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Wired headphone sales are exploding

bbc.com

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Re: Wired headphone sales are exploding

#301

Post by Gigachad »

shalmanese wrote: post #247
mcdeltat wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

Re: Wired headphone sales are exploding

#302

Post by mcdeltat »

alpaca128 wrote: post #218
mcdeltat wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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.

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.)

Re: Wired headphone sales are exploding

#303

Post by FpUser »

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…

>"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

Re: Wired headphone sales are exploding

#305

Post by unleaded »

bwv848 wrote: post #297
userbinator wrote: post #125

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 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

Re: Wired headphone sales are exploding

#306

Post by randerson »

rapnie wrote: post #304

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.

Re: Wired headphone sales are exploding

#307

Post by ZekeSulastin »

kuschku wrote: post #273
scarecrowbob wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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 orga…

Do you have a German word for ignoring the things the person you’re replying to liked about a given thing?

Re: Wired headphone sales are exploding

#308

Post by vladvasiliu »

crote wrote: post #204
mcdeltat wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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 reduc…

> 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.

Re: Wired headphone sales are exploding

#309

Post by ghaff »

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 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.

Re: Wired headphone sales are exploding

#310

Post by bwv848 »

unleaded wrote: post #305
bwv848 wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.
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