Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Wired headphone sales are exploding

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 752 posts

Re: Wired headphone sales are exploding

#241

Post by raw_anon_1111 »

kotaKat wrote: post #205
roenxi wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

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

Re: Wired headphone sales are exploding

#242

Post by jszymborski »

alpaca128 wrote: post #210
bob1029 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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.

Re: Wired headphone sales are exploding

#243

Post by raw_anon_1111 »

charcircuit wrote: post #151
an_guy wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Re: Wired headphone sales are exploding

#244

Post by raw_anon_1111 »

downsplat wrote: post #202

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

Re: Wired headphone sales are exploding

#246

Post by maccard »

vnorilo wrote: post #227
maccard wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wireles…

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.

Re: Wired headphone sales are exploding

#247

Post by shalmanese »

mcdeltat wrote: post #149
beloch wrote: post #83

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 a…

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 simply because we said so! It's just the peak of trend following bullshittery and…

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.

Re: Wired headphone sales are exploding

#248

Post by homebrewer »

gonlad_x wrote: post #188
kelnos wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'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.

Re: Wired headphone sales are exploding

#249

Post by alpaca128 »

raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #234
alpaca128 wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Here, you must use 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.

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.

Re: Wired headphone sales are exploding

#250

Post by porker »

beloch wrote: post #83

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 a…

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.

Post reply on HN