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Wired headphone sales are exploding

bbc.com

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Re: Wired headphone sales are exploding

#421

Post by steezeburger »

exitb wrote: post #368
NikolaNovak wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- 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’ve used many pairs of wired headphones over the years, cheap and expensive, and never had ones with a cable that didn’t eventually fail, unless they mostly stay plugged into a single device. The article prominently highlights mobile usage, in which case wireless headphones easily win on longevity.

I've used tons of wired as well. Maybe have bad one pair fail at the wire? I'm super active with them too. Snowboarding with them and my Sony g shock in 1998. Lots of cycling and running usage. You've had every single pair of wired headphones fail for you? Every single pair?

Re: Wired headphone sales are exploding

#422

Post by wiseowise »

LinXitoW wrote: post #412
NikolaNovak wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- 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…

They also lack any and all useful features. Even just the ability to tap for pause is critical to my daily life. I just wonder if wired fans just never skip forward a song, or adjust the volume. Or even use active noise canceling.

Or ever do anything in parallel with listening. I’ve been working in my garden and went to a shed that’s like 15 meters away from my home only to notice that I’ve forgotten to take my phone with me - music never stopped.

Re: Wired headphone sales are exploding

#423

Post by basilikum »

LinXitoW wrote: post #412
NikolaNovak wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- 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…

They also lack any and all useful features. Even just the ability to tap for pause is critical to my daily life. I just wonder if wired fans just never skip forward a song, or adjust the volume. Or even use active noise canceling.

Many wired headphones have a little control thingy with buttons on the wire. Four pin aux connectors support control signals. If your headphones have a detachable aux cable I suppose you can just replace it with cable with controls.

Re: Wired headphone sales are exploding

#424

Post by ziml77 »

exitb wrote: post #368
NikolaNovak wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- 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’ve used many pairs of wired headphones over the years, cheap and expensive, and never had ones with a cable that didn’t eventually fail, unless they mostly stay plugged into a single device. The article prominently highlights mobile usage, in which case wireless headphones easily win on longevity.

Same here. Wired headphones never lasted anywhere near as long for me as wireless ones. Any with inline controls were especially prone to failure.

Re: Wired headphone sales are exploding

#426

Post by kQq9oHeAz6wLLS »

hshdhdhj4444 wrote: post #355
throw0101c wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I'd say buy a poster instead, but it just now occurs to me that they're likely not displaying them full-time, and the LP has the advantages of being a uniform size and made of stiff cardboard for easy storage and retrieval.

So I guess it actually makes sense.

Re: Wired headphone sales are exploding

#427

Post by scns »

emacdona wrote: post #293
dijit wrote: 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…

I think we can agree that vinyl sounds different than CD, right? Is it so hard to believe that some people actually prefer the sound of music on vinyl? For such a person, that might be the only metric that matters. But, another example: when I was growing up (dating myself here), cassette tapes were superior to CDs in the only way that mattered (to me): they didn't skip in my portable music player (walkman) when I to…

Really deep bassnotes can't be reproced by vinyl. The grooves would get too wide IIRC, it's a physical limitation.

Re: Wired headphone sales are exploding

#428

Post by raffraffraff »

NikolaNovak wrote: post #335
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…

A friend worked at sennheiser about 15 years ago and I took advantage of his cost-price deal on a pair of HD700. They are, without a doubt, the best sounding and most comforted cans I've ever used. Now, I treated them badly, throwing them into ruck sacks etc, and eventually one of the transducers failed. I contacted Sennheiser who charged me €140 to "repair" them... They sent me a brand new set with the thick silver core cable (I never sent mine back so now I have two, and those cost over 100 bucks by themselves)

Re: Wired headphone sales are exploding

#429

Post by steezeburger »

wiseowise wrote: post #422
LinXitoW wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They also lack any and all useful features. Even just the ability to tap for pause is critical to my daily life. I just wonder if wired fans just never skip forward a song, or adjust the volume. Or even use active noise canceling.

Or ever do anything in parallel with listening. I’ve been working in my garden and went to a shed that’s like 15 meters away from my home only to notice that I’ve forgotten to take my phone with me - music never stopped.

I use a pocket for this scenario.

Re: Wired headphone sales are exploding

#430

Post by hokumguru »

NBJack wrote: post #390
exitb wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve used many pairs of wired headphones over the years, cheap and expensive, and never had ones with a cable that didn’t eventually fail, unless they mostly stay plugged into a single device. The article prominently highlights mobile usage, in which case wireless headphones easily win on longevity.

Most high end headphones have a replaceable cable. What have you tried on the expensive end of the spectrum?

Not even high-end nowadays, you really have to scrape the bottom of the barrel for something with a nonreplaceable cable. Even for iems.
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