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Corded headphones are making an unexpected return

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451–460 of 496 posts

Re: Corded headphones are making an unexpected return

#451
post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not sure I want to get into a pocket logistics discussion. I have kids. There are never enough pockets.

so your dedicated headphones pocket has been reassigned to peanut butter & jelly sandwich holder, sniffles tissue holder, candy wrapper holder, neat rocks holder, and other daily fascinations holder. the contents of this magic pocket are never truly understood until after the washing.

Yes exactly that. Usually resulting in me having to scrape the gore out of the inside of the washing machine! :)

Re: Corded headphones are making an unexpected return

#452
post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A downside being that backpacks (outside of hiking context) are so visually associated with schoolchildren that wearing them as a professional is kind of impossible, image-wise. For someone fresh out of college maybe; for thirty+ it starts communicating a very juvenile appearance. The key with messenger and shoulder bag ergonomics is all in positioning (vertically and in orientation relative to body).

How juvenile do you have to be to give a fuck about what people think of you wearing a backpack

Image is one of those laws of society that we all wish wasn't true, all believe shouldn't be true, but is intractable and almost certainly derived from evolutionary pressure.

"Vestis virum facit", or clothes make the man is extraordinarily powerful in business and social dealings. Clothes signal a lot of information quickly. So this isn't about you caring what other people think, it's about how what other people care about affect your options. I could prescribe a few experiments to witness the differences directly but I'll tell you from personal experience that the A-B differences are stark.

There was a time when I was younger that I raged against this rule, but it's a youthful variation of "old man yells at cloud". You can try and create a new reality in your head and believe it fervently, and cut your nose to spite your face, but image matters greatly to other people, at a deep level.

Re: Corded headphones are making an unexpected return

#453
post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

so your dedicated headphones pocket has been reassigned to peanut butter & jelly sandwich holder, sniffles tissue holder, candy wrapper holder, neat rocks holder, and other daily fascinations holder. the contents of this magic pocket are never truly understood until after the washing.

Yes exactly that. Usually resulting in me having to scrape the gore out of the inside of the washing machine! :)

that's where i typically find my wired ear buds as well.

Re: Corded headphones are making an unexpected return

#454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say pretty good jack to not allow the cable to pull out. Should have been using a magsafe jack! I can't count the number of times I have done this very thing.

Mixing desk outputs are typically either on the very front of the desk or at the back for a less ergonomically designed deck and at right angles to the plane of the deck for top mounted and sticking out the font for front mounted. So which ever you've got you'll never be doing a nice straight pull. Magsafe would be a nice solution to this (but back then nobody thought of this).

The mixing consoles I've used had the 1/4" coming vertically out of the top of the board. For other equipment, it might be coming out facing the user in a vertical rack piece of gear. Never have I seen it on the very front of the desk. that would be very prone to getting sheered off when a rolling chair slides across the front of the desk.

Re: Corded headphones are making an unexpected return

#455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A number of these complaints seem like they are issues of implementation and not of wirelessness in and of itself. I definitely found 3rd party Bluetooth headphones to be not worth the trouble early on, but since Apple introduced the AirPods I got tempted back to them. Either Bluetooth got a lot better or Apple's doing something clever (or both), because with the occasional "one pod didn't wake up; put it back in the…

Audio dropping out because the wireless signal is not strong enough or interference is not something that can be fixed in implementation it is a fundamental limitation of the technology. When it happens it makes wireless headphones useless at their one function playing audio.

Yes, a persistent problem with said issue WOULD definitely be grounds for abandoning Bluetooth headphones.

However.

What I'm saying is that this is not a problem for me with the Apple headphones I use (Airpods Pro and Max), which is what I'm using for most of my listening (owing to convenience, I've almost completely stopped using wired headphones).

I do occasionally experience dropouts with the AfterShox I use for some outdoor exercise, and I did sometimes experience the issue with the Sennheisers I had before I got the Airpods Max, which leads me to believe that there ARE aspects of this problem that CAN be ameliorated with implementation, contrary to your assertion.

I mean, how else do we explain the fact that it's only been a problem for me when I use nonApple hardware?

Re: Corded headphones are making an unexpected return

#456
post #165

I have never really gotten used to wireless buds, and still find myself reaching for wires half the time: - Wireless buds don’t connect 100% reliably; sometimes I get one and not the other, or neither. Sometimes they will randomly disconnect during use. - Sometimes the sound glitches out randomly, which is so irritating that I don’t care how good the sound supposedly is the rest of the time. - Gestures and voice are…

> Sometimes they will randomly disconnect during use. FYI, that's interference. Wi-fi "randomly" disconnects for a few seconds due to interference just as often, but you don't notice, because 1. the OS hides short disconnects, and 2. most protocols you use are TCP-based, and so use retries. (If you were doing something involving UDP streaming, you'd notice.) Bluetooth audio, on the other hand, is a realtime protocol,…

There is a happy medium.

Wireless headphones with a short wire hanging down to use as an antenna. Now send audio using 900MHz analog FM radio.

The signal quality can be made quite high by using enough power and/or bandwidth spreading.

Delay is near zero and it reconnects faster than you can blink at it.

Re: Corded headphones are making an unexpected return

#457
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My problem is I lose them. I bought the Bose QuietComforts earlier this year and have lost one or the other a couple of times already. Right now one is sitting in the console of my truck and i can’t find the other one. No clue where it could be and of course the batteries are dead. It would be nice if they all had Tile or similar tech, but if their batteries go dead just sitting there (super annoying thing about the…

Can I ask what you hated about the XM4s? I have a pair of XM3s and I love them (for what they are) but the form factor of the XM4 looks nicer so was considering an "upgrade".

Couple of things, both could potentially be remedied by aftermarket foam tips, I'm not sure.

- Maybe I have weird ears but the bulk of their weight is up high and kind of out from the body and there's no real support other than the tip wedged into your ear canal. If you run downstairs or jog or jump it tends to make an audible 'pop' or clacking sound as the weight sort of pries against your ear canal. If you look at the Bose they have a little rubber support that grabs your ear and supports the weight. The XM3s are more evenly distributed.

- The ANC has tons of audio artifacts. I did all of the Sony ear tuning stuff and couldn't get it to go away. Any time you bump them you'll get weird twirps and chirps, certain frequencies kind have this wooden resonance and every now and then it just went apeshit with weird howls and whistles. This could be due to poor fitting (again possibly i have weird ears) and could likely be fixed with software over time.

If you like the XM3's I'd say give them a try but just make sure you know the return policy.

Re: Corded headphones are making an unexpected return

#458
post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you exclusively use a messenger bag/shoulder bag? I've never had a problem with a backpack and wired headphones. There's an auxiliary benefit as well in that a backpack seems to be way better for my back than a shoulder bag.

A downside being that backpacks (outside of hiking context) are so visually associated with schoolchildren that wearing them as a professional is kind of impossible, image-wise. For someone fresh out of college maybe; for thirty+ it starts communicating a very juvenile appearance. The key with messenger and shoulder bag ergonomics is all in positioning (vertically and in orientation relative to body).

I could give less of a shit if someone wants to judge me by whether or not I wear a backpack.

FWIW I think messenger bags are shitty design and think people who use them just don't know any better.

Re: Corded headphones are making an unexpected return

#459
post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How juvenile do you have to be to give a fuck about what people think of you wearing a backpack

Image is one of those laws of society that we all wish wasn't true, all believe shouldn't be true, but is intractable and almost certainly derived from evolutionary pressure. "Vestis virum facit", or clothes make the man is extraordinarily powerful in business and social dealings. Clothes signal a lot of information quickly. So this isn't about you caring what other people think, it's about how what other people care…

Those kinds of things matter when it's all about appearance and there's nothing of importance being done.

If I need a job done, I couldn't care less if the person who is able to do it wears a backpack or not.

Re: Corded headphones are making an unexpected return

#460
post #243
post #17

The 1/8th inch RCA stereo jack is the best interface ever created. The fact that it's essentially unchanged from when this 44 year old used it in middle school is pretty good proof.

It's even been adopted as a MIDI jack in smaller devices like Korg Volcas. Only problem is, each manufacturer has chosen their own tip-ring-sleeve pinout...

Given that no manufacturers are going to mess with GND, there are really just two options -- Korg and Arturia ;)
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