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Wired headphone sales are exploding

bbc.com

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Re: Wired headphone sales are exploding

#221

Post by alpaca128 »

gucci-on-fleek wrote: post #86
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…

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 fla…

> 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.

Re: Wired headphone sales are exploding

#222

Post by OJFord »

rock_artist wrote: post #175

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…

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.

Re: Wired headphone sales are exploding

#224

Post by thendrill »

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

Re: Wired headphone sales are exploding

#225

Post by MrScruff »

Schnitz wrote: post #108

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. Mode…

I think on the go is the point. I love my AirPod Pros but I wouldn’t listen to them sat at my desk.

Re: Wired headphone sales are exploding

#226

Post by adrian_b »

roenxi wrote: post #169
esperent wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 a…

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.

Re: Wired headphone sales are exploding

#227

Post by vnorilo »

maccard wrote: post #219
adzm wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And latency!! Anything that needs to be real time is impossible without wired headphones. Even the lowest latency wireless is noticeable.

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.

Re: Wired headphone sales are exploding

#228

Post by OJFord »

jhbadger wrote: post #139

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…

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!'

Re: Wired headphone sales are exploding

#229

Post by input_sh »

ben-schaaf wrote: post #164
gucci-on-fleek wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fla…

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?

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.

Re: Wired headphone sales are exploding

#230

Post by raw_anon_1111 »

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 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.

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