Wired headphone sales are exploding

Post by coreyburnsdev » Sat, Mar 14, 2026, 5:47 PM UTC

hedora wrote: post #66

I wonder what percentage of the people driving this trend have either only had AirPods (they make me dizzy, and I think the sound quality is terrible), Beats (even worse) or no-name $20 bluetooth headsets. I have a nice high-end set of Sennheisers that cost ~ $150, and they're much better than my old wired set (both in-ear, both noise isolating, similar prices). The bluetooth ones win because they eliminate cable noi…

Post by manmal » Sat, Mar 14, 2026, 5:47 PM UTC

jwilliams wrote: post #559

I like to do walking meetings or meetings where I'm cleaning/emptying dishwasher/etc. It sounds strange, but I'm a lot more present than when I'm at my computer. Anyway. Somewhat ironically, I use a wired set of headphones for this. It's not just the speakers that are better. I often get people remarking how much better the audio is on their end too... i.e. the cheap inline microphone.

Post by f1shy » Sat, Mar 14, 2026, 5:51 PM UTC

raffraffraff wrote: post #428

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…

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…

Post by mrob » Sat, Mar 14, 2026, 5:54 PM UTC

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…

Post by dcdc123 » Sat, Mar 14, 2026, 5:59 PM UTC

mock-possum wrote: post #552

letmetweakit wrote: post #512

"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're trying to set a vibe, and then you have to forget the network. On a date!" The quote above makes absolutely zero sense to me, it's like ChatGPT 0.3a decided to write something about Blu…

It’s poorly written but painfully familiar. Even if it’s two devices that have never known any connection but the single one between them… Bluetooth aomeyimes just inexplicably fails, requiring forgetting the previous connection, and reconnecting.”