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Wired headphone sales are exploding

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Re: Wired headphone sales are exploding

#281

Post by UltraSane »

ahhhhnoooo wrote: post #110
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…

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…

Any media that is actively damaged during every use is inferior.

Re: Wired headphone sales are exploding

#282

Post by sinkasapa »

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.

Re: Wired headphone sales are exploding

#283

Post by duskdozer »

luag wrote: post #154
volemo wrote: post #119

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.

Re: Wired headphone sales are exploding

#284

Post by saalweachter »

lb1lf wrote: post #183
cj wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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…

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.

Re: Wired headphone sales are exploding

#285

Post by dsr_ »

Lio wrote: post #277
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…

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.

Re: Wired headphone sales are exploding

#286

Post by UltraSane »

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

Re: Wired headphone sales are exploding

#287

Post by cyberrock »

siva7 wrote: post #30

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.

Re: Wired headphone sales are exploding

#288

Post by Lio »

adrian_b wrote: post #215
ahhhhnoooo wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

Re: Wired headphone sales are exploding

#290

Post by madaxe_again »

glimshe wrote: post #84

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 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.

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