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Wired headphone sales are exploding

bbc.com

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Re: Wired headphone sales are exploding

#601

Post by t_mahmood »

parpfish wrote: post #463
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 last forever Until my cat finds them. Any serious set of wired headphones better have replaceable wires because apparently they are delicious

Any cable, I tell you ... any cable. Ruined multiple USB cables, and almost went through two Laptop charger cable.

Re: Wired headphone sales are exploding

#602

Post by pjmlp »

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…

Another point you missed, the microphones also have better quality, they don't get all the surrounding noises as most wireless ones.

Re: Wired headphone sales are exploding

#603

Post by kuschku »

ZekeSulastin wrote: post #307
kuschku wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Most of this thread is already exploring the consumer perspective, and as the previous poster said they couldn't talk about the professional perspective, I chose to only focus on the production/broadcast angle in my comment.

Re: Wired headphone sales are exploding

#604

Post by uyzstvqs »

NoLinkToMe wrote: post #557

This hyperbole is not really necessary on hackernews. Apple alone makes 20 billion on a single product: airpods. This article notes 2025 saw a 3% increase of 15m. That means total sales are 0.5b, or 2.5% of Apple's airpods product. In other words: tiny market with a growth in line with inflation after years of decline? Let's call that 'exploding sales' and farm some clicks. Yes perhaps there is some newfound interest…

Wired and wireless will always co-exist. Your casual consumer prefers wireless. Professional audio equipment for mixing and critical listening will never favor wireless over wired. For pros, $20-50 wired IEMs beat $250 Airpods every time.

The same applies to pro gamers. Latency and empty batteries are a big no-no.

Re: Wired headphone sales are exploding

#606

Post by everdrive »

Wireless headphones have always been stupid.

- Disposable

- Small-but-not-zero fire risk inside your backpack or your ear

- Pairing woes

- Expensive

- No user-replaceable batteries

Someone's going to come and say how much they like them, but you need to remember that "needing to deal with a cable sometimes" does not actually qualify as inconvenience. When the washing machine was invented, 10s of hours of labor were freed up from people so they could either get more work done or pursue leisure and enjoy life. What did wireless headphones do for people? Prevent them from needing to exercise the tiny amount of impulse control necessary to to run your cable?

Re: Wired headphone sales are exploding

#607

Post by VerifiedReports »

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…

Also you get reliable sound quality. The DACs in the iPhones were always decent. Now you have no idea what kind of quality you're going to get from a given listening device. Plenty of them are noisy POSes; my girlfriend had a Belkin adapter that had automatic gain (!) and would ramp up to blast hiss through the car stereo during quiet segments... and sometimes even during non-quiet ones.

The phones will always have to have DACs in them, to drive their speakers if nothing else. Denying customers a physical connection to them is just a dick move.

Re: Wired headphone sales are exploding

#608

Post by mschuster91 »

pimlottc wrote: post #341
stogot wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also been seeing many “protect your brain” shorts on youtube saying that athletes are switching to wired

I don’t get it, what’s safer about wired headphones?

Probably the usual "RF is bad for your head" quackery that has been floating around ever since the first mobile phones, and for athletes, wired devices aren't in danger of getting damaged when they fall out of your ear.

Re: Wired headphone sales are exploding

#609

Post by mschuster91 »

superultra wrote: post #264

I have three teenage kids and they’ve all switched to wired. Many of their friends have as well. It has nothing to do with fashion or retro vibes, as far as I can tell. They’ve all lost too many AirPods through the years. AirPods just too easy to lose, and at their school, too easy to be stolen by someone else. And they’re expensive. Yes you can buy cheaper Bluetooth headsets but those often don’t sound as good and g…

People still steal AirPods despite them being remotely brickable? Jeez.

Re: Wired headphone sales are exploding

#610

Post by avidiax »

temp0826 wrote: post #457
raffraffraff wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bought a tiny lapel clip Bluetooth receiver that has buttons and a headphone socket. Charge over USB, pair with phone, turn any headphones into Bluetooth. If the battery runs out, plug the headphones straight into the phone. However, the noise cancelling gap is real. I'd kill for wired IEMs with an inline battery + buttons, and noise cancelling mic & circuit in the earpieces. Closest is the Sony cans, which have wi…

Re: noise canceling... recently got a pair of IEMs (Etymotic ER2XR) with good foam tips and their isolation blows away any ANC I've ever tried. The only thing is noise from touching the cable but that was solved with some ear hooks to put the cables behind my ears.

Yeah, Etymotic headphones were my go-to for probably a decade. Passive noise suppression was wonderful for public transport.

The utility has dropped tremendously though, now that headphone jacks have disappeared.

Would love to have a pair of "direct-USB-C" Etymotics.

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