubadour who knows the Neat Records, Guardian Records n' Tapes and Heavy Metal Records singles catalogues and I'm sold :)
Known repertoire is a function of BAC only.
Any media that is actively damaged during every use is inferior.
The best meals I've ever had were damaged by their use, and many were quite artistic.
Not if you see it from an artistic perspective.
There’s always one.
And latency!! Anything that needs to be real time is impossible without wired headphones. Even the lowest latency wireless is noticeable.
Not trying to argue against your point, but most of the Bluetooth latency comes from the codec, not from it being wireless. Bluetooth LE Audio comes with LC3 which supports a codec latency of as little as 2.5 ms.
This is the big one for me, I hate all that lag with bluetooth, signal interference, and constantly wondering which device my headphones have connected to. So much easier for so many reasons, with a wire!
I’ve been using AirPods on audio and video calls for many years now, and I notice no latency. Same with my bluetooth mouse.
Try using them to play a twitchy game and you'll notice.
Real time covers a lot of different things, and have a lot of different solutions.
Do you mean real time like games? “Wireless” headsets are perfectly fine and usable. Real time audio? Wireless transmitters and receivers exist and are used (granted with wireless in-ears but IMO that’s mostly so the don’t fall out) at the absolute highest level of audio production and live events.
You definitely can’t just say wireless isn’t used for real time.
I think we are talking about Bluetooth devices/use cases within the consumer world.
Real time audio exists for sure. But it doesn't use Bluetooth, and nobody here cares about it, not to mention the amount of investment needed for equipment.
This is just being pedantic.
The wireless used for pro audio is never bluetooth, however.
Oh absolutely. The wireless for gaming headsets isn’t Bluetooth either. If your argument is Bluetooth isn’t suitable for real time, I’m on board - I’d even go further and say Bluetooth isn’t suitable for anything other than fire and forget.
Gaming headsets are usually 2.4GHz wireless, and pro audio stuff is ~500-800MHz and the proper stuff requires a wireless license to use.
> They don't need charging.
This is it. I have a lot of wireless headphones and every time I need to use one, it isn't charged. It's very exhausting and I don't want to deal with that. So I use them as wired headphone if possible, or dump them in the discard pile if not.
Why do you have a lot? I have one pair of AirPods and I don’t think it’s ever gone flat on me. I have to charge it less than once a week and it gives me a long notice period before.
Not the op but for me - Different headphones for different purposes.
For convenience and casual on the go listening, or to not annoy anybody, I'll use earbuds or light headphones.
If I really want to enjoy music I'll take the big ol' cans (circimaural open-back), lie back, and enjoy the music fully. Etc.
(And I'm extremely not an audiophile! But big roomy headphones are super comfy and sound super nice to me :).
If I'm on zoom calls all day I want something lightweight but with a boom microphone (massive Grrrr! To everybody joining meetings with airpods).
etc. I'm an extreme example but I have a few different boom-mic headsets in my home office for work, gaming headphones, running around headphones, and listening to music headphones. All of that at a teeny fraction of price people used to spend on basic entry level home hifi setup.
I just hate the move to wireless for things that don't need to be wireless and having to constantly keep things charged. I got so frustrated with my $100 magic mouse at work a few weeks ago that its now in a drawer and I'm using a $10 POS Dell mouse. My wireless mac keyboard just has the wire permanantly plugged in. And wireless headphones? I've never gone down that road, and never will. I bought a handfull of the $10 Apple 3.5mm to lightning adapter because I lose them frequently, and when I'm eventually forced to upgrade to a phone with USB-C, I'll buy a handfull of the 3.5mm to USB-C adapters.
> This isn't a Vinyl vs CD thing where a clearly inferior technology lives on due mainly to sentimental reasons.
"Half of Vinyl Buyers in the US Don’t Have a Record Player, New Study Shows":
* https://consequence.net/2023/04/half-vinyl-buyers-record-pla...
Seems that people are buying records not to listen to, but to use an 'art object', or other type of artefact to publicly show their like and support of the artist(s) in question.
A lot of people buy vinyls for the albums art.
I'd say buy a poster instead, but it just now occurs to me that they're likely not displaying them full-time, and the LP has the advantages of being a uniform size and made of stiff cardboard for easy storage and retrieval.
So I guess it actually makes sense.
Also you get reliable sound quality. The DACs in the iPhones were always decent. Now you have no idea what kind of quality you're going to get from a given listening device. Plenty of them are noisy POSes; my girlfriend had a Belkin adapter that had automatic gain (!) and would ramp up to blast hiss through the car stereo during quiet segments... and sometimes even during non-quiet ones.
The phones will always have to have DACs in them, to drive their speakers if nothing else. Denying customers a physical connection to them is just a dick move.
Bluetooth also opens your devices up to spying/tracking/monitoring/hacking/fingerprinting.
Here are some lesser known facts about wired headphones that I wish I had known earlier:
- there are TRS (3 rings) and TRRS (4 rings) connectors
- TRRS has integrated mic, also ofen implements playback control via buttons
- Apple headphones volume controls won't work on non-apple devices, because they implement a proprietary protocol based in an ultrasonic chirp authentication chip[1]
- 1more headphones seem to have implemented this auth protocol, but it does not work reliably
- Headphone remotes on apple devices have tap codes (in my opinion a huge benefit), that can be used to
- The same tap codes are also implemented on hardware buttons (e.g. iPod) - while fast forward and rewind only work for devices iPod Nano 6th or later (iPod Classic 2009 only has next and prev)- Apples USB-C 3.5 Adapters work with Android and iPhones and all headphones, Android does only implement play/pause and volume
- headphones remotes are fundamentally broken on Android because Google reserves longpress (button hold) for voiceover
- there are also balanced (often 4.4mm) outputs for much higher quality, often used in high res daps from fiio or shanling, etc
1: https://tinymicros.com/wiki/Apple_iPod_Remote_Protocol
i use an android app called keymapper (by sds100) that lets you remap the volume buttons so that a long press will change the track.
my wired earbuds only have 1 button on the in-line remote but the app can detect the button being pressed whether its a single, double tap or long press, and you can just assign whatever you want to them
Technically TRS only has one ring (Tip Ring Sleeve) and TRRS only has two rings (Tip Ring Ring Sleeve). It does have four separate contacts though, separated by bands.
That's correct... I meant this more visually :-)
I occasionally use wireless, but 90% of the time I prefer wired for this reason. Reliable, simple, harder to lose, no charging, easier to connect. I just done think the wires are a problem for me, sometimes a benefit, sometimes a mild inconvenience.
Longevity! The headphones I have on me are 15 years old. Batteries degrade quickly, especially in consumer products that does everything in their power to boost the spec sheet but sacrifice longevity.
The 3.5mm audio jack is pretty close to engineering perfection on the important dimensions: cheap, fast, and good.
Getting rid of it in favor of Bluetooth-only audio connectivity is creating a problem to sell you a (more expensive, less reliable, less time-tested) solution.
I compared the mic quality of Airpods Pro 2, Airpods 4 ANC (similar), and freebie Apple 3.5mm wired earbuds. The earbuds won. My limited research suggested either 1) compression and transmission take a lot of power, so the Airpods don't do as good of a job as something with a bigger battery can afford to, 2) the mic position is worse, or 3) Bluetooth doesn't have enough bi-directional bandwidth for two good signals.
I tested this and based on my testing it’s (3). The AirPods microphone actually gets (slightly) better in quality if you don’t play something through the speakers while using it. Even then the 3.5mm ones were better tho
4) The Bluetooth standard is just kinda bad. Technically there should be enough bandwidth for better quality audio, but the existing profiles like headset mode drop audio quality down to 8-16 kHz sampling rate in mono, not just for mic but for audio you're listening to as well. It's a huge flaw and it's been bad for decades with seemingly no improvement at all (at least certainly not in a way that could be widespread and commonly used).
It's so bad you'd almost wish for a brand new wireless connectivity or wireless audio standard, or even resort to some proprietary 2.4 GHz nonsense, because it's genuinely so horrid. You could have the best most expensive headphones in the world, but because of Bluetooth and its ancient profiles and mic support it's gonna have baseline absolute garbage mic quality no matter what.
> - They don't need charging. Charging may seem like a minor inconvenience, and we're used to charging a lot of devices. However, even a minor inconvenience is still an inconvenience.
I’ve always found it more convenient to keep the headphones plugged in when I’m not using them then when I am. The cord is not going to get tangled when it’s not attached to my body, and aren’t going to unplug themselves sitting on a shelf. Different strokes though.
They have no latency, which is essential for gaming.
I have a AirPods Pro. But I also travel a lot and I have a pair of $60 Beats Flex that have a 12 hour battery life and if they fall out, they just fall around my neck. I also bought a third party pair of double flange ear tips that are better noise cancelling for flights than my AirPods.
Pairing has been a solved problem for decade now with Apple devices. I pair my AirPods Pro or Beats with one Apple device by pressing a button and they are automatically paired with my iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, Mac and AppleTV and switch seamlessly between them.
Bluetooth was never meant to be used as an audio connection? While the original standard didn’t support A2DP, it was a part of the standard in 2003?
All Apple headphones support standard BT protocols.
> I have a pair of $60 Beats Flex that have a 12 hour battery life and if they fall out, they just fall around my neck.
Exactly!! After losing an airpod into the depths of a Polaris seat and another one having to beg the guy behind me to find it on the floor I gave up my airpods for flights it was so annoying how often they fall out.
- no latency. They’re actually usable when playing video games.
I agree but stuck with Apple ecosystem. I like the cheap wired lightning headphones they do. The audio quality is acceptable on public transit, they’re cheap enough to lose and the mic is surprisingly good. Weirdly if Apple stopped making these I would jump ship for an Android phone with 3.5mm.
But you have wired earpods, both lightning and usb-3. I cannot be happier with those for my iphone and ipad, resp.
My bad, meant USBC - used to have Lightning
> It's old but far from obsolete.
Apple themselves know this. Every MacBook, no matter how few ports it has and how “non-pro” it is, ships with a headphone jack.
I've yet to find a set of Bluetooth headphones or earbuds that don't have a level of background hiss that I can hear.
Particularly for spoken word, it's annoying and distracting.
I actually keep an old pair of (good) noise canceling ear buds for travel. Even with retainers I don't really like using my Bluetooth AirPods on a plane. Aha, located them for an upcoming trip.
Analog formats are clearly inferior to digital ones, but analog speakers are superior to digital ones?
Digital speakers don’t exist. No matter how the signal gets there, the end result is wiggling air in an analog process.
> Wired cans don't need to pair, don't glitch out
Cables can wear out. You can get a wire break.
All good wired headphones and earbuds (“IEMs”) have replaceable cables. And the ones that don’t are super cheap.
I once had a wire break in the cable that goes from the left can to the right can (not the external cable).
Wired headphones are infinitely more durable when good. I had a single pair of Sennheiser HD25II for 16 years now and I use them to run 16km a week, often in the rain.
What annoys me the most is that the industry collectively decided that 3.5mm jacks are obselete, removing the option of using wired headphones, for no(?) good reason. We could at least agree that wired and wireless each have their own pros and cons, but no, we're shoehorned into wireless because corporate decided it. Here, you must use <NEW TECH> simply because we said so! It's just the peak of trend following bullshittery and represents a lot of what is wrong with capitalist society.
> removing the option of using wired headphones
I am personally a fan of wired headphones with USB-C connectors. I am only ever going to use it with my phone, laptop, or desktop anyways - and all of they have at least one USB-C port.
In theory it could also be the best option for audio quality: if you move the DAC all the way to the headphone itself you minimize the length of the analog chain, which should also reduce the possibility for it to pick up any kind of noise or interference. Additionally, the DAC can be perfectly tuned to compensate for any imperfections in the headset itself, which should result in a better audio output than a random 3.5mm headphone paired with a random external DAC.
The obvious downsides are that you lose any kind of influence on the audio signal itself by forcing you to use a specific DAC, that the integrated DAC is yet another component which can break and be basically impossible to replace, and that a 3.5mm plug is far less likely to break than a USB-C one.
On the absolutely high end you probably want headphone and DAC separate, but for a Teams call or some casual on-the-go Spotify a fully integrated mid-tier headset / headphone seems to be the better option to me.
i have a headset that does all three, 3.5mm, usb-c and bluetooth and i usually go with usb-c when using them with a laptop or desktop.
im not sure using them with a phone would be good in the long run, especially when you are moving around a lot more with the phone in your pocket. the usb-c connection isnt as tight as 3.5mm so its going to put a lot of strain on the usb-c port. if that goes on a phone youre in big trouble
i don't know what i'm doing wrong but my mac has terrible time recognizing any USB-C headphones. First, it takes a while to recognize, then it never switches over by default so i often end up blasting on speakers if i forget that it's oh, USB-C headphones. Same confusion on Zoom. At the same time, Mac's 3.5mm just works, instantly.
But i realize that it might be hard to have 3.5mm on phones due to insane amount of size optimizations on these sophisticated devices we kind of take for granted by now.
Got recommendations for good USB-C wired headphones?
I don’t find wireless (AirPods) all that convenient, so when they inevitably die of battery illness I’d like a pair that won’t suffer the same fate.
JBL Tune is what I have. I wouldn't call them amazing, but the USB-C connection is super useful. You never pair, you never charge, you can't lose them, and even if you did, they are cheap.
The only real downside is lack of ANC, and the wires can transmit some mechanical noise if it rubs on your clothing. I just have a little lapel clip (from my old Etymotics) to stop them moving.
The newer Beyerdynamic models have detachable cables. They sell USB-C cables which i have not used but i am very content with the three out of the four pairs of cans i own by them. The pair i dislike are wireless ones. If you want em for music on the go i'd recommend the DT 700 Pro X.
> that the integrated DAC is yet another component which can break and be basically impossible to replace
Meh. If you want your headphones to last for ages, you could go just a bit higher end and get a pair with a replaceable cable. Then you can just swap the cable with the integrated DAC, regular 3.5 mm jack, or whatever.
I used to have a lightning cable for my Shure IEMs, worked great until the cable developed the usual problems around the connector, just like your regular analog cables. I then bought a BT adapter for the same headphones and never looked back. I've had them for 15-16 years now, still work as good as new. The BT dongle is something like 6 years old, and the battery still holds a good charge.
My adapter is a bit of a pain nowadays since it's the last thing I have that uses micro-USB for charging. I hear Shure has released newer adapters with USB C and no wires at all. But that's too expensive to replace something that still just works.
> Here, you must use <NEW TECH> simply because we said so!
Because the integrated battery adds an expiration date to a device that could otherwise last decades if maintained properly.
Same as Apple tightly coupling the iMac screen with the Mac's software support cycle even though nothing would stop them from just adding, say, a USB-C port that can act as video input.
With the trend of computing devices getting more baseline capable but the functionality/usability not improving at the same rate, I do wonder what the endgame will look like. Will we have a reversion to more efficient, durable designs? Or will we end up with absurdly large computing power in every device to counteract the horrible software rot? Phones with 100+ CPUs? Smart fridges with 1TB RAM? (The latter is kinda scary, imagine rewriting all software in Python - we could easily piss away 1000x hardware performance for no functionality gained.)
Macs overall are only 10% of Apple’s revenue and with 70-80% of those being laptops and the other 20% being split among Mac Mini’s, iMacs and Mac Studios, what does you think are the chances of Apple spending time optimizing iMac sells?
> Macs overall are only 10% of Apple’s revenue
"Only" $43 billion in revenue is more than 95% of corporations achieved.
Apple is pretending to be eco-friendly and using that as excuse to ship fewer chargers, for example. If they can optimize the same Mac's packaging to use paper that's folded in all kinds of fancy ways, they can add a tiny bit of functionality to an existing port. You can't tell me Apple isn't able to care about small details, because they absolutely do when they want and not only when it's about revenue.
Apples revenue was $416 billion. Let’s say $41 billion came from Macs and assume 20% of that was from all of the desktops that’s $8.2 billion from iMacs, Mac Studios (more expensive), and Mac Minis (more popular). It’s not too far fetched to estimate about $2 billion from iMac sales or less
What's interesting is that Apple was the one responsible for removing the jack from their phones but they've stubbornly kept them on all their computers.
The only port in common between a 2015 Intel Macbook Pro and a 2026 Macbook Neo is the 3.5mm headphone jack. But also, the only port in common between a 2015 Intel Macbook Pro and a 1991 Powerbook 100 is the 3.5mm headphone jack.
Because the MacBook isn’t particularly short on space. The MacBook neo appears to have massive blank space blocks where the speakers are.
The 3.5mm jack is fine, there isn’t any need to replace it on the MacBook where you can afford to have both. On the iPhone it makes more sense to use the usb c for audio.
That hasn't stopped them from periodic stalinist redesigns in an attempt to purge other ports from their machines. But the audio jack always survives.
I'm guessing there are some key "user journeys" for scientific / industrial customer base, that involve using 3.5mm jack for something other than audio signal, and said customers would probably sooner change hardware suppliers than deal with dongles and all the problems of introducing USB into the signal path.
There is an adapter 3.5mm jack to USB-C which works great, so from my perspective there is no option removed.
I keep the adapter with my wired headphones (which I bought many years ago), and I did not encounter any issue (falling, heavy, etc.), it's just a slightly longer wire and a couple of euros spent to buy it.
Can't use a power bank at the same time.
You can with a data splitter. I haven't seen any power banks with that integrated which is a weird miss for an obvious product feature.
> we're shoehorned into wireless because corporate decided it.
You can still buy such phones. You need to take the brand loyalty blinders off first.
It was the solution to the "analog loophole" "problem". The idea of the "loophole" is that the hole must be plugged shut to eliminate piracy.
Not true, since Bluetooth to 3.5mm adapters exist, and they've long given up on full-assing audio DRM anyway.
When the internal non replaceable battery dies the product dies; that's also one reason to prefer wired over wireless. I wrote product instead of headphones because the principle is applicable to every product whose battery can't be replaced by design. All those discarded single use vapes are a good example of that, and... surprise! All of them actually contain rechargeable cells but no recharging circuitry and port, the reason being that rechargeable Lithium cells are much cheaper than primary non rechargeable ones because of economies of scale. Just another example of greed being so damn efficient at producing e-waste.
it will be interesting to see what the consensus is 50 years from now when people have more hindsight on this. how long will a wireless headset last until the battery no longer holds a charge, and if its only something like 10 years then that means someone is having to buy 4 or 5 headsets over the course of their whole life instead of 1 or 2 cheaper wired headsets
theres also the issue of whether the wireless protocols that are in use now will still be supported in 50 years. removing the headphone jack from phones was mostly just a money grab to force people to buy wireless headsets so i wouldnt be surprised to see other tactics in the future where support is dropped for older versions of bluetooth, or whatever gives them a slight uptick in sales
I also prefer open-back over-the-ears and there just aren't many wireless options for that.
Another point you missed, the microphones also have better quality, they don't get all the surrounding noises as most wireless ones.
Yep, Bluetooth just sucks. I don't use it for anything, and it's disabled on my phone.
I always try to use wired mouse and keyboard and headset at a PC for this reason. Charging. 0 reason to use wireless.
For mobile devices I can understand it and do use it.
All valid points, but I don’t miss having a tangle of wire in my pocket or that wire failing after a couple of months meaning I have to get a new set of headphones.
I have a set of IEMs that I bought at least 8 years ago, and they still work fine. And the wire is even replaceable, though I haven't needed to do so.
If your wired headphones are only lasting a couple months, then likely you're buying at a price point where quality suffers.
Agree with the tangle of wire, though.
I solved the tangle issue going on years now with this: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07Z8G6VH4?ref_=ppx_hzsearch_conn_...
You accustom to the wrap-unwrap motion and then that's it.
I'm looking for long lasting iems myself -- the bunny ears that I recently bought had the cables die on me pretty fast. What are your recs ?
Anything from Etymotic never failed me. The current ER3 SE has been going for 7 years, and the cable is replaceable (when/if it fails — they're still on the original cable).
All Etys have a peculiar love/hate neutral sound profile, so you should try them before committing to them. I exclusively listen to podcasts, so they're a perfect match.
I have the Shure SE215 which has a replaceable cable.
I also have a pair of Shure IEMs, some 15-16 years old. They still work great, but I've been through at least 2 cables with them, plus an additional 3rd party Lightning cable. I've then switched to BT and couldn't be happier.
Yeah, paying a tad bit more for earphones with replaceable cables pays dividends. A cable doesn't cost much, and you also get much better sound quality (which has to count, right? Since BT sound quality often comes as an argument).
I also have a pair of these and they sound really good. Then I received a pair of the Shure Aonic 4s for Christmas one year and those sound amazing. As an added bonus, the passive noise isolation with proper fitting eartips beats any noise cancellation I've ever seen.
I've replaced wires of my main headphone 2 times over 10+ years. 40 dollars for something I use 8 hours a day, not too bad.
Honestly I don't find these days bluetooth to a mobile device that bad.
However, some of the other devices in my home are absolute crap with bluetooth headphones, particularly my windows desktop and my steam deck.
> However, even a minor inconvenience is still an inconvenience.
I do not miss spending 30 seconds untangling my headphones every time I used them nor do I miss trying to find clever ways to wind my headphones back up so as to minimize the likelihood of them becoming tangled. If someone solved this problem well I would use them, but putting my airpods on a charger once a week is a much lesser inconvenience IMHO.
>"Too many android phones copied Apple and ditched the venerable audio jack, but a few kept it, and I've always insisted on it when buying phones. It's old but far from obsolete"
Same here but I did not have a single phone that after a while did not develop a problem with quality of contact leading to problems with sound starting from mild and going to awful. It is better now after I started to use USB-C based headphones.
Wireless - way too much overhead for me to manage. The only wireless audio I really use is Cardo headset when riding my EUC
Sentimental sure but there’s also a lot of music that was never properly remastered for digital so the vinyl distribution does in fact sound better.
I live this site - down votes even though it’s 100% true. There are TONS of old recordings that don’t even have masters anymore and the digital versions are ripped from a vinyl copy. There’s entire communities around this.
FWIW, Bluetooth LE Audio [0] solves most of these problems in my experience. Battery life is way better, pairing is almost instant, you can connect to multiple devices simultaneously, the latency is almost imperceptible, etc. The sound quality is still worse than wired, but it's close enough that it doesn't bother me personally.
Very few headphones support BLE Audio, and you need to enable some experimental Bluez flags for it to work on Linux, but both of these should improve with time. But it makes such a huge difference that I'd argue that it's worth the effort, even right now.
[0]: https://www.bluetooth.com/learn-about-bluetooth/feature-enha...
Just to be clear the parent is still 100% correct that wired headphones: * Do not need charging * Are hard to lose. * Offer better audio * Never glitch out with pairing.
BLE Audio offers lower need for charging and better (but not equivalent) audio. So 2/4 are not as bad with BLE Audio (and arguably only 1 since you still need to charge). The other two 2/4 are related to the form factor. Wireless headphones have advantages but they are not the decisive winner.
Right, my point was just that "Bluetooth sucks" does not necessarily mean "wireless headphones suck", but since nearly all wireless headphones use Bluetooth Classic (or some proprietary analogue protocol), it can be hard to disentangle the two. But yeah, I agree no matter how good the protocol improvements are, wired is still better for some use cases.
Is BLE the only way for Bluetooth to have multiple connections? I'm no audiophile but in my experience, the audio quality noticeably drops when multiple devices are connected (I've only ever had at most two at a time). I reasoned out that the bits were being divided so `quality /= 2` as well. I've only ever done this accidentally so I can't be certain the connection was really over BLE.
Granted, I've only ever done multiple connections on Linux so maybe it's a Linux problem.
> Is BLE the only way for Bluetooth to have multiple connections?
I think (?) that it's possible with Classic Bluetooth too, but like everything else with Classic Bluetooth, it's kinda buggy and unreliable.
> I'm no audiophile but in my experience, the audio quality noticeably drops when multiple devices are connected (I've only ever had at most two at a time).
I haven't personally noticed any audio quality difference with two devices connected over BLE, but I've never tried to play audio simultaneously from two sources. My phone and my laptop both auto-connect to my headphones, so I usually have two devices connected simultaneously, but I only ever play audio from one at a time.
> you can connect to multiple devices simultaneously
I don't want to connect to multiple devices. I want to select one device and be 100% certain that it's switched to that device as a source. Even with 100% Apple devices this is not perfectly reliable with bluetooth.
Putting the cable in another audio jack makes it physically impossible that the audio comes from the wrong source or to the wrong output device. And it is a lot more convenient than untangling the mess once the bluetooth devices get confused about what to do and requiring you to manually disable bluetooth at some devices just so it gets the message.
I wasn't able to find the answer on that page or with google, does bluetooth LE solve the dogshit quality when using the microphone?
Yes, you can simultaneously use full-quality source and sink (speaker and microphone) streams [0]. And from personal experience, this works exactly as you would expect.
As you've seen, the documentation on LE Audio is rather horrible. The Android documentation [1] is semi-useful even on other platforms, and the official book [2] is also helpful if you're willing to wade through a ton of dense technical details, but there's not really much else available on the internet. I've had to spend an annoying amount of time tracing stuff with Wireshark and reading through the specifications [3] (which are thankfully free) and the BlueZ source code [4] to figure stuff out.
(The poor documentation mostly only matters if you're trying to do something specific; LE Audio mostly "just works" on Android out-of-the-box and Linux after you change the single config setting from [0])
[0]: https://www.collabora.com/news-and-blog/blog/2025/11/24/impl...
[1]: https://developer.android.com/develop/connectivity/bluetooth...
[2]: https://www.bluetooth.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Introdu...
[3]: https://www.bluetooth.com/specifications/specs/
[4]: https://github.com/bluez/bluez/
In my experience, it's a significant improvement, but I wouldn't call it a solution. If non-LE drop in quality is like 1/10, with LE it's like 6/10.
I should point out that unlike the other reply I haven't really bothered researching it at all, I just upgraded from a non-LE pair to a LE pair recently.
> "Too many android phones copied Apple and ditched the venerable audio jack"
I understand this is a personal preference, but I never understood the anger some people had over the removal when it's as easy as just using a small USB-C to 3.5mm audio jack converter to use wired headphones.
>when it's as easy as just using a small USB-C to 3.5mm audio jack converter to use wired headphones.
As someone who uses wired earphones exclusively and must use those USB-C adapters you suggest, it's not quite "just as easy" because there are several problems:
- it's an extra $10 dongle to buy and potentially lose. I've lost several of them over the years
- adds more mechanical stress to the USB-C jack. The office Apple USB-C 3.5mm adapter protrudes out from the phone and I've had several close calls with the wire getting snagged on a door knob which can damage the USB-C port. I've never been comfortable with this Rube-Goldberg dongle contraption that adds more risk to damaging a $1000 phone. It's a fear I never had with the built-in 3.5mm jack on my old iPhone 5. There are 3rd-party right-angle USB-C to 3.5mm on Amazon (including magnetic ones) but the ones I tried interfere with phone cases and they don't sound as good. (Apparently Apple uses a more premium DAC chip in their USB-C adapter.)
- can't simultaneously charge the phone while listening unless you buy a different USB-C adapter that has both 3.5mm input and a USB-C passthrough charging port. These are bulkier.
- it's an extra dongle that's easy to forget. I once got on a transatlantic flight and realized that I forgot my USB-C earphone adapter at home. I panicked and dreaded the idea of nothing to listen to for 8 hours but I was luckily saved by a friend that didn't need to use hers and let me borrow it. Why can't I just leave the USB-C dongle connected to the 3.5mm 100% of the time so there's nothing to forget?!? Because I often need to connect the earphones to things that don't need the adapter.
With all those drawbacks, I still use the USB-C adapters because I have to. But it has definitely made life more complicated.
Because that small audio jack converter cannot drive my wired headphones, so now it's not a small dongle but another smartphone-sized gadget with usually another rechargeable battery, and at that point I might as well use my laptop as portable music player.
And if you ever held e.g. Apple's adapter in your hand you'll know how incredibly flimsy its cable is, and how such adapters easily act as levers to mechanically strain the USB-C port. There's a reason headphone jacks are robust - they were actually designed for use with audio devices in mind.
You really cannot see? The experience is vastly inferior: the required dongles have a huge list of annoyances, and you either cannot charge at the same time or have to use an ever more finicky splitting dongle.
Actually, no.
We know as a matter of fact that Android does NOT handle your audio properly when you transmit audio over USB-C then converter. It used to work fine with 3.5mm.
https://android.stackexchange.com/questions/250602/how-to-di...
And you could run into weird issues like this
https://support.google.com/pixelphone/thread/238773737/assis...
Which nobody needed to worry about.
I'm one of those person who were extremely pissed. I've stuck with older phones for a long time to avoid the thing.
The USB to Jack things are brittle and low quality. That's yet another stuff to not lose and carry around.
Jacks just work. If it ain't broken, don't fix it.
I tried the Apple one for a while but it’s badly shielded and picks up interference a lot. I mean really obvious buzzing sounds if near certain sources of RF. Switched to wired ear buds with a lightning connector and no interference issues. So I’m sad I can’t plug in my high quality headphones or hook up my phone to my mixer when I want without having noise.
I have bought probably two or three dozen different kinds of USB-C adaptors over the past few years, for old USB peripherals, for HDMI and display port, etc. They always last a few months then develop unreliable connectors and begin failing on any computer I try them with unless I baby the exact angle of the cable. There's something about USB-C that makes them particularly vulnerable to strain relief issues. Never had these kind of problems before with anything other than apple magsafe connectors. Certainly not from trusty old analogue jacks.
Curiously, I have had the exact opposite experience. Over the years I tried dozens of earbuds and headphones with a jack connection and all of them after a few months of use started getting unreliable connections unless I kept them at the right angle. The pair which lasted longer without issues costs around 180€ but still started showing problems after 2-3 years, though to be fair I left them almost always plugged in my pc. If I had used them with my phone I would've likely started experiencing connection issues much sooner.
The only other connection type I found to be even worse is microusb. I lost count over how many cables I had to change, some even after just a few months. On the other hand I neved had any problem with usb-c cables or peripherals.
Why would you want to carry around an additional dongle? It's just one more thing which you can forget and which can break.
If they replaced it with a second USB port, not simply removed the jack, there would be far fewer complaints.
Part of it is jack longevity. I've never had a headphone port die on me, but I have multiple old phones with dead lightning or USB-C ports...
I’ve had lots of them break. Sometimes the jack was only attached to the board via solder joints which eventually break from fatigue.
It's just one more thing to buy and lose. I know I own both Apple's lightning-to-3.5mm adapter and the USB-C-to-3.5mm. Right now, I know where my nice big-cans headphones are, but it's not with either adapter. I'm pretty such I know where my cheap wireless buds are. The lightning adapter should live in the same travel pouch, but I'm not 100% sure if it's there because I frequently use those with devices that have a 3.5mm jack, so they might have been separated. I know for a fact my USB-C-to-3.5mm adapter has been separated, and I've not seen it for over a year. I know it's in the house somewhere, so I certainly wouldn't buy another one (especially considering how infrequently I used it before), but I have no idea where it is and so if I did want to use my iPad with my nice headphones, I can't.
Contrast that to the simplicity with devices that still have a 3.5mm phone - my daily Android phone, my Macbook Air - I can just plug any old headphones in and not have to go searching for the adapter.
And despite the fact that I also own two bluetooth headphones, my wired big-cans headphones have far superior sound quality to either of them. I know it's not a fair comparison because they were well over $100 compared to $10 for the others, but I'm still limited to what I can use them with - which in my case is absolutely everything except my Apple kit (laptop excepted).
Can you charge the ohone while listening on the phone?
I have a splitter but it's pretty niche and probably not the best DAC
I've done that for years and it's a 'tax' for being allowed to use my actual headphones. Every single converter I've used will shit the bed after 6-12 months thanks to shitty cabling, and I've used both the official converters as well as third party ones. Eventually it becomes a fucking pain in the ass when it dies at an inconvenient time.
In comparison the headphones I've been using have lasted me for over 10+ years with no issue, and any decent high quality set of cans makes the 3.5mm cable easily replaceable.
> With Apple's proclivity for proprietary standards, I'm amazed they (or others) haven't rolled their own wireless audio standard by now.
Can you imagine Europe's reaction? They'd fine Apple to the moon -- no innovation allowed unless it interoperates with other products that don't exist yet.
> Can you imagine Europe's reaction?
And they'd be right to do so. The correct approach to creating a new standard is plan interoperability from the start. If a vendor plans lock in by introducing a new standard, they should get shut down immediately and told to do better.
That sounds like a way to not get any progress. The way I'm used to this sort of thing happening is some company brings in a new proprietary standard, makes bank, then all the competition bands together to form an open standard to try and stop them. There is a bit of a tick-tock feeling as consortiums use more open and accessible standards to slowly lever power away from incumbents.
It is interesting to just glance at the history of USB [0] through that lens was originally developed, and it is interesting to see that as I would have predicted the group of companies that developed USB (MS, IBM, Compaq, etc) seem to be disjoint from the companies listed as precursor technologies (looks like that was especially an Apple-led consortium of hardware manufacturers organised around firewire [1]).
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB#History
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_1394#Patent_consideration...
As your link shows, even if the IEEE 1394 promoted by Apple was technically superior to USB (mainly because IEEE 1394 had been derived from SCSI), it was killed by patents.
Many superior technologies have been killed by patents and the greediness of the patent owners has been futile and they gained very little from their patents, because people have always preferred something cheaper, even if less good, so the inferior USB has easily won against IEEE 1394.
The patent owners that hope to gain too much from their patents always forget that instead of paying a too big royalty it is always possible to circumvent the patent by using an alternative solution, even if that is inferior.
> The way I'm used to this sort of thing happening is some company brings in a new proprietary standard, makes bank, then all the competition bands together to form an open standard to try and stop them. There is a bit of a tick-tock feeling as consortiums use more open and accessible standards to slowly lever power away from incumbents.
And that leaves you with two standards (at least), non interoperable between them. In the case of hardware this can be really annoying, constraining and inefficient both for consumers and at large.
How likely is it that that can be avoided if, as in this context, the starting point is the current standard not being that great? It pretty much has to end in 2 different competing standards. Or there can be 2 different flavours of the existing standard which are quite likely to break interoperability and make reusing the name an annoyance rather than a help.
A downside of existing standards is it means it is quite hard to innovate on them.
It really is a damn shame that my Lightning connectors are all dead and useless despite being the empirically better connector because of Vestager's whinging and stupidity across the entire EU mobile ecosystem.
Lightning is not a better connector. It maxed out at USB 2 speeds and I needed separate bespoke adapters and chargers. I can now use standard USB C cords with everything, standard USB C headphones, connect my iPhone to my portable external monitor with the same USB C cable I use for my computer…
https://imgur.com/a/fIwsjIQ
And the iPhone supports all of the USB C standards that computers support - audio, video, mass storage, network, keyboard, mice etc
Side note: USB 3 Lightning did exist on iPad Pros.
Oh yes, Europe bad, regulation bad. Maybe add some nuance to your thinking.
> no innovation allowed unless it interoperates with other products that don't exist yet
Products that don't exist yet... so, future innovation? No innovation allowed unless it incentivises and streamlines further innovation? Count me in!
> interoperates with other products that don't exist yet.
Are you claiming no other wireless earphones exist other than apples'??
That would implement Apple's proprietary protocol. He thinks Europe would think Apple is creating a monopoly for themselves for iPhone headphones since no other company could implement the protocol without Apple's approval.
iPhones work with any BT headphones.
But other BT headphone manufacturers wouldn't be able to get the ultra low latency / sound quality / perfect device switching / etc.
This trend story about wired headphones is possibly a "submarine" story as Paul Graham calls it[1], like a headline that "Suits make a corporate comeback":
"The suit is back," it begins. Trend articles like this are almost always the work of PR firms. Once you know how to read them, it's straightforward to figure out who the client is. With trend stories, PR firms usually line up one or more "experts" to talk about the industry generally. In this case we get three: the NPD Group, the creative director of GQ, and a research director at Smith Barney. When you get to the end of the experts, look for the client. And bingo, there it is: The Men's Wearhouse.
[1] https://paulgraham.com/submarine.html
Possibly it's a paid for ad. But the trend is real, at least among Gen Z/Alphas. I recently modded an iPod Mini 2nd gen for my daughter and put Rockbox on it. The thing is amazing, and I am thinking about buying an iPod classic myself. The touch wheel interface is one of my favourite interfaces ever.
First off, you're a kickass parent, that's an awesome thing to do for your daughter. How easy is it to sync with music she wants to listen to? I haven't touched Rockbox in quite a while, but I imagine it's still expecting DRM-free audio files of some sort right? Other than bandcamp I can't think of any good source for finding some beyond ripping audio streams and organizing it yourself.
Amazon Music sells DRM-free MP3 files.
Qobuz too!
I’ve been thinking about doing this too! Would love to get back to maintaining a personal music collection on a dedicated mp3 player.
So who is the client? In all of the article’s photos of celebrities, they’re wearing Apple EarPods. Is Apple trying to convince people to buy their $19 EarPods instead of their $250 AirPods?
I agree. At the very least it's vastly overstating a real trend.
> Sales are through the roof in recent months.
OK, I'll follow the link here. It goes to an article titled "Wired Headphones Growth Is a Throwback to 2016"[1], already a far cry from "through the roof".
From that article we have this:
> After 5 years of sales declines, which culminated in a $42M drop in 2024, wired headphones rebounded in 2025, growing 3% (about $15M).
OK, great. So wired headphones are a little bit trendy after years of decline. And of course they have some real advantages as many people here are testifying.
But c'mon, "sales are exploding", "sales are through the roof". They're not through the roof, they did a little bounce when they hit the floor. OK, to be fair it also says "the trend really gained momentum in the second half of 2025, with sales surging 10% between July and December", so maybe it's getting some momentum, but let's not get so far ahead of ourselves.
[1] https://www.circana.com/post/wired-headphones-growth-is-a-th...
I saw one yesterday pointing out how phone cases are passé and "unnecessary" because of replacement plans.
This hyperbole is not really necessary on hackernews. Apple alone makes 20 billion on a single product: airpods.
This article notes 2025 saw a 3% increase of 15m. That means total sales are 0.5b, or 2.5% of Apple's airpods product.
In other words: tiny market with a growth in line with inflation after years of decline? Let's call that 'exploding sales' and farm some clicks.
Yes perhaps there is some newfound interest, but since bluetooth headsets took off they keep getting cheaper to buy, easier to pair and connect, longer lasting batteries, easier to find, smaller to pocket, more varied, more comfortable to wear, and with better noise-cancelling. Plus every year fewer devices carry the headphone jack.
It's on the way out, though it'll be a slow death. I have a pair of wired headphones, I prefer them on corporate laptops for meetings because corporate laptops suck with pairing. But that's about it.
Wired and wireless will always co-exist. Your casual consumer prefers wireless. Professional audio equipment for mixing and critical listening will never favor wireless over wired. For pros, $20-50 wired IEMs beat $250 Airpods every time.
The same applies to pro gamers. Latency and empty batteries are a big no-no.
> It's on the way out, though it'll be a slow death
At the very most, it's on its way out in the same way normal computers are on their way out for non-IT professionals. There are situations where wired is a must, not a preference (studios being the most obvious).
Aside from that, wired offers the highest sound quality possible, plug-and-play, and all at a lower price. Wireless headphones don't appear to even be trying to catch up.
When I'm watching movies or playing games, I find the lag jarring so plug in my wired ones every time.
Wired were deliberately killed by Apple in order for them to make that $20 billion. We should not celebrate billionaires making the world worse so they can make more money.
"Bluetooth does not work," Kravitz said in a recent interview, and it's not just headphones, but Bluetooth connections in general. "It's ruining important moments. Imagine the amount of times that you're with someone on a date, you're trying to set a vibe, and then you have to forget the network. On a date!"
The quote above makes absolutely zero sense to me, it's like ChatGPT 0.3a decided to write something about Bluetooth.
The quote resonates with me, even though I haven't experienced the exact "set a vibe on a date" scenario.
I have multiple bluetooth headsets that I use with multiple devices. I have collected a series of tricks that I use when I can't get bluetooth to operate the way I want it to: turning bluetooth on/off, restarting the bluetooth device. "Forget the network" is not one of those tricks, but I wouldn't be surprised if others have learned to use it.
Agreed. What network are they forgetting here? Pretty sure I've only ever seen that apply to wifi. Are they trying to say you might need to re-pair a bluetooth speaker on a date? I don't get it.
Connecting to bluetooth is annoying, period. It's needless friction that can be avoided just plugging in headphones.
On a date the only acceptable bluetooth usage is for teledildonics.
I use my wired sex toys usually. Ethernet works really well.
That's when you especially badly don't want a sudden disconnect, or the battery dying.
It’s poorly written but painfully familiar. Even if it’s two devices that have never known any connection but the single one between them… Bluetooth aomeyimes just inexplicably fails, requiring forgetting the previous connection, and reconnecting.”
"Forget the network" implies something to do with wifi though.
> After 5 years of sales declines, which culminated in a $42M drop in 2024, wired headphones rebounded in 2025, growing 3% (about $15M). The trend really gained momentum in the second half of 2025, with sales surging 10% between July and December. Multiple brands and price points are seeing sales growth, a signal the trend is widespread. In the first six weeks of 2026, wired headphones revenue is up a whopping 20%!
This is a Circana Retail Tracking Service content-marketing piece. Like the x% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck is a LendingClub content-marketing piece. 3% being $15m indicates this is a $500m market. Airpods themselves are a $25 b revenue product.
I'm the trendsetter. I've never stopped using wired headphones and, after being made fun of for years despite much better audio quality, cost, simplicity and reliability, the rich finally decided to imitate me. Never let go of your convictions!
Amen! This is the way. Many beautiful women have approached me finally! It shows that staying sane pays off.
I bought a little rechargeable bluetooth transceiver with a 3.5 mm jack on it - Just like having a 50 foot audio extension cord, plus it adds a mic.
I've almost caved and bought bluetooth because most stores stopped stocking wired headphones above crap-grade. But maybe I can just wait this out, if wired really is making a comeback.
Same. I've been using the same apple earbuds since like 2005(?). I still have the original plastic case for them and use it to store them in my backpack.
I'm with you! After I lost my gen 1 AirPods a couple years ago, I paid $20 for a pair of Apple's corded EarPods and used them until they failed (1) a few months ago. They had a good mic + music controls, sounded fine, and didn't need a dongle.
Now I'm down to my Shure IEMs (via an Apple lighting-to-3.5mm dongle) and a borrowed pair of old Galaxy buds - wanted to give wireless buds a try, since it's been so long. I don't like them.
1: emitting an earsplitting screech as they did so - the cable must have gone.
AirPods Pro 2 went through a washing machine cycle and still works. Having cables it’s a pain, need to pass behind your clothes or outside dangling. Can’t charge phone while using wired headphones
> Can’t charge phone while using wired headphones
You can with wireless charging!
Phones used to have a 3.5mm port for a reason: sturdier, simpler and independent. Having dangling cable is offset by wireless having to be charged charged, for some only in a case with a charger.
They still do too.
Same, but I made the switch to usb-c headphones as needed for my phone without complaining about it. I still use 3.5mm headphones on desktop.
Yep, same boat. That's why I had kept my pixel 4a for years until is finally kicked the bucket 2 years ago.
> That's why I had kept my pixel 4a for years until is finally kicked the bucket 2 years ago.
RIP I'm sure it was a noble device. My Pixel 3a is currently my wireless router for very German reasons. I worry this will kill off the still-decent battery life, as has happened with my OG Pixel.
I have since allied myself with what I personally consider the devil of consumer electronics just to stay on this boat.
I recently upgraded my 4a to a 10 two months ago. Besides getting security updates again, it feels like a downgrade in every way that matters to me.
Can't lie flat due to camera bulge. No headphone jack. Fingerprint sensor on the front that screen protectors interfere with. No sim slot. Ai bullshit triggers if i keep my thumb to close to where you touch to switch apps. Ai bullshit also replaces the old power menu, which now requires a combo button press.
Such a let down.
I bought a nice pair of sony studio monitors (MDR-7506), uh, 30 years ago now, and they're still my daily driver. I've had to replace the earpads, but that's it, they're still fabulous headphones.
Actually, they're so good, they're still making and selling the exact same model.
Not following trends guarantees you'll be the trendsetter every 5-10 years.
Setting aside debates about which is “better”, this article appears to be based on crap. The link to the supporting analysis uses the words “through the roof”, but here’s what it says:
“ wired headphones rebounded in 2025, growing 3% (about $15M).”
So now a 3% growth in sales is “exploding” and “through the roof”? No, I don’t think so…
This is the BBC. I've been reading their site every day for many years now. They're mostly good, but at times they have a way of steering their audience towards an agenda through bunk articles like this. It was especially evident with the remote work hit-pieces they published regularly during the RTO movement a couple of years ago. It was clear someone was pulling strings at the BBC to generate negative headlines about remote work, but when you dug into their sources, you'd see data to suggest the complete opposite.
I'm not sure what the agenda would be in this case and maybe there is no agenda, but it's something to be aware of. It could be simply one of their contributors has a bone to pick with manufacturers over the lack of reliability in Bluetooth audio technology.
> They're mostly good, but at times they have a way of steering their audience towards an agenda through bunk articles like this.
Real-time Gell-Mann amnesia.
And a 30% increase in sales across a cherrypicked 6wk time window. This is one of those articles that's more wishful thinking than real news, even though I have the same wish.
I wouldn't choose those words, but a 3% increase of something that's been steadily in decline is significant enough to warrant hyperbole of some kind.
I have three teenage kids and they’ve all switched to wired. Many of their friends have as well.
It has nothing to do with fashion or retro vibes, as far as I can tell.
They’ve all lost too many AirPods through the years. AirPods just too easy to lose, and at their school, too easy to be stolen by someone else. And they’re expensive. Yes you can buy cheaper Bluetooth headsets but those often don’t sound as good and get lost just as easily.
So you’re either on a subscription basis relationship wih Bluetooth headsets, or you use wired headphones, which are actually harder to lose and less desirable to steal.
Sound wise they are exactly the same. This is what bewildered me at the time with the airpods. Everyone is raving about the sound. Same chinsy crappy earppod sound they always had. Might as well use one of the five pairs of those you've accumulated.
And then also everyone I know who was heavy into airpods has also over time moved off them because, the battery. Everyone uses over ears from Sony now. Like look at what the walkers in your neighborhood are doing, everyone has overears now with actual battery life that isn't going to be ewaste in 18 months.
Heavy usage on these is just killing the battery. It is worst case for battery health: people just draining these down in one session constantly. In like 1 year maybe 2 your battery life has sunk like a stone and apple wants $50 out of you. 10 years half a grand spend on $5 sound quality.
People still steal AirPods despite them being remotely brickable? Jeez.
and there is that whole thing of sharing one of your wires with your mate/partner that is super cute and great for bonding I should think.
I also been seeing many “protect your brain” shorts on youtube saying that athletes are switching to wired
No doubt with a convenient affiliate/collab/gifted link nearby.
I don’t get it, what’s safer about wired headphones?
It's a growing trend in the "alternative" health scene. I have a few friends who should absolutely know better do silly stuff like use wired headphones due to RF, and even as much as turning Wifi off at night for health reasons. Nevermind they just switch to 5G in bed on their phones.
Ask them why they stopped wearing their copper bracelet
Probably the usual "RF is bad for your head" quackery that has been floating around ever since the first mobile phones, and for athletes, wired devices aren't in danger of getting damaged when they fall out of your ear.
I read the implication of AI slop content, so I'm guessing RF emissions.
Lots of good theories here, but none saying "TikTok", which I think is the answer.
TikTok is a big reason wired headphones are popular. AirPod microphone quality is spotty and improving the quality is non-deterministic. With wired earpods, people put the mic next to their mouth and get above-average audio quality.
Like the article says, wired headphones have also become a fashion statement akin to vinyl culture.
Agree with the fashion. Big clunky headphones can be part of a signature style. No doubt anime and video game characters have had an influence here.
They also project a clear message of “don’t bother me” when worn in public.
I dunno; IME many people who could barely be called a ‘creator’ seem to invest in a standalone microphone already, and many of these (the portable ones anyway) aren’t wired.
This is why I use wired for longer calls or video conferences. I've tried so many wireless in-ear things and all of them are more sensitive to surrounding noise and I have to repeat myself more due to dropouts or spotty quality.
It's just much harder to get good sound quality when the mikes are by your ear rather than on a wire near your mouth
Not to mention that it completely removes the risk of running low on headphone battery mid-call
I used to think Bluetooth was nearly unusable both in audio quality and annoyingness.
Then I moved to the Apple ecosystem including iPhone, Airpods, and MacOS. It Just Works(tm) 99% of the time. The last 1% is a little annoying, and almost always has to do with device switching.
I also haven't had a problem with third party devices for many years now. My car does wireless Carplay just fine, and before that worked nearly as well with Android Auto. Rental cars the past few years even work - although pairing them the first time is roughly as annoying as digging through my bag for USB cable I suppose.
I've lost more pairs of wired earbuds than I have Airpods so far. I thought for sure I'd lose Airpods once every few months due to how often I forget things, but for whatever reason I find them to be easier to keep track of - the case fits perfectly in the "key pocket" in jeans, and it's become third nature to pat that pocket whenever I leave just like I do for keys/phone/wallet.
Not dealing with the annoying cable is great. I get a phone call, and I just grab the earbuds out of the case from my pocket within 10 seconds and I'm good to go.
For at-home PC use it's a different story, although I don't really find myself using my wired high-end cans much anymore. It's either airpods for day to day Zoom calls, or full on high-end speaker setups if I actually want to listen to something or game. Even high end cans cannot hold a candle against moderately decent speakers. The difference is night and day.
Audio engineer originally and a current audio software.
In the pro audio, wireless was never a thing with an exception of live shows where you’d might want to be free on stage but avoid stage monitors.
Notice that while Apple made everyone ditch the lovely 3.5”, on the MacBook Pros they’ve actually kept it and *improved* it.
As this is HN, I’ll focus on technical aspects I didn’t notice in the article.
- Active Noise reduction
While the article suggested the battery free magic of analog headsets. Flights are where the active noise reduction headsets shines. Active cancellation isn’t needed for studio environment but on the go it can certainly make your listening more pleasant.
- Hybrid devices There are several manufacturers with classical headset designs that also includes wired support with all modern features. This is a good balance in my opinion for benefiting from both worlds.
- Latency
Especially Bluetooth, our current consumer wireless is buffered and this latency is too much for creating music. Products such as GarageBand, Logic or FL Studio won’t be that useful for tracking with Bluetooth.
- Quality
Indeed, analog 3.5” audio is uncompressed vs Bluetooth. But it doesn’t mean the audio is superior for listening just because of that transition. Our modern devices are still mostly digital those days so there is DAC that takes those bits and converts them to analog (most of it today is done well as those chips are common) and the other step is the analog amplification. Audiophiles usually invest a lot in the headphones amplifier. Most android devices in the past were mediocre in that sense.
So while wired is a trend, the “dongle” of USB-C to convert the audio is still a major part of the quality we end with.
- Sharing is caring (my personal take)
The biggest frustration I feel with Bluetooth is that it’s now nearly impossible to use multiple headphones for listening. In the old days, you had a simple splitter and as long as both headsets were the same impedance, you can even have 4 people listening to the same content easily.
With Bluetooth, only Apple addresses this in a very limited manner with a lock in to specific models and up to 2 devices and no video calls or live audio support.
Active noise reduction isn't unique to wired models any more though - in fact I find it better on the wireless earphones I use now than my old similar wired model (same brand) because the microphones are right there in the ear, not bashed around or muffled by clothing halfway down the cable.
"With Bluetooth, only Apple addresses this in a very limited manner with a lock in to specific models and up to 2 devices and no video calls or live audio support."
The Bose mobile app also allows me to use two pairs of Bose headphones on a single device, but still only 2 devices and AFAICT only for media consumption.
Tangential - The funny thing is, broadcasting Bluetooth to multiple devices isn't a new thing at all. Back in 2017, Motorola did it on their phone [1]. No extra hardware afaik, it was purely a software solution.
Of course, the company disappeared, and now in 2026, we have lesser tech than we had back in 2017.
If you're wondering "Well, how did a company disappear?!", feel free to take the most corpo/capitalist-dystopian guess.
If you guessed "They got bought out by Google - presumably for IP - with the founders joining Big G, and Google of course promptly shelved it and did absolutely diddly squat with it", congratulations, you win... frustration and disappointment, I suppose!
1 - https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/the-most-exciting-th...
I own a pair of Focal Bathys - amazing sound, bluetooth connectivity, noise canceling, AND usb-c with DAC. I'm very happy with them.
What have Apple done to improve the audio jack on MacBook Pro
https://support.apple.com/en-us/108351
Not "audiophiles" standard though from a sound engineer pov, it is very decent (especially compared to my other laptops)
I bought a bunch of wired cables as switching devices and making sure Teams is able to work with the device never worked smoothly with Bluetooth. I only miss wireless when i get snagged or the wires are entangled but both are easy to prevent and all the benefits of wired far outweigh the wireless setbacks
"The dangling cables of wired headphones are a must-have fashion accessory in 2026"
Gee, is that the kind of stuff that makes people want this, rather than actual usefulness related reasons?
I want it because I don't want yet another thing to have to charge, and because I'd want to be able to throw some cheap headphones in my backpack that I can use the one time in a month that I actually need them in combination with a phone (which of course isn't possible anymore today)
Also, why are ANC headphones today worse for gaming than in the year 2018 when they supported aptx that had less lag? Technology is going backwards?
Actually, a week ahead of the BBC, my sister informed me wired headphones are making a comeback. With a smug grin I told her, "Comeback? It never left my side."
I've had to ally myself with a brand I've once sworn off just to get a flagship model Android with a headphone jack. Killing Reader is a greedy betrayal (they were pushing us onto Plus, the whole social web thing) but removing headphone jacks from Pixels is a cowardly betrayal! Eyeing you too there, Samsung. You and Google both have made it extremely difficult to maintain a modicum of principle in today's consumer landscape! You made me justify my purchase with a utilitarian "Better the jacked devil than the blue-toothed one".
(And before you ask, I only generally buy flagships because I upgrade my phone like, every five years, and in my experience flagships are just more bang for buck. YMMV tho.)
Anyway, honestly, wired is not perfect. Wired and wireless each have their inconveniences it's just that I'm more willing to put up with the inconveniences of wired. Wired connections have known failure modes, something which I really value in tech. I have a Sony WH-1000XM3 which can work both as wired and wireless and I love it for that.
Long live wired connections! Here's to a future with cheaper flagship models with a headphone jack!
Maybe I am just old, but I have absolutely no idea what this passage is about -- why would people be fiddling with Bluetooth on a date and why would it cause them to forget their network?
>"Bluetooth does not work," Kravitz said in a recent interview, and it's not just headphones, but Bluetooth connections in general. "It's ruining important moments. Imagine the amount of times that you're with someone on a date, you're trying to set a vibe, and then you have to forget the network. On a date!"
Picnic date with a Bluetooth speaker for some background music, perhaps? I often see that in parks/beaches/etc, and as long as volume is reasonable I don’t think anyone minds.
I found this confusing as well. She probably meant to "Forget" the device when the Bluetooth pairing with the headphones is lost.
I followed the link through to the video interview; it's not a lot clearer, except that she's definitely talking about trying to play a song (and it not working, ruining/frustrating the moment). Follows with the example 'or you're in a car, you have to pull the car over. To play a song?! On a date!'
I've just been putting wired headphones on my date's ears. It makes it harder for her to run away too.
The idea is that you're at home with the other person and want to listen to some music from a bluetooth speaker.
One segment I wish came back are bluetooth inear headphones wired together (untrue wireless, i guess).
There are some models but none really explore their possible advantages (battery, ux, single signal source).
I lost single wireless earpiece multiple times making the rest useless. This won't happen with wire. With wire its also so much easier and quicker to take them off they will just hang around your neck. There is reason why many workers in loud environments prefer earplugs wired together.
My impression is that apple hyped the airpods so well that people forgot about other possibilities. And when Google included cool headphones with cables people thought they have to cut them… that was when industry decided its dead segment.
This is very true. Especially for sport, they are just great. I always found wired headphones annoying when running, because I need to take care of the wire somehow. Wired-together bluetooth in-ears like the Bose SoundSport kind of fill that niche, as I don't need to worry about one of them falling out. Looks like they don't make them anymore.
Yeah sport is main reason companies are making them.
I also have to say i haven't checked this for two years but there seem to be some new models now (under banner of neckband earbuds). So maybe there is something nicer now.
My wired headphones never run out of battery. They also don't drop the connection if my pocket is at the wrong angle from my ears.
All that, plus with wires, I can run the cable under my shirt and up through the neck hole. When someone starts to talk to me, I can just pop them out of my ears and let them dangle across my chest without having to hold them in my hands. I also don't have to worry about dropping them on the floor.
This was common for kids in the 00s. Having just one bud in while talking to someone was common. There was also this type that instead of having two equal length wires, one to each bud, was asymmetrical and you would wrap the longer wire around you neck so you could easily "unbud". Sony invented this, I think. In fact there were some pretty crazy designs before Apple made the simple but conspicuous earbuds popular again.
All that and they cost a fraction of the price! Wireless headphones are a strictly inferior product to wired, and it astonishes me that Apple convinced anyone to buy them. They're a total rip off.
I can leave my phone on the charger or propped up with a recipe on the counter while I cook and still get signal. Wired headphones cannot let me walk between rooms without picking up my phone.
Wireless headphones take up much less space. I can put them in my pocket trivially.
Wireless headphones can tell me where they are and if I've left them behind.
Wireless headphones don't have a piece of plastic that dangles on my neck, shoulders, and face. As someone with sensory issues, this is genuinely important.
I've never had to spend five minutes untangling the cords for my wireless headphones.
I've never accidentally snagged the cable on my wireless headphones, causing them to snap off.
I can put my phone in a waterproof case in my backpack and protect it while walking. I don't have to do cable management to route the wire.
It's fine to prefer the wired headphones. I fully endorse that for you. Maybe drop the hyperbole about how wired headphones are strictly better?
It's weird, because I absolutely agree in principle, but 90% of my headphone use is wireless now.
And I hate it: latency, glitches, randomly just deciding not to connect anymore, deciding to connect in the lower-quality headset mode when I want to listen to music, and refusing to switch to the high-quality mode, battery running out at inconvenient times, the cat knocking them off my nightstand and under the bed where I cant reach them. So many reasons to be annoyed by them!
But I hardly ever take out my wired headphones anymore, and I'm not sure why. Back when I got my first phone without a 3.5mm jack, I just kept a little USB-C adapter in the little pouch/case that held my wired IEMs, and it was fine. But at some point I bought a new phone, and there was a deal on cheap (or free?) wireless earbuds with it, and I really just stopped using wired headphones for the most part since then, even though the wireless ones really annoy me for so many reasons.
Similar story here, I love wired headphones but have to admit that, after being gifted my first set of AirPods, my actual use of any sort of personal speaker device went up like 20x or more. It’s exactly that factor of being able to get up and walk around without a thought that does it. That’s the reason I’ll often not put wired headphones on in the first place, but no such concern with wireless.
(I actually don’t like 3.5mm jacks as much as some people do, though, as my experience has been the ports get janky over time if they’re under any strain at all, which they will be on a mobile device and which is always a back-of-my-mind source of stress when using them, but quarter-inch jacks are awesome)
For me, all of my wired headphones and earbuds have died the same way: audio cutting out or completely lost due to cable damage due to storage and use cycles. Wireless has completely fixed this for me.
Wireless is more comfortable. I don't have to deal with cables brushing against my ears or sitting on my neck.
Wireless can't get caught on doorknobs or other protrusions.
I don't have to plug them in. I put them in my ears and they work.
They automatically work with multiple devices. I put them in and make a phone call. I put them in and take a video meeting on my computer.
There certainly are advantages to wired headphones and more power to you if you prefer those tradeoffs. But it's bizarre to call wireless "strictly inferior." It should not be difficult to find at least one thing about them that someone might find to be superior.
I bought two pairs of premium wireless headphones about 10 years ago. These failed gradually, I patched them up with tape and kept them going. One of them had the Bluetooth electronics fail but still works wired, the electronics are fine on the other one but physically it is a jumbled mess that I can't really tape together anymore but it kinda sits on my head.
I went looking for the state of the art in headphones and bought (1) a set of AirPod Pros and (2) a recent Sony headset.
My feelings about the AirPods are terribly mixed.
10 years ago I think the best reason to spend $250 instead of $25 on a set of Bluetooth headphones was that the $250 device would pair properly with multiple devices whereas it might take you 15 minutes of screwing around to unpair and repair the $25 headphones every time you need them. But hey they are so cheap maybe you can pack one for each device you have and not worry about it.
Today it is the other way around, somehow $25 headphones "just work" with Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, Steam Deck, whatever. After I disabled the microphone and switched to the microphone on my camera, the AirPods got reliable with Windows. Inside Apple's ecosystem it tries really hard and almost works, yet the $25 headphones "just work" and don't seem to be trying so hard. I don't get messages warning me that somebody else's $25 headphones are following me around but my iPhone tells me that about my AirPods all the time but I think it is a KPI for somebody in Cupertino that I see the word "AirPods" as much as possible.
Now the sound quality of the AirPods is just great, I'll grant that, but I'm not going to be one of those annoying youngsters who is as hard as hearing as the oldest oldsters because I have some genetic polymorphism that makes me produce copious amount of earwax that eject the AirPods from my ears if I move too much. My doc says one of these days my ears are going to plug up and I shouldn't get so excited about it.
I got myself a plastic welder - the thing that melts little pieces of metal to strengthen plastic joints - now I can keep old plastic things in shape almost indefinitely. Cost like 10 usd or so and has prolonged the life of all manner of things.
If you still want to make the old headphones work these welders are a godsend, and with some small amount of diy work of cleaning, sanding and buffing you can easily hide these welds.
I personally like to leave them though since they accent that something that was once broken is whole again, and that it has a long history!
For whatever reason, in my experience, the 1st gen Airpods Pro seem to pair much more easily to non-Apple devices than the 2nd gen. I have a 1st gen pair more or less dedicated to my Linux PC, and they auto-pair 99% of the time within a few seconds.
Have you ever tried bluetooth wearables like the Bose SoundWear? Off topic but they are awesome
Mine do. The phone's lightning connector socket has become "flaky" (from age, or lint..), and at this point I must hold the phone in hand rather than in pocket while walking, for uninterrupted playback.
Headphone jacks.
Sony experia, Asus zenphone, Motorola Moto G, and a few others
They're rare nowadays, but they're inherently superior when it comes to audio just working
Same here. And also unlike airpods, you can't easily lose one that you can't replace. Which also renders the one left useless because you can't pair it with another orphan, what a waste.
Back when I still thought all headphones were basically the same, I was writing some music and I could not understand why the cello lines sounded so much louder than the violin lines at the same dynamic. It was only years later that I found out that mainstream headphones are tuned to boost the bass, which is supposedly the mainstream taste.
If your tastes in music are not mainstream (and mine definitely is not), mainstream headphones will ruin your music more than you realize - for years I just thought that was how recorded music is supposed to sound, and it wasn't very good. Trying a neutrally-tuned headphone can change your (musical) life. Unfortunately, very few wireless headphones are tuned that way.
Edit: Part of why I never looked into it sooner, I had heard so much about "audiophile snake oil" over the years, I thought that was all there was. That exists, but there plenty of headphones marketed to "audiophiles" that are legitimate.
Please let this mean that they'll start bringing back the headphone jacks to phones. usb-c is too unstable, and I prefer not having to deal with charging more devices and with pairing shenanigans when switching devices.
You can get phones with headphone jacks still. You have to shop carefully, because it eliminates a lot of options. My current phone is a moto g stylus 5g 2023... to get a headphone jack, snapdragon cpu, and reasonable cost, I had to also accept a stylus that I only use to fidget.
Probably need to start shopping again soon cause updates stop in June.
The moto g stylus 2025 is reasonable. It has some bloatware you have to go through and disable, and it is a bit bigger than I'd like. But it's about the best you can do in today's market.
At this point, I'm mostly just praying that the motorola + grapheneos collab will have a headphone jack. I probably won't purchase anything until I at least see what's cooking over there.
Right now, since I buy audio files anyways, I've mostly been relying on a tiny audio player that can also act as a Bluetooth receiver for my phone.
Wired headphones are the top reason I've bought Moto phones the last two times.
It'll never happen but I'd love to see a new analog audio connector designed with portable audio and extreme durability in mind make a debut. The old 1.44mm connector is nice for its ubiquitous nature, but its internal footprint is large and it's prone to contact issues over time (I'm sure most of us have had a device/headphone pair where the jack had to be rotated into a "sweet spot".
I'm not well versed in the world of port design, but what comes to mind is a little shallow magnetic nub with a couple of contacts on it. Easy to clean, impossible to break by accidental torquing, not deep enough to get stuff stuck in it.
The cool thing is that whatever the new design is, making adapters for 1.44mm to the new thing is dirt cheap since it's still just an analog connection.
What’s 1.44 mm connector in this context? Common sizes for headphones are 2.5, 3.5 and (lately) 4.4 mm
Since you mentioned 4.4mm, thought I would chime in and mention pentaconn (the trade name) which is a TRRRS connection (which does include a ground connection as well as L+/L-/R+/R-. I still do not understand the purpose of the ground connection in these plugs since there's nothing to ground on the other end.
Isn’t it the only common variant of 4.4mm? Since portable balanced audio is audiophile-adjacent, no wonder it includes the common ground of dubious utility.
Don't forget the classic 6.35mm jack!
Totally agree, as an iPhone user it’s literally the only ‘innovation’ that would make me lust after a new device.
Please, it's the one thing I miss on my Pixel 10
> usb-c is too unstable
Would you share more? I've never had an issue with a USB-C cable. Helps to buy well constructed ones with legit specs.
I'm talking about this specific context, rather than in general. I find that for usb-c earphones and small dongles/dacs, they disconnect more when I'm walking around with phone in pocket. They also tend to wear down with use much faster than normal aux cables. Usually, they last a few months for me before I start having issues.
And when usb-c phones disconnect just a little, usually the phone will pause the music completely and disconnect, whereas the aux headphones will just keep playing. So if the connection isn't perfect, the usb-c cable becomes unlistenable because I can't walk 20 steps without it pausing.
edit: I've tried many cables and dongles, so if you don't have this problem, it might be just that I move around more? Biggest problem for me is commutes and walking around.
Same issue with the lightning to 3.5 dongle. Plus the phone sometimes takes like 10s to recognize it.
That problem might be considered a software problem, not a hardware or physical problem. The instant pausing of the music is the real problem. Software developers probably don't move around as much as you do, and I'd bet if they did, this problem would be fixed quickly with a simple timeout setting or something.
I gave up on USBC headphones because if your port becomes full of lint (say by being in your pocket all day), it doesn’t take much to disturb a USBC connection and cause it to go through the whole handshake all over again for a few seconds.
Compared to 3.5mm where the frustrations I remember were usually limited to sometimes getting a bit of a crackle or one of the audio channels dropping out and worst case scenario you just unplugged it and put it back in and it usually worked. With USBC you have to wait to see.
Are there recommendations on USB-C to 3.5mm adapters, preferably ones with input and output? My biggest complain with Bluetooth headphones is the astonishingly bad quality when doing voice calls.
As usual, the Apple design is a great baseline: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/r...
It doesn't provide full volume output under Android, though.
Otherwise, the CS43131 DAC powers some great designs. I can't comment on their durability, though. https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/j...
See if Apple's USB-C to 3.5mm adapter works for you.
The samsung one is usually easier. On non-apple devices the volume is very limited, especially in the EU version.
Thanks for pointing this one out.
I am hesitant to buy Apple accessories like these as I am having quality concerns. Specifically the macbook chargers I've encountered are far less rigid than Lenovo Thinkpad chargers (at least before they switched to USB-C). I never felt Apple did a particularly good job with cables and connectors when it comes to longevity.
I never got on board with wireless headphones.
* Having to charge them is a PITA
* Having to pair them is a PITA
* Having more points of failure is a PITA
* Paying more is a PITA
On the other hand:
* Wires are fine
Counterpoint: wires really suck and are not fine. AirPods Pro are great, I can afford them and they improve my quality of like quite a bit.
Different strokes I guess.
Some years ago I commuted to work by subway in a city that had turnstiles at all transit stops. Having earbuds unceremoneously ripped out of my ears by spinning metal arms sent me straight to bluetooth and I have never looked back.
Wires suck.
counter counterpoint:
A wire sitting on a table does not suck. 2 people can gather around that table and still, the wire does not suck. As soon as 1 person picks up the wire and starts doing something with it....now an interaction with a wire sucks.
But that's not the wire's fault.
>now an interaction with a wire sucks.
>But that's not the wire's fault.
So... "it's not the fall that kills you, it's the sudden deceleration"?
I believe that's a straw man fallacy.
My assertion is that an inanimate object becomes a problem when a human interacts with it.
Your attempted logical argument is that a law of nature is the same as an inanimate object.
I am not contesting that an inanimate object is the same as gravity.
I'm saying that humans make bad decisions with simple things and whine about inanimate objects and that's a very real first world problem.
was listening to music while coming with groceries and simultaneously juggling stuff to open the doors and change the track with Siri (the only use for Siri I have)
It's hard to lose one or both of your wired earphones.
yeah I don't have this issue with airpods pro. charge them maybe every other week and never had issues pairing. The case charge should last for ~30-40 hrs of listening. The auto switching between laptop and phone is pretty great too for taking calls or walking away and not having to fiddle around with repairing
Agree they’re great but it does fascinate me when there are weird edge cases that Apple mess up.
For example if I have my phone and laptop running, and I’m listening to something on my phone, I pause with my AirPods, and then I unpause with my AirPods, instead of what was playing on my phone resuming through my AirPods, a video that I’ll have forgotten about will instead play through my laptop speakers, and pressing pause on my AirPods will do nothing and I have to interrupt whatever I’m doing to pause on the laptop. Possible they’ve fixed this specific issue though since I’ve learned to not have anything that has media controls open on my laptop.
The cross platform control stuff is probably very hard and usually works though.
>* Having to charge them is a PITA
The equivalent PTIA for wired would be having to untangle them everytime you want to use them.
>* Having to pair them is a PITA
How many devices do you have that this is an issue? This is an issue that pops up a few times a year, at most.
>* Having more points of failure is a PITA
It's unclear which has more PoF. Wires can break, not to mention randomly catch on stuff and sending your phone flying.
While using wired headphones, my spouse's car never steals my audio when it starts or pulls into the driveway. Also, I can join a meeting seconds before it starts without spending a few minutes scrambling to verify that my BT headset will allow me to hear/be heard.
This experience of different devices competing for a BT headphone is really the most annoying aspect of BT to me. I pair my headphones regularly with my work laptop, my phone and my private laptop, and when working from home and walking around in my apartment, the headphones sometimes just randomly pick another device, even if the current device has audio going, and the other does nothing. Sometimes the Macbook does that when it's on standby, which is bizarre. I always wondered if that is an implementation bug on one of the sides. I fixed it by forcing the Macbook to shut off BT when going on standby.
A good bluetooth experience requires that both the headset and the audio source device implement bluetooth well, which is hard. That said, I have zero problems with my AirPods Pro pairing with my Mac or iPhone ever, it's pretty nice.
it requires that you only have a single pair of headphones, and a single device capable of connecting to it.
with my bluetooth headphones, every time I use them in my house it's a hunt. First find my phone and disconnect them on it since thats what connected automatically. Then, go to the tv and disable bluetooth since that was the second thing it connected to. Then put the headphones in the case and back since they won't pair for some reason. Then go to settings in my PC. Realize my PC connected to my speakers, disconnect them, then connect to the headphones.
Someone then calls me on the phone, I pick up and their voice comes booming from the speakers.
Bluetooth would be infinitely better if it didn't connect automatically. Just press a button on the device you want to use. Instead it connects to everything but the thing I want to use.
Recently I bought some cheap $10 wired Sony earbuds. I was surprised they sound much better than my $150 bluetooth earbuds.
AirPods seem pretty nice; but if you use them primarily with Android and connect them to Find My, they will claim to be lost all the time. Seems like you have to choose between annoyance or not being able to find them if you drop them.
I personally prefer wired headphones... they're always charged and ready, even if I only use them with my phone once in a while.
Tbh it may be the host that's causing the problems, not the headphones. I'm using pretty cheap JBLs with a mbpro and iphone and also never have any problems.
Incidentally the same goes for bluetooth mice.
A few companies have demoed wireless cases with screens, and I would be very easy to tap connect on the case while I'm putting in the buds. My earbud was loose in my case yesterday, and it kept stealing the audio of a very important call. I almost threw them across the parking lot.
I have some generic Bluetooth dongle and some anker over the ear headphones and can turn the headphones on after initiating a call and not really have problems. Sometimes Windows doesn't find the microphone right away.
I like to do walking meetings or meetings where I'm cleaning/emptying dishwasher/etc. It sounds strange, but I'm a lot more present than when I'm at my computer.
Anyway. Somewhat ironically, I use a wired set of headphones for this. It's not just the speakers that are better. I often get people remarking how much better the audio is on their end too... i.e. the cheap inline microphone.
That has probably more to do with the microphone(s) rather than that it's wired. Voice is not a problem at Bluetooth bitrates.
I suspect it’s mostly microphone position rather than anything else (the headphones I have are the basic Apple ones).
$20 iPhone white headphones are great. They last forever. The battery never dies.
Sustainability is good.
With a 0$ Bluetooth-3.5mm jack dongle from AliExpress one can have best of both worlds, or at least continue using wired cans with a phone where the charging port stopped working.
Sony WH1000XM5 headphones are my daily driver, mainly Zoom calls and music. I'm generally pretty happy with them, but one big gripe I have is when I'm on a call and briefly take off my headphones to e.g. chat with someone in the room, there is like a 90% chance they stop working and I have to reconnect them.
It happens so often I even wrote a script to switch to the MacBook internal speakers then back to the headphones.
I've used wired headphones before (and the Sony even has a wired option), but I didn't like how the cord was constantly getting the the way of my arms.
edit: Another big gripe is with the Bluetooth codec itself, and how the quality changes depending on if the mic is active.
Thank you, this brings me a feeling of relief because after constantly dealing with various wireless bt headphone issues when using linux it frequented my mind that surely on the other side of the fence people don't have this kind of problems.
You can use the Sound Connect app to disable auto pause and auto power off.
You don't need the proprietary and data-collecting app. I'm using GadgetBridge to configure the 1000XM5 (along with my Garmin Forerunner) and it works great!
Headphones were a solved problem. I had 20 years ago some high end IEM that i used back in the days on on so called mp3 players - those were pocket sized music players - and since apple released the airpods and bluetooth headphones were the new standard audio quality never recovered to the state we had two decades ago
It wasn't a solved issue because 3.5mm is too anemic to power modern ANC. Remember when headphones like QC15 had a single AAA battery to power that? Maybe it's not an important feature to everyone, but ANC is critical to my experience on long distance transportation.
Multipoint is also cool too. I like listening to music, taking a call, going to the toilet, and coming back to music all without doing anything.
If there's a silver lining to the last 15 years, it's that replaceable cables became a standard feature and that there are IEMs with direct USB C cables now. If/when Moondrop/KZ/Linsoul release IEMs that can be used like wireless earbuds with ANC, and can also connect and recharge via USB C, they can just take my money.
iPod Shuffle + Shure SE215 was the pinnacle of portable audio. The ritual of maintaining a separate playlist that would actually fit made it intentional. Allowing Spotify to slip into an infinite stream of slop is so easy these days.
The trick is to use Google music. The recommendation algorithm is so bad that your brain rejects the slop it thinks you will like.
I'm also team USB-C wired earbuds (the Apple ones are cheap and solid, mic is also nice for calls) for podcasts and commute.
I never stopped using wired headphones at home but also had BT ones on the go. When they started showing signs of age I got a cheap BT receiver instead of replacing them. It's not quite as practical but for many people it's something to consider, they work surprisingly well!
I'm firmly on team "dual USB port" for this problem. We do this on computers, which can then perfectly well charge and play audio at the same time. Why not phones? It seems like there's plenty of space for a second port.
the usb port is much more complicated than a 3.5mm port. It is more expensive, it takes more space. Do you add another real port or a built in hub? (they would go with the latter, probably)
The advantage is you have a backup port.
Anecdote, I like wired headphones for important online calls. I use earpods[1], I started using them back when they came with a phone, I'm happy that it's still possible to buy replacements. I like having a reliable wired connection that works and disconnects predictably.
I guess a lot of that is nostalgia. My laptop model no longer has a webcam cover or a physical network switch; connecting and disconnecting the trrs[2] cable reminds me of these.
But some of that is still practical needs. I have AirPods and Bose wireless headphones, both praised for reliable connections. Every now and then they take a bit longer to connect or the volume changes unpredictably, or they need to be charged, etc - when wired headphones just work.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_headphones#EarPods
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phone_connector_(audio)#TRRS_s...
I very much appreciate it when people use wired headphones with a decent mic for calls. Speech clarity is just so much better even with Earpods compared to tws earplugs.
Can someone recommend USBC earbuds with good ANC? Sometimes I’d love to avoid battery and interference concerns of Bluetooth, but noise cancellation became a must-have for me.
Is in-ear ok? With IEMs, you'll get passive noise canceling that I've found more than enough for most situations.
I have a pair of IEM with the usb-c converter attached most of the time for use with phones.
Give Truthear Hexa a try.
For me, it isn't, I need ANC also. This is the thing sticking me with wireless because as far as I can tell, the best ANC are all wireless.
I'm not seeing anyone mention that there is a recent social media trend of people touting that AirPods emits "harmful" radiation. I only mention this because otherwise intelligent health-nut friends were trying to convince me of the same.
Apple Earbuds cost $19 while AirPods Pro 3 cost $250. If one of the pods flies out of your ear on the Fremont Bridge, it's a pretty bad day. I should get over it.
You can also load your hearing test results (from either an audiologist or a hearing test app like https://mimi.io/products/mimi-hearing-test-app) into Apple Health and then use them with your Earbuds.
It's funny how this coincides with a time when BT headphones have finally become cheap, reliable and capable enough. I recently bought two different sets from Lidl: one for €8 and the other for around €12. Both have ANC and a battery life of around 5 hours, and the sound quality is quite respectable. I've been using headphones all the time since I was 11, so that's 37 years with many different kinds of headphones. Even now, I have more than ten headphones that work. IMHO, Bluetooth headphones have never been closer to becoming a natural counterpart to mobile phones for everyone.
I have 2 wired headphones.
My main ones are Sony MDR-V6s which I've had for 10 years. They are the best headphones I've ever owned and they sound just as good today as they did a decade ago. They were originally made in 1985 and the wire never tangles.
The other are crappy $8 earbuds / mic combo that are maybe 7 years old and work just fine.
I have wireless earbuds that I occasionally use since the Pixel 9a has no 3.5mm jack. They are worse in every way that I care about. I have to babysit them to make sure they are charged.
Sure the wired earbuds get tangled sometimes but it's not a big deal to address that. I also think wired is an advantage for portable usage. For example, for running or doing any activity the wire ensures if they fall out of your ear you won't lose them. They also don't need a case so you can stuff them anywhere without a bulge.
I never understood the appeal of AirPods. To me, it just seemed like an inferior product at a much higher price. You now have to worry about charging them (not to mention charging the case), you have three things that are easy to lose vs one that is hard to lose, and finally, to my taste, they are somehow gross to look at - like hearing aids from the 1950s. The product just seems like a manifestation of complexity for the sake of complexity.
I prefer wired headphones at my desk but my AirPods are incredible for being on the go.
The noise cancellation is also great. I’ll use them if it gets noisier than my closed headphones can block.
> and finally, to my taste, they are somehow gross to look at - like hearing aids from the 1950s.
I do not care in the slightest how they look. They’re small and work well.
> The product just seems like a manifestation of complexity for the sake of complexity.
As someone who actually uses them, I disagree on every level.
> The noise cancellation is also great. I’ll use them if it gets noisier than my closed headphones can block.
You can get the Seinhensser Momentum 4, wireless optional, but closed over-ear and still work without battery, for less than 200. Way better sound quality than the in-ears.
Their size is nice. You can easily take them wherever you go without questioning if you need them. It's not all bad.
I hate untangling wires. The noise cancellation (including passive for the pros) is great. Easier to switch between devices. I can use them with the Apple TV when my wife goes to sleep (she's an early riser).
The downsides you list don't apply to me personally. I don't have to "worry" about charging them; I just charge them. I have never lost them, I keep them in the same spot. I also personally think they look better than wired, but that's a fashion thing.
I think it's fine to have a different preference, but I find it odd people can't even understand the appeal of them. I don't like wired, but I can understand why people have different preferences.
Apart from all the other things everyone mentioned, wired headphones never really become technically obsolete. I can still connect my 15-year-old pair of headphones to a laptop, and they work just fine. Sure, I swapped cushions a couple of times, and the headband is all new leather, but the sound is great.
A pair of BT headphones from 15 years ago, even if they worked (which in my experience, they don't), would use an outdated audio codec- no one in their right mind want to listen to an SBC now
It's amazing how people will jump to something new just because it's there and it's being promoted.
When wireless headphones came out, I looked at my wired ones and asked the simple question: is a tangling cable worse than bluetoth pairing and having to keep yet another thing charged? My answer was no, so I kept using cheap wired ones.
A few years later, now that makes me look rich. Or something.
Bluetooth pairing hasn’t been an issue with the iPhone in a decade. As far as charging, at night is it really a pain for me to stick my AirPods on the same charging pad my iPhone and watch are on anyway
There is no way I’m going back to wired headphones. I always hated them. Cables lasted a few years at best leaving the headphones unrepairable. And when using them while moving I could only here my own steps. Plain awful.
This seems backwards to me, mostly. A decade ago, quality sound on the go meant a pocket headphone amp wired to deep-seated inner-ear earphones or clunky over-the-ear cans.
Today? Airpods Pro do the trick: the second- and third-generation models rival or exceed most wired options. And that makes sense: Apple's R&D spending and engineering capabilities for a product like Airpods dwarf the resources of traditional audio companies--the built-in DSP alone is a staggering achievement. So they ought to sound great, and they really do.
And that's before you even consider all the other capabilities, like taking calls, etc. My pocket amps and wired 'phones (Etymotic, Shure, B&O, a few others I'm forgetting) have been gathering dust since the Airpods Pro came to market. I do not miss de-tangling the cables.
Of course, it is possible to do better, but not easy or inexpensive. On my desks at home and at the office are dedicated headphone rigs: DACs, amps, and wired open-backed cans (Focal, HifiMan). Those set-ups sound great--although not nearly so great as my two-channel speaker systems. But that's what it takes to get appreciably better sound than Apple's Bluetooth sets, and forget about portability.
do Airpods even work on most of the available phone models?
It’s money.
Wired headphones are dirt cheap.
I never gave up on my wired headphones. I'm so bad I have to use a stretchy cord (ahla old phone cord) to tie my phone to my body just so I don't drop it. There is no way I can go wireless headphones just so I can lose half my sound. When my Pixel finally abandoned the headphone jack I was forced to get USBC headphones and I just don't like them as much, probably because of the ear shape more than the port but I feel like USBC port plug doesn't stay as secure as the old headphone jack.
Perhaps not related to the article but I find it puzzling that Bluetooth in 2026 still sounds like a fax machine when you use the mic too. That and a much too high latency in general.
Using the mic requires the device to drop to a much older protocol for headsets designed for an old, obsolete Bluetooth generation.
Afaik that's one big reason why BT is such a mess. Many different use-cases are dictated by different protocols, many of which are outdated, and two paired devices can only use a protocol supported by both. So the headphone can't just reuse the same nice connection and add a mic, it has to start pretending like it's some Bluetooth 2.0 device from 2005 or something.
Wireless headphones have always been stupid.
- Disposable
- Small-but-not-zero fire risk inside your backpack or your ear
- Pairing woes
- Expensive
- No user-replaceable batteries
Someone's going to come and say how much they like them, but you need to remember that "needing to deal with a cable sometimes" does not actually qualify as inconvenience. When the washing machine was invented, 10s of hours of labor were freed up from people so they could either get more work done or pursue leisure and enjoy life. What did wireless headphones do for people? Prevent them from needing to exercise the tiny amount of impulse control necessary to to run your cable?
I have good wired earbuds and over ear headphones, but I still almost always go back to bluetooth. If I'm vacuuming, mowing the lawn, etc. I use my Airpods Pro. If I'm practicing drums or working with loud tools, I use my bluetooth 3M Worktunes.
Being able to get my phone out of my pocket and not have to worry about the cable is worth all the tradeoffs. At my desk, I have studio monitors, which I prefer over any headphones. For video calls, I use just the right Airpod to prevent echos, and so I can still hear myself.
It is not an either-or. Many bluetooth headphones (not earbuds) also have an audio jack to be used wired. I use my bluetooth headphones (sony wh-1000xm3) through bluetooth when I am on the go, and wired when I am at home, especially if I want low latency. If anything, I would rather be able to replace a simple jack cable if it breaks, as it would consistently happen back when I was using wired earphones.
I find using all these cables when I am on the go inconvenient, and I cannot imagine going back there. Especially with earbuds, I have probably changed over 10 or sth over the years due to cables failing (but I hate earbuds now anyway regardless). On the other hand, eg when gaming I definitely notice latency issues, especially if I compare them with wired, so I prefer to use them wired.
I used wired headphones not only because Bluetooth can be a pain but because I hate noise cancellation and all bluetooth headphones seem to have it (even when it is turned off, it does “something” that messes with my ears)
I am convinced noise cancellation is causing me tinitus and I don’t seem to get it when I use normal headphones
I do wonder if this is in part to Spotify educating people with their very much in your face notifications when you set your player to lossless quality mode. They inform you bluetooth won't pass the signal with enough fidelity and to go wired.
I don't think many people thought their expensive Airpods/Bose/Sony were not capable of handling lossless and may feel left out or missing something.
Isn't aptx lossless an old and very standard thing?
I haven't bought headphones in years, and my current set support it.
Old yes, but hardly standard.
For phones, I think it's just the Sony and Asus and Chinese brands that support it. Pixels and Samsungs generally don't since they use Tensor/Exynos instead of Qualcomm/Snapdragon SoCs, and definitely not Apple.
Story is even more bleak on the headphones side, Sony prefers their own LDAC codec so they support that instead of AptX Lossless, a pattern shared by many Asian headphones manufactuers. Many western brands only support up to AptX HD and AAC because Apple/Samsung devices have the majority marketshare. Qualcomm's own site only shows 12 headphones that support AptX Lossless.
Now my opinion is LDAC is close enough to lossless that it's probably good enough for Sony and most people (the 1411kbps for uncompressed 16/44.1 CD quality generally compresses to under 900kbps which is below the 990kbps max of LDAC). Bose does have a headphone that supports AptX Lossless. It's just the Airpods that are far behind the competition.
For me AirPods are one of the greatest products I’ve ever owned. I resisted them for years and recited the usual tropes about wired being better. But after being gifted a pair years ago, I realized how wrong I was.
I spend a lot of time at the gym or walking with headphones in and music, podcasts, or audiobooks on. It’s so much better not having any wires when you’re moving. I can’t imagine doing these actives anymore with wired headphones.
Battery life, pairing, charging, audio quality, and other complains are all non issues for me, but I’m also no audiophile. They work incredibly seamlessly inside the Apple ecosystem.
I've got a fairly cheap pair of Soundcores and I use an Android phone. Never really had a problem. Pair them once and they reconnect flawlessly, I only have to charge the battery case like once a month, and the earbuds themselves last more then an entire day. Mine get a lot of use, and I've never had an earbud die on me.
There are a couple of minor annoyances for sure, like the car grabbing my phone when it turns on, but that's not a huge deal. And the annoyance of having a cord dangle around while I'm walking the dog or doing dishes or whatever the hell I'm doing far outweighs it.
All of that said, if I wanted audio quality to sit and actively listen to music, I'd go wired no question. But I don't really care when 95% of my listening is audiobooks and podcasts.
I use Bluetooth every day however, playing games on Bluetooth is some mistake. Quality is noticeably worse, stuttering happen, and cable is the fallback when my BT headphones' battery die. So I really do not understand why the jack has been removed from major brands of phones
This is a more Reddit comment section than I’ve seen on r/headphones in ages. It’s almost nostalgic!
I use my wired Sundara (which have dropped in price greatly since I got them years ago!) at my desk with DAC/AMP all the time, of course, and have a very nice set of Etymotic IEMs with a USB-C dongle permanently attached (once I stopped using it for my PC*). For use with my phone I haven’t actually reached for those Etys over my AirPods Pro 2 in years as the latter are significantly more convenient. They also work fine with Windows 11 (which supports AAC over Bluetooth, as can Linux IIRC) if I want to use them there for whatever reason. Maybe I’m blessed in that I don’t require my phone to be a critical listening device?
* If you have hissing/interference/etc when plugging headphones into your PC, the Apple USB-C dongle is very good and only 9 USD.
I went back all the way to tape. It’s surprising how well it still works 30 years after it became obsolete.
Obviously with wired headphones, because tape players don’t do bluetooth.
Here's a standard-structure, VC-funded, exit-oriented startup to consider: make video calls reliable. As in, you provide a guarantee and pay the customer if the call didn't work.
Wired headphones could be one part of the solution. They're just far more reliable (if they don't break, which they will). But if the reliability of video calls can be improved so that it's literally as reliable as talking to someone next to you in a quiet room, I bet lots of people would pay for it. There is so much latent frustration about unreliable calls, even with the best setup, even in NASA, in DoD, corporations, zoom and other platforms fail to perform reliably in so many cases.
Funny you mention it; I actually have been thinking of this as a startup/solution for ages (especially since covid). I realized that it's likely a fair bit more difficult (you'd need significant control of both software as well as hardware stacks.)
If you or anyone's seriously interested in pursuing it, feel free to reach out to the email address in my profile page.
> make video calls reliable. As in, you provide a guarantee and pay the customer if the call didn't work.
Microsoft would be ruined, haha. Over the past week, I had about a 30% chance of the call not working and a a 80% chance of the screenshare not working
I wonder what percentage of the people driving this trend have either only had AirPods (they make me dizzy, and I think the sound quality is terrible), Beats (even worse) or no-name $20 bluetooth headsets.
I have a nice high-end set of Sennheisers that cost ~ $150, and they're much better than my old wired set (both in-ear, both noise isolating, similar prices).
The bluetooth ones win because they eliminate cable noise. I can actually jog with them. In quiet rooms, they're very comparable, except the bluetooth set has a built in EQ, which works around the fact that iOS / Android still inexplicably do not let you adjust treble and bass.
The bluetooth headset market has been stuck in this weird spot where fashion mostly dictates. I guess I shouldn't be surprised that fashion now dictates wired headsets.
totally agree with you, though I have 3 sets of $20 bluetooth sets that I rotate on various devices and have no complaints whatsoever. Also use a DAC and $300 set of can on PC, so I know what good audio sounds like.
I personally think people who jog with anything more intrusive than earbuds are bonkers.
There's a guy who runs around my neighbourhood with airpods max, I don't understand it, it's a literal brick on your head.
Back in the day when I was in school, I wanted to learn how to solder, so I started fixing my classmates headphones.
This "service" ended up to be quite popular - broken headphone wires were a very common problem.
I think the average lifespan of wireless headphones is definitely longer than that of wired ones.
I use to have wired headphones for years but wires always get damaged over time and then headphones stop working. Now I got wireless headphones.
I picked up a Sony MDR-Z7 and Z1 and an iFi headphone amp and threw out my wireless Apple headphones. Of course comparing them to the expensive Sony's isn't fair but once you experience the soundstage in the wired headphones you will never look back. You don't need to even buy the expensive headphones, you can even get something like a V6 or a 7506.
The difference is the battery dies in the wireless models in 2-3 years irrespective of the brand but these wired headphones live on for ever.
Yes, this is a trend, but it doesn't seem like just a fad; a lot of people are choosing to return to "outmoded" things to embrace ritual and intentionality. As others have commented, it doesn't have to make sense to you; having options hurts nobody.
Both wired and wireless headphones of all types fail for me between 10-13 months. Something breaks no matter the price or brand.
The only wireless headphones worth the hassle of using Bluetooth (which never connects on the first try, disconnects randomly all the time, and is generally far too unreliable for daily use) are shockz bone conducting.
If shockz made a wired version I’d only buy those
This is a you thing. I had the same pair of Sony wireless headphones for years and I only replaced them because the ear cups started disintegrating. Their replacements (also Sony) have already lasted me a couple of years with no issues. I also have absolutely no problems with Bluetooth either, the headphones are paired with maybe 6 devices across iOS and Linux and they never fail to connect.
Dear Sony, please start making the MDR-XB450 again. Lovely wired headphones that for some inexplicable reason Sony discontinued a few years ago.
Aye, add to that the XB50 in-ears too. My current pair is ~8 years old.
So what are some recommendations for good wired headphones?
The Sony MDR-J10s I used to buy stopped being manufactured, and old stock is showing up online less often for more money. They were also never the most durable model, which wasn't a problem when they were easier to replace.
So what are some good, durable wired headphones? Suitable for active use, cords not going to snap with a light tug, don't fall off when running, plug/wire connection doesn't wear out and need to be held just so?
I wonder how much of the "it sounds better" argument is just a fashionable make-believe, like the gold-plated HDMI cables that, for the most part, don't really make a difference but somehow people believed it does.
Or like people who think that brown-shell eggs are better quality than white-shell eggs.
CD audio quality is the best…specially with wired headphones
https://youtu.be/cIQ9IXSUzuM
I wonder how much of this has to do with the popularity of the MacBook Air and now, potentially, the Neo. My current desktop setup is a MacBook Air and a big 4K monitor. I considered getting an outboard DAC/amp for headphones but the headphone jack on the MacBook Air sounds pretty great to me through my mid-price Hifiman cans.
I use wireless almost exclusively. ANC in the office is a must. I also know that a good pair of wired headphones will have way more fidelity than AirPods. But I do have some nice wired headphones and I pair them to my iPhone with the Fiio BTR5. It’s been a good mix of the two. I’m of the mindset to go back to an mp3 player and use the fiio to connect to my car Bluetooth
FiiO is great to get the best of both worlds. Using IEMs with FiiO UTWS5.
I've considered the move to wired not for quality but for the sad state that Bluetooth pairing headphones has become. Theycan't just be headphones anymore; They require their own app and pairing protocol. They want 19 different touch points and permissions to implement a handful of never used features I get people being frustrated at why they can't just do what copper did for the last century.
I have two wireless sony headphones for handling the battery issue. So yesterday before 5mins to my meeting, I plugged in one and it was out of juice. I plugged in the second one and it was also out of juice. Mind you, I was travelling and hence didn't follow the usual charging cadence I follow.
I charged my wireless headphone for 5 mins and took the call and it went out of juice mid way through the call. I had to run to find a free conference room in the office which was present since it was friday.
I also often connect my wireless headphone through the weekend and not know that it is still connected since friday with my work mac. Wired solves all of this.
Thanks to this article, I just ordered a Apple Earpods USB-C 5 mins ago in Blinkit. It is going to be delivered in another 5-10mins. Good bye wireless. I will use it for work with my Mac and my personal Samsung phone.
Edit after 4 mins: Earpods Delivered!
I bought a pair of IEMs. A while back, the cable broke, and I was able to repair by just buying a new cable.
Also, I enjoy not having another device to charge. I recently have been wearing a traditional Casio watch more often instead of my smartwatch.
Same here, I can't imagine adding 2 to 3 (earphones + case) batteries to my life, batteries that most likely aren't user replaceable, most likely will be cycled at least once a day and will inevitable die and take the whole device with them in a matter of years.
I love my IEMs but I actually want a Bluetooth version. Heck a dongle that made them act just like AirPod Pros would be my dream gadget.
As other comment suggests, FiiO does adapters like that, also Qudelix. Depends on what you mean by 'like AirPod Pros'. You won't get ANC, mic is so-so I believe and you still have wires, but you get LDAC/aptX HD codec, it can still act as USB DAC if you forgot to charge it, it has very capable DSP EQ that allows loading headphone profiles. I use AirPods Pro as muffs on transit and concerts which is a killer feature for me, but use Qudelix dongle with IEMs for music.
Fiio has a couple of adapters that work with many IEMs and there are probably others on the market https://www.fiio.com/utws3
Shure makes some for their IEMs. I have an older model which has worked great for several years.
I may have had the same. Wasn't impressed. But I'm rough on my electronics and it lasted less than 6 months.
I'm not rough, but don't handle them with white gloves either. I usually tend to roll them up in a ball in some pocket when not in use.
The model I have, BT2, is "semi-wired", meaning that the Bluetooth and battery are common to the two earbuds, linked by a cable. And, outside the big heavy cables some big heavy headphones have, this one is the one that has held up best – I'm pretty sure I got it before Covid. They now have a newer model with no wires, which houses the BT and battery in some over-ear clips [0]. I have no experience with these. In any case, I expect other manufacturers to have similar options.
Before this, I would have to change the (old-school) wire on these IEMs seemingly every other year. But at least it was changeable, as opposed to other cheaper IEMs which would require to break out the soldering iron at best, or end up in the trash at worst if they were a glue fest.
[0] https://www.shure.com/en-US/products/accessories/rmce-tw2?va...
I have the Shure TW2 adapters and they work great. No connection issues, great battery life, and the passive isolation I get with the right ear tips is better than any ANC I've ever used. As an added bonus, if you order when they're on sale, you can get the TW2 adapters with a pair of SE 215 buds for the same price as the plain adapters.
so many replies here on HN, this post also have the vibe of AI generate comments. medium-long format, try to cover too much of the pectrum, miss a punch line or a main idea. just my 2c
For me, wired multi-driver armature IEMs (in-ear monitors) are the best thing to happen in the audio field since the arrival of neodymium magnets.
For a fraction of price of professional monitor speakers, you get the closest thing to direct hardware-to-brain audio transmission. It's precise and fast transient-wise.
No reflections, no phase problems, nada. You can choose exactly the type of frequency response you need: flat, V-shaped, U-shaped, bassy, bright, whatever. There are even models with switchable curves.
No need to invest much more money than your speakers cost in your listening room, installing wool/foam pads/draping/soft furniture/bass traps/carpets etc to reduce the amount of reflections and bring frequency responce to anything resembling flat.
That said, there is a huge number of IEMs produced these days and they range from absolute trash to stellar. And to navigate this vast ocean, I find Crinnacle's resourses utterly useful:
https://crinacle.com/rankings/iems/
https://list.hangout.audio/iem
(disclosure: I'm not affiliated in any way, I just adore this guy's dedication!)
I refurbished a pair of old Sennheiser HD-25s I’ve had since 1998ish recently.
They work just like new and there is something really satisfying about bringing old tech back to a useful life.
I’m using them for monitoring things that don’t have Bluetooth.
I still use AirPods day to day though because it’s so useful to always have something in your pocket that can block unpleasant noise. Bluetooth works fine for me.
Bluetooth headphone has one disadvantage —- if it “sleeps” then I have to put them back to the charger container to wake them up. I don’t need to charge it, just need to put it in and take them out. But this is a hassle as I need to bring the container around with me. Other than that, it’s better than wired headphones.
My new bottom-of-the-line phone does not have a headphone jack. Did not realize that when I got it and now I'm bummed.
Have had two Airpods. Great devices, but broke down after a year or so and I don't want to spend their price every single year.
I am still waiting for a wired AirPod 4 ANC equivalent. Wired, earbud but not silicon in-ear style. Still using my normal wired headphones never switched to wireless so far but longing for an ANC version.
For me, using Bluetooth headphones with my (Samsung) phone is smooth and trouble-free. The experience is miles better than wired headphones, and I would never go back. Meanwhile, connecting to my TV with Bluetooth is an exercise in pure frustration.
So it seems to me like the problem isn't Bluetooth, it's shitty implementations of it.
And it's not just cheap devices. My TV is a fancy LG OLED. For the price I paid it should handle Bluetooth just fine.
It's a real shame. When Bluetooth works, it's awesome, but a lot of people have had their opinions tainted by bad devices.
Yeah, I'm reading these comments and I would have agreed 10 years ago, but I'm regularly using three different pairs of wireless headphones plus a Bluetooth speaker and have literally zero issues. My Bose headphones are usually even paired with two phones.
Yeah, charging is a bit annoying, but the added comfort is worth it to me and I can't tell that the audio quality is any different.
It's super inconsistent across devices and implementations. I've had so many issues with it over the years.
I've had headphones where a slight change in the environment around me while walking would disconnect audio. Or IEMs not syncing properly the L and R channels.
Even in the best of cases using headphones with multiple devices is just terrible. Also syncing audio to picture rarely works as it should.
> So it seems to me like the problem isn't Bluetooth, it's shitty implementations of it.
Perhaps, but it kinda seems to me that there must be some inherent limitation of the standard which make it particular hard to create a high-quality experience?
The latency for instance - in my (somewhat limited) experience audio over BT does not sync perfectly with video.
The channels/codecs is/was so limited in bandwidth that until recently (few years back IIRC) headsets couldn't even send and receive decent quality audio at the same time. Even recent headsets like the Shokz Openrun Pro 2 has this limitation. (Which you could argue is an instance of "shitty implementation" since it was released after the availability of necessary tech (LE/LC3))
>So it seems to me like the problem isn't Bluetooth, it's shitty implementations of it.
Yep, but this is a problem that is present everywhere. For example, electric cars are supposed to be simpler, because its one moving part. In reality, you get essentially vertical integration of all the components like battery management, motor controllers, infotainment, gauge cluster and the software that connects all of that, and when bugs are present you can't even get into your car.
I still use AirPods for listening but if I’m ever taking a call, I always use EarPods (USB-C). The microphone quality is multiple times better and that’s important to me. Especially for work. It only took me a few times to hear other people will AirPods to be tainted. It just seems unprofessional now because of how bad it sounds.
A few years ago I was looking for my favorite Headphones for my synth (some AKG ones, I dont remember the concrete model name by heart) - prices went to the roof... I prefer Bluetooth for mobile applications, as my sockets respectively wire got defected after a few months...
This one can easily be blamed on apple. I wonder how many awful design decisions we suffered because of their trendsetting
Wired headphones just work, unlike the bluetooth ones.
You can get cheap wired earphone splitters and share what you're listening to on long bus rides or flights. I miss that. Maybe one wants something between needing to be on and conversing and the isolation of separate bluetooth listening.
My Bluetooth headphones are great and very rarely have any glitches. I use wired headphones only when listening to high-resolution lossless music (using the right hardware). I would guess the fact that some streaming platforms have these now is also a contributing factor to the rise in popularity of wired headphones.
I used Sony ear buds. Never once have I had any issues with it.
Charging is a minor inconvenience, but the freedom of not having tangled mess on my hands when I work while I speak is much more worth it.
I suspect the vat majority of these wired ones are for use during online video calls on office computers and laptops.
One of the reasons is software quality. Incredible shitty experiences are pretty common.
Yes, it is getting more popular in 2026. The main reason is because its affordable and easy to use.
I've had a set of Etymotic SR4s for years, I just replace the cable every 1-2 years. I love them to death, they're extremely flat though, so they make a version with bumped bass if that's your thing.
If someone made a cable with a mic on it for them I'd probably buy 10--it's pretty annoying to switch to Apple earbuds for calls, but whatever.
So the fact, that I recently bought used iPod, replaced the battery and storage and use it now with pair of IEMs make me some sort of a... trendsetter?
I've never had a pair of headphones with a cable connection that survived more than 2 years. Can't say that about the Airpods Max.
Like, I have opinions about high-end headphones based on how easy the cords are to replace. That shouldn't be the case.
I was a discrete headphone amp guy, just to situate myself in this market. I didn't expect to get good wireless headphones and think "I'm never going back", but that's precisely what happened.
I'm sure that there can be situations where it's better to sacrifice sound quality and reliability for the convenience of wireless but I think the ability to replace cables is a huge advantage and not a pain point at all. The only problem I've ever had was with an old pair from Sony where by the time I needed a new cable they'd stopped selling a replacement cable but I knew I was rolling the dice when I got that pair because the cable wasn't standard.
Even in the extreme case where you're replacing them every other year you could buy a handful of spares right away so you have them on hand when you need them and your headphones will outlast the batteries in your airpods
Wired headphones are also 1/10 of the price of airpods. So they still come out ahead on the cost of ownership front.
What high quality wired headphones (that you’d drive with a dedicated amp and have a replaceable cable) cost $55?
How much of this is due to school phone bans?
I know kids are switching to mp3 players because of that.
Bluetooth headphones with mics are absolutely trash at connecting to a pc.
Many pro wired comments here about quality which can be classed under the category “most people cannot tell the difference”. You simply cannot compare the considerably greater convenience of wireless to wired when on the go. Also, any decent wireless over the ear headset allows for wired use when out of battery. That’s hardly a game changer
Not everybody is using their headphones on the go. 99% of my headphone use is at my desk while I work. Wired is more convenient than wireless since it's one less lithium battery to charge.
It's true that humans are not particularly sensitive to audio quality, but they are very sensitive to audio latency. If all you do is listen to buffered audio sources then latency is not important but the moment you need to use your headphones in an input loop then wired is the superior technology as it offers close to zero variance in latency.
Wireless is convenience on the go and when you don't give a shit, like work calls.
Wired is for when you want to listen to music you really like and it's too late to use the speakers.
You can have low quality, low cost and very portable wired headphones, as well.
You can also go for moderately priced cans and just feel your ears tingling the first time you listen to something through them.
I'm waiting for a wired bone conducting headset (mic included), so far only Chinese producers for that market.
You're not buying the ones available...because they're chinese?
Love my JBL in-ear wired headphones but I can only use them when sitting still. When I walk with them they 'rustle' like crazy (don't know how else to describe the sound)
I think you're talking about microphonics:
https://zikman.audio/blog/cable-microphonics-what-it-is-and-...
Also sometimes called the stethoscope effect.
I think strictly speaking, this isn't actually microphonics, because that means that mechanical noise causes electrical noise, which then results in audible noise, whereas what is happening is just transmission of vibrations up the cable into the ear.
Anyway, it can be fixed with better cables. They don't have to be fancy (they don't have to be the 349 euro cables that site is selling!) - i have a pair of KZ ZS10 Pro X earphones, and using the stock cables, i don't get rustling through those.
(more generally, i have an embarrassing number of Chi-Fi earphones, and don't get rustling with any of them)
Thanks! I'm probably just being cheap with my 20 euro headphones and need to upgrade to at least mid-range
Well, those KZ ZS10 Pro X are still fairly cheap (40 euros), and i really like them. But there is a huge range of amazing value for money earphones out there. You just have to wade through dozens of pages of forum posts and Reddit threads to find them.
The elephant in the room is "chi-fi". There's been a huge growth in small Chinese companies with unusual names making amazingly cheap, yet great-sounding over-ear headphones, IEMs, and earbuds within the past few years, and the vast majority of these are wired.
I’m by no means an audiophile and it had been years since I owned a pair of wired headphones, but I picked up a pair of Linsoul 7HZ x Crinacle Zero:2 (yes that is actually the name) IEMs after seeing some glowing reviews online and I was absolutely blown away by how they sounded despite costing only 240 SEK (around 25 USD). Back in the early 2010s when I was more interested in hi-fi audio you definitely couldn’t get as great sounding IEMs around this price.
How long does it take from placing your order to receiving the headphones?
It took about two weeks to ship to me in Sweden from China.
I still find it hard to justify buying Chi-Fi. My HD650 still has no competitor in terms of style and cost efficiency, I wish I could afford HD800 but they sound very different. My IE80 from 2012 is very outdated, but IEMs are technologically inferior, and even the Chinese ones are not cheap. So I just put a USB-C cable on it and use it occasionally.
think their target market is closer to the £20 segment than the £200 segment
Nah, here's an example, Hifiman's planar offerings range from 50 USD to 8000 USD.
Can you recommend some brands with good quality over-ear headphones?
A bit off topic, but I sometimes wonder if OpenOffice would have become as prevalent without wireless ANC headsets be coming the default for focus.
An alternative to a wired dongle is a high-quality bluetooth amp, e.g. from Fiio. It's reliable, keeps your phone free from cables, but you can keep using your high quality wired headphones.
That seems a ~~wired~~ weird compromise to me: you get the downsides of Bluetooth (inherent latency, potential codec quality loss, spectrum congestion — I occasionally experience interference and dropouts in crowded areas) but still have a wire hanging from your head and another battery to keep charged. :/
Latency doesn't matter for music and Fiio supports both LDAC and aptX.
Keeping the battery charged is a weak point though, agreed.
I can attest to this. I gave away my Sony WH-1000MX and my €80 Soundcore earbuds stopped charging. Headphone emergency! I got myself €30 AKG USB-c IEMs off a local shop. The sound quality is far, far superior to even the €350 wireless Sony headphones. I'm not even an audiophile, it's just noticably better. I had forgotten all the little details from the music I regularly listned to.
With your popular wireless headphones, you're really paying for the computer with ANC (and branding, packaging, depending on which version of the series the latest model is on).
The wired IEMs don't have an ANC but I realised I don't need it as often as I thought. I'm certainly going to look for Wired over-the-ear ANC cans next, but honestly I'm not sure if I need them.
Backlash is probably wrong. There was some hype around wireless technology, but that always fades eventually. You can see this in other electronics like "smart" home appliances: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/01/half-of-smart-applia...
It seemed cool, people bought it, and then eventually many realized they didn't care about the fancy feature(s).
Fashion no fashion, I think it's great that they are making a comeback. Wouldn't hold my breath for the headphone jack to make a comeback though
my bluetooth headphones died mid-meeting yesterday and nobody noticed the quality improvement
I also went back to a wired mouse and never having a sudden lo-bat that interrupts my computer work.
You are lucky to get lo-bat. I get no-bat. Working perfectly one moment, not responding the next. Not so much as a popup telling me why my PC just got unresponsive.
Headline: "sales are exploding"
Actual fact: sales were up 3% last year, a whopping $15 million.
One can only hope this trend is big enough to make phone manufacturers bring the 3.5mm jack connector back.
It's simple, I can buy some IEMs that sound better, cost less than a third of a barely-even-comparable wireless earbud, and roughly conforms to market standards so I can swap out the cable and tips. And I never have to charge them.
I have a pair of Airpod Pros that I use solely for audiobooks and podcasts when I'm doing chores or shopping, but the audio quality is so garbage that's all they're really good for.
Airpods Pro audio quality "garbage"? That is beyond harsh, and a quick search will find countless reviews extolling their audio quality.
e.g. https://www.soundguys.com/apple-airpods-pro-3-review-close-t...
The problem with earbuds is that to have good quality, you need to create a seal, like IEMs do. Most professionals who use IEMs have them custom molded to their ears.
If you are lucky and have a good ear shape, then airpods sound good. Still not as good as IEM because IEMs have more space for better drivers without needing a battery or bluetooth hardware.
But if you are a person like me who has very hard time with any earbud staying in, then its gonna sound like garbage because you are never going to get a perfect seal.
The measure of audio is what comes out of the speakers not what is written on the web.
My Airpod Pros are the most convenient personal audio device I have ever used. Sound wise they pale in comparison to my Sony MDR-ZX100 which I bought on sale for $9.99 at Best Buy...unfortunately the new model is about $15 regular price and maybe not as good (but I doubt it).
Sure the Airpod Pros sound better than ordinary Airpods or the wired Airbuds, but that's a really low bar for an audio device.
Yes, objectively Airpods Pro audio quality is not good if you're comparing it to a high-end IEM setup that uses multiple driver types, balanced armatures, electrostatics, etc. Also the tuning on the 3 vs. the 2 is worse.
Airpods Pro have great audio quality considering they are wireless bluetooth earbuds. Remove that qualifier, and if you're sitting at a desk all day and wired becomes an option, you can get far better sound quality/longevity for a fraction of the price.
Are Google one of the last holdouts ?
I've been on cheap Android phones and just moved from Samsung to Motorola and both have headphones sockets.
No, the Pixel dropped the headphone jack ages ago. It's why I don't have a Pixel any more.
For my recent middle class Android phone, I got a USB-C dongle that I keep in my wallet since phones with headphone jacks have moved to the lowest end of the market and almost disappeared entirely. Doesn't seem worth it anymore.
The dongle is tiny and seems to be of good mechanical quality.
here's hoping that someday headphones without pressure (e.g. active/passive noise cancelling) will make a comeback, too. But then again I think there still exist cheap wired ones without such "advanced" technology. As one woman in the article said best: "'I don't like how this feels' and we're all kind of returning to the last place we were comfortable."
> here's hoping that someday headphones without pressure (e.g. active/passive noise cancelling) will make a comeback, too
What do you mean? There are tons of wired headphones that don't do noise cancelling at multiple price points.
I can still pick up a new pair of headphones that I started using 10 years ago (AudioTechnica m50x if you want the recommendation).
For wireless headphones I've gone to bone conduction and open-ear. Started with some cheap models from Ali-Express to see how I liked it. I did.
Shokz had a black friday deal on Open-Run Pros and those are my goto. Admittedly, they are not as convenient as my Airpods were, but my ears appreciate not being bombarded with noise canceling.
Every headphone that has noise cancelling also gives you the option to turn it off, and also to enable audio pass through.
Bose QuietComfort Ultra 2 at least just allows varying levels of passthrough. You can have noise cancelling or noise cancelling + sound from the outside mike. You cannot have noise-cancelling off for better battery life or to cope with windy conditions
They're awful in several other ways too, which is sad for what should be their flagship model
Yep.
I prefer other technologies over noise cancelling in my ordinary use anyway. And my ears feel healthier. But that’s me, not you.
I avoid noise cancelling as well; I find that it very rapidly gives me a headache. I prefer a nice set of headphones that physically block outside sound.
I got a pair of AirPods Pro, paid for by a past employer, and it's the only Apple product I like. I'd even give some of my own money to Apple if I had to buy another pair.
When I'm wearing wired earbuds, the feeling of getting the cord caught on something and having the earbuds violently yanked from my ears is one of the most annoying things, like a slap in the face.
Plus I like being able to put my phone wherever I want, when I'm listening to podcasts while doing yard work. The phone stays in the house, or on a patio table, not in my pocket where pruning shears or dirt will get to it.
There are various other situations where having wires going to my ears is annoying or impossible.
Article explains it's being partially driven from people following celebrities who believe they're using it as countersignaling, demonstrating economic class via things that could be perceived as the opposite.
"Wearing wireless 24/7 tells me you don't own any land."
I wonder how much is being driven by such lead following.
I started seeing this trend nearly a year go in Seoul. I think it is just a sort of fashion trend. I like wired experience when I am alone in a silent place listening to classical or instrumental music. But it’s hard to beat convenience of Bluetooth elsewhere.
I find them the opposite of convenient ("where are they? are they charged? are they paired? did they lose pairing? did I just pair to my downstairs neighbor's TV? did he just pair to mine?")
The removal of the 3.5mm port is literally satanic behaviour.
I would love to hear the Bluetooth engineers battle it out. I know BT isn't the only reason people want wired, but it's got to be one of the aggravating factors.
Is it the specs fault? Hard to believe if they have gone through at least 5 major revisions. Is it those stupid engineers that didn't implement the spec? Is it the chipsets? I want to see a "who made Bluetooth suck?" Showdown
They can focus on being pure transducers rather than being DACs and power amps as well.
Every blue tooth audio thing I've had sucked... and then stopped working altogether.
Wireless audio traded a trivial inconvenience (a cable) for multiple new inconveniences.
It's obviously a fashion thing.
It absolutely isn‘t
Look up "performative male starter pack".
Yes, i know the memes. But these are the reasons why people around me go back to wired:
- lost many airpods - wired tends to be cheaper than wireless equivalents
It can be very simple
Will wired speakers make a come back? Stereo separation vs mono pods?
Every phone has a Type-C port, so why aren't headphone manufacturers following the trend?
every headphone and phone had a 3.5mm connection, why did phone manufacturers fuck it up?
My daily headphones are the Google Pixel USB-C earbuds, but they seem to be no longer made. Anyone have good recommendations for similar style USB-C headphones w/mic?
Except on the go, I don’t see the point for Bluetooth headphones. Due to the built in batteries that are uneconomical to replace they are essentially consumables, even high end ones like AirPods Max. Pairing and (re) connecting is a never ending pain. For less than $200 you can get a set of wired open back headphones that sound so good that unless you are in the audiophile niche they are your forever headphones. Models like Beyer Dynamic DT990 are built to last and very repairable, it just makes sense.
I think on the go is the point. I love my AirPod Pros but I wouldn’t listen to them sat at my desk.
The article ofc focuses on girls instagram and not us gamers who have been using wired for decades.
We are opressed. Unironically I am so annoyed. It was an "ick" before and now its cool again. Okay whatever.
If you are on Windows don't forget to setup Equalizer APO matched to your headphones. On Android check out Wavelet. It can really bring music alive.
The DACs in most bluethooth earbuds are absolute garbage, but I think the bigger issue is people are tired of both having to charge them and having to keep track of where they are.
Good luck finding a phone with a headphone jack anymore though :(
I love my wired headphones though. They support BT but I've used that maybe twice. Ever. Obviously was only because I was using my phone with them, which again don't have a port for the cord.
Audio delay for most Bluetooth headphones is downright atrocious. Yes, there are some out there which support low delay modes (under 40ms), but the vast majority of them do not.
I have never bought a wireless headphones and I never will. I bought a bluetooth adapter for wired headphones instead, for when I need that. The only thing I feel like I am missing is noise cancellation.
The drivers or whatever can influence the wireless experience a lot. Apple has the best bluetooth reliability of any manufacturer I've experienced. I can be out in a field next to my house and somehow the half-asleep laptop finds my headphones instantly unless I remember to switch its bluetooth off. On my windows machine sometimes, for seemingly no reason, you will be left standing around waiting and waiting for it to find the device right next to it.
The convenience of being able to get up and walk around the house, or got out with the phone without wires getting caught makes it worthwhile though. On the other hand for stationary peripherals like mice I would never go wireless. I hate that feeling of complete helplessness to the pairing/connection lottery and the time waste of it.
Tldr: that's a fashion trend. Couldn't care less.
Personally I use wired headphone at home, either open back or closed back depending on the situation and Bluetooth outside when I don't want to be bothered by a cable.
I think it gets the best of both worlds. Couldn't care less if I look 'cheap' because I have Bluetooth headphone.
Another underrated simplicity with wired headphones is - you don’t need to charge it. It just works. Sound quality for sure is one of the biggest advantages of wired phones.
for audiophile, wired is still king
I've listened to hundreds of audiobooks using Sony and Bose bluetooth ear buds. But when I'm sitting at a computer I use wired headphones so I don't have to worry about charging and latency. The bluetooth latency is noticeable during video calls
meh, same as "record sales are back" - it's missing a zero in scale and two zeroes in money.
Next up:
"traditional speakers are replacing headphones"
This article makes an elephant out of a fly. The explonation is much simpler...
The microphone and communication protocols on Bluetooth is shit. Everyone that talks alot on the phone knows that the microphone one a wired headset is sooo much better than Bluetooth, simple as that. You hear better and they hear you better. That is it
For me it's cost. I used to be able to get those JVC gummy earbuds wired, for nine dollars. Now I have to spend upwards of $20 for Bluetooth. And of course, when the battery can't be recharged anymore, I'm supposed to throw them away. Much prefer the wired headphones. Sometimes Bluetooth makes sense, But economically wired makes more sense.
If they want to take them away, they'll have to rip my Sennheiser HD600 from my skull.
Legendary for their neutral, correct and pleasant sound, comfort, effectively forever durability, and being affordable to boot.
I can plug them to current or 40 year old hardware, and they do work. I use them with Topping DX3 Pro+[0] today.
It is no wonder they want us to instead adopt something active, crippled with bluetooth latency and dependent on lossy codecs, with a non-serviceable battery built-in.
0. https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/t...
I like my EarPods, except that the wires keep tangling up. T for that I want to try those zipper hacks
They have a good mic and fit properly.
AirPods, nope nope nope. I could throw them away after one year and the multi device “dream” s was a nightmare.
I still have my HD580, but I don’t want to have the big cups on anymore
Because it's a freaking pain to connect them, obviously! In my experience they work well enough once you have, but consider the experience of "plugging them into a different device".
Barely any devices support being paired with more than one central. So you have to tediously disconnect with the first device in some shitty menu (e.g. on Android the UI is not at all clear), then maybe put it into pairing mode (again usually though some terrible UI because manufacturers think pairing is a rare operation) and then finally pair it on the other device.
Absolutely ridiculous. Oh and what's the Bluetooth equivalent of a headphone splitter? Auracast? It's taken decades to get that and basically nothing supports it.
I do use Bluetooth things and I think the sound quality and reliability can be very good (if you're lucky), but the connection process is miles worse than plugging in a wire.
I mean yeah - generally wired devices are better in every way… except for the inconvenience of needing to be tethered to your device during use.
My default is always to buy wired devices, and only consider wireless in situations where the convenience specifically outweighs the downsides - wireless earbuds while exercising or working outside, or while traveling light to listen to a podcast or work at a cafe.
The rest of the time? Wired keyboard, wired mouse, wired headphones, wired controller, wire microphone, etc etc etc.
There's a much simpler explanation. I regularly see boomers with wireless "earpod" type earphones out and about. They're not cool any more.
Fashion is fickle and it's best to not pay any attention to it. Choose the right tool for the job. Sometimes wireless is better, like when running, sometimes wired is better, like doing serious listening in a quiet environment.
It's fashionable. Some famous people have been seen with visible wires, therefore everyone needs wires.
All these arguments here about technological superiority are quaint but miss the point. People in the wider world don't have the same concerns the people of HN have here, they're following icons.
As soon as they started talking about celebrities and it being a fashion statement they lost me on this being a real resurgence.
For about a month we had videos of people getting in fist fights over fucking Stanley tumblers of all things, those stupid Labubus popped off too, and God knows how many other things come and go in like a month. Unless theirs a sustained long term resurgence in the market, it's probably just another tiktok fad.
There are two tiers of bluetooth devices. There are the Apple and Samsung devices (and Bose and other high-end brands), which just work. Then there are the rest, which are terrible.
I wouldn't lump the high-end audio brands in with Apple.
They often produce models that cost 25% as much and perform much better than the comparable Apple offerings.
I think Apple is in a "fashion tier" that's distinct from "high quality" or "high end".
Wired headphones is the style these days.