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Wired headphone sales are exploding

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Re: Wired headphone sales are exploding

#331

Post by twic »

alpineman wrote: post #251

Love my JBL in-ear wired headphones but I can only use them when sitting still. When I walk with them they 'rustle' like crazy (don't know how else to describe the sound)

I think you're talking about microphonics:

https://zikman.audio/blog/cable-microphonics-what-it-is-and-...

Also sometimes called the stethoscope effect.

I think strictly speaking, this isn't actually microphonics, because that means that mechanical noise causes electrical noise, which then results in audible noise, whereas what is happening is just transmission of vibrations up the cable into the ear.

Anyway, it can be fixed with better cables. They don't have to be fancy (they don't have to be the 349 euro cables that site is selling!) - i have a pair of KZ ZS10 Pro X earphones, and using the stock cables, i don't get rustling through those.

(more generally, i have an embarrassing number of Chi-Fi earphones, and don't get rustling with any of them)

Re: Wired headphone sales are exploding

#332

Post by JensKnipper »

ramgine wrote: post #328

I use wireless almost exclusively. ANC in the office is a must. I also know that a good pair of wired headphones will have way more fidelity than AirPods. But I do have some nice wired headphones and I pair them to my iPhone with the Fiio BTR5. It’s been a good mix of the two. I’m of the mindset to go back to an mp3 player and use the fiio to connect to my car Bluetooth

FiiO is great to get the best of both worlds. Using IEMs with FiiO UTWS5.

Re: Wired headphone sales are exploding

#333

Post by catlikesshrimp »

vaginaphobic wrote: post #170
0x38B wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm with you! After I lost my gen 1 AirPods a couple years ago, I paid $20 for a pair of Apple's corded EarPods and used them until they failed (1) a few months ago. They had a good mic + music controls, sounded fine, and didn't need a dongle. Now I'm down to my Shure IEMs (via an Apple lighting-to-3.5mm dongle) and a borrowed pair of old Galaxy buds - wanted to give wireless buds a try, since it's been so long. I do…

AirPods Pro 2 went through a washing machine cycle and still works. Having cables it’s a pain, need to pass behind your clothes or outside dangling. Can’t charge phone while using wired headphones

Phones used to have a 3.5mm port for a reason: sturdier, simpler and independent. Having dangling cable is offset by wireless having to be charged charged, for some only in a case with a charger.

Re: Wired headphone sales are exploding

#334

Post by The_President »

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 little rechargeable bluetooth transceiver with a 3.5 mm jack on it - Just like having a 50 foot audio extension cord, plus it adds a mic.

Re: Wired headphone sales are exploding

#335

Post by NikolaNovak »

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…

- 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 ones do :-)

- to me, it's like email. Icq, aim, msn messenger come and go, yet email is old and boring but survives.

There's absolutely a time and place for wireless headphones and I probably use them more at this point. But killing 3.5mm from phones has been a Massive annoyance.

Re: Wired headphone sales are exploding

#336

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Wired headphone sales are exploding

#337

Post by catlikesshrimp »

zeta0134 wrote: post #262
dutchCourage wrote: post #258

I'm also team USB-C wired earbuds (the Apple ones are cheap and solid, mic is also nice for calls) for podcasts and commute. I never stopped using wired headphones at home but also had BT ones on the go. When they started showing signs of age I got a cheap BT receiver instead of replacing them. It's not quite as practical but for many people it's something to consider, they work surprisingly well!

I'm firmly on team "dual USB port" for this problem. We do this on computers, which can then perfectly well charge and play audio at the same time. Why not phones? It seems like there's plenty of space for a second port.

the usb port is much more complicated than a 3.5mm port. It is more expensive, it takes more space. Do you add another real port or a built in hub? (they would go with the latter, probably)

The advantage is you have a backup port.

Re: Wired headphone sales are exploding

#338

Post by gzread »

mcdeltat wrote: post #177
atoav wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but your "IF" is doing the heavy lifting here and it would be your burden to proof how dirt would be a means of artistic expression before anybody could take your argument seriously. As a musician myself I can assure you that the high stakes releases for any musician are vinyl releases. They also happen to be the ones with which most musicians earn the most money. Now technologically vinyl isn't superior (and an…

Yes that's my point with the "if"! And in general I largely agree with you. The parent comment basically argued vinyl is superior because when artists used vinyl the resulting music was creatively better (because of whatever process). Sure, but then you can't selectively ignore the great music that has been made with other recording technologies. I can point to a lot of good music recorded on tape or digital. Unless…

> There is no magic sauce killer feature unique to vinyl.

Old-school DJing! Imagine carefully positioning the laser on a CD...

Re: Wired headphone sales are exploding

#339

Post by throw0101c »

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…

> 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(s) in question.

Re: Wired headphone sales are exploding

#340

Post by gzread »

otabdeveloper4 wrote: post #214
atoav wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adressing your points: Music may have been a bigger culturual force during the heights of vinyl record sales. Whether that translated to better music or whether it is some form of survivorship bias: I don't know. In fact I doubt it. But there is something to the music that happened when it was new, e.g. Punk music was better when everybody was still trying to figure out what is punk and what isn't, while today it fee…

> Digital is endlessly flexible Not really. Analog electronic instruments are based on non-linear feedbacks loops. Those are pretty much impossible to emulate digitally without emulating actual electric circuits and current flow. (Yes, I know, irrelevant to the vinyl discussion.)

I used to think that, and indeed a computer can run any equations you want. However with analogue you're getting a bunch of interesting-sounding equations without having to think of them and write them down, and that's the "analogue sound." Analogue circuitry isn't a perfect math processor the way digital is, only an approximation, and the deviations from perfection are useful.

Especially if you get into synths. A digital sine wave oscillator is doing sin(time*frequency)*gain. An analogue one is designed to produce a close to perfect sine wave at a certain set point, but you make it able to be varied around that set point by replacing some of the components with adjustable ones in somewhat ad-hoc ways, and see what it sounds like. The frequency may be set by a 3-stage RC circuit, you replace all the Rs with vactrols and see what happens, now the impedance changes as well as the frequency and it might affect other parts of the circuit. You may one-point calibrate it to 1 volt per octave but it won't be linear.

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