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Wired headphone sales are exploding

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Re: Wired headphone sales are exploding

#351
post #120

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…

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 ev…

> advantage of not requiring power. Vinyl doesn’t even have that.

well actually...

Re: Wired headphone sales are exploding

#353
post #120

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…

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 ev…

RAM shortages will never make vinyl more expensive. Anything digital requires a CPU to work.

Re: Wired headphone sales are exploding

#354

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 t…

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.

Re: Wired headphone sales are exploding

#355
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…

> 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(…

A lot of people buy vinyls for the albums art.

Re: Wired headphone sales are exploding

#356

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 t…

> 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

Re: Wired headphone sales are exploding

#357
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…

- 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…

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.

Re: Wired headphone sales are exploding

#359
post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ev…

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.

Re: Wired headphone sales are exploding

#360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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.

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.

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