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Wired headphone sales are exploding

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Re: Wired headphone sales are exploding

#641

Post by asdff »

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.

You are right, in the past we never skipped a song or adjusted volume, just went with what came out of the factory and what was playing at the time. Those buttons on the device itself were for show.

Re: Wired headphone sales are exploding

#642

Post by asdff »

phil21 wrote: post #569
pimlottc wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It's a growing trend in the "alternative" health scene. I have a few friends who should absolutely know better do silly stuff like use wired headphones due to RF, and even as much as turning Wifi off at night for health reasons. Nevermind they just switch to 5G in bed on their phones.

Ask them why they stopped wearing their copper bracelet

Re: Wired headphone sales are exploding

#643

Post by my123 »

raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #241
kotaKat wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really is a damn shame that my Lightning connectors are all dead and useless despite being the empirically better connector because of Vestager's whinging and stupidity across the entire EU mobile ecosystem.

Lightning is not a better connector. It maxed out at USB 2 speeds and I needed separate bespoke adapters and chargers. I can now use standard USB C cords with everything, standard USB C headphones, connect my iPhone to my portable external monitor with the same USB C cable I use for my computer… https://imgur.com/a/fIwsjIQ And the iPhone supports all of the USB C standards that computers support - audio, video, mass…

Side note: USB 3 Lightning did exist on iPad Pros.

Re: Wired headphone sales are exploding

#644

Post by asdff »

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…

Sound wise they are exactly the same. This is what bewildered me at the time with the airpods. Everyone is raving about the sound. Same chinsy crappy earppod sound they always had. Might as well use one of the five pairs of those you've accumulated.

And then also everyone I know who was heavy into airpods has also over time moved off them because, the battery. Everyone uses over ears from Sony now. Like look at what the walkers in your neighborhood are doing, everyone has overears now with actual battery life that isn't going to be ewaste in 18 months.

Heavy usage on these is just killing the battery. It is worst case for battery health: people just draining these down in one session constantly. In like 1 year maybe 2 your battery life has sunk like a stone and apple wants $50 out of you. 10 years half a grand spend on $5 sound quality.

Re: Wired headphone sales are exploding

#645

Post by polishdude20 »

ReptileMan wrote: post #517
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…

On a date the only acceptable bluetooth usage is for teledildonics.

I use my wired sex toys usually. Ethernet works really well.

Re: Wired headphone sales are exploding

#646

Post by ricksunny »

kelnos wrote: post #129
shortercode wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All valid points, but I don’t miss having a tangle of wire in my pocket or that wire failing after a couple of months meaning I have to get a new set of headphones.

I have a set of IEMs that I bought at least 8 years ago, and they still work fine. And the wire is even replaceable, though I haven't needed to do so. If your wired headphones are only lasting a couple months, then likely you're buying at a price point where quality suffers. Agree with the tangle of wire, though.

I solved the tangle issue going on years now with this: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07Z8G6VH4?ref_=ppx_hzsearch_conn_...

You accustom to the wrap-unwrap motion and then that's it.

Re: Wired headphone sales are exploding

#647

Post by WhyNotHugo »

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…

OTOH, with Bluetooth headphones I can stand from my desk and stretch, or rest my eyes focusing on something while standing next to the window — without interrupting whatever I'm listening to.

I can also freely move around the house while listening to music or any podcast. Carrying my laptop around would hardly be convenient.

I do have a pair of wired headphones which I rarely use. My laptop has ended up on the floor twice due to me standing and forgetting about the cable. I almost broke the plug another time when I stood up and they were still plugged to the desktop. As someone who's grown up with the comfort of wireless headphones, using wired headphones is like wearing headphones with an anchor.

Honestly, I hate dealing with cables, even more having cables wrapped around me. I can't imagine being out on the street and having cables wrapped around me, connected to the phone in my bag or pocket, while trying to move around or use my arms in the usual way.

Re: Wired headphone sales are exploding

#648

Post by lb1lf »

saltcured wrote: post #564
saalweachter wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The killer feature of CD players is shuffling and skipping tracks. Heck, it used to be all the rage to get a three or five CD changer and shuffle the whole thing, comfortable unpredictability, forty or fifty songs you like but never knowing which is next. You could likewise just listen to an album on your phone, in order, but it's too easy to let your distraction kick in and switch it halfway through.

As someone who grew up during the transition, the killer feature of the CD was amazing audio quality and the lack of degradation from every playback. The period where we started finding albums marked "DDD", for fully digital production, was also amazing. It saddens me a little that, in spite of all the technology, actual Hi-Fi listening seems to have become less accessible or prevalent. I'm still not sure how much th…

Anecdotally, I don't think hi-fi's decline has to do with cost - at least not cost alone. You can still get a more than decent system which will fit most living rooms for quite reasonable money - I just had a look at prices at a national retailer's website here in Norway, and you can get a pair of decent bookshelf speakers and a stereo amp delivering 2x60W into 8 ohms, built-in streaming support and a HDMI input to ease connection to the TV, covering the most common use cases nowadays, for less than $1,000.

For comparison, median income after taxes is approx. $50,000 a year, so we're looking at less than a week's net wages.

I think it is more likely that our media consumption habits have changed - when I was a kid in the eighties, a few - like, the bank branch manager, the dentist and a few others - had a VCR at home. The rest of us had TVs, meaning we watched what was on at the time, or (once in a while) rented a VCR and a movie.

That aside, our media choices were radio, going to the cinema (not very often!) or - drumroll - recorded music.

Hence everybody had stereos. I believe my parents were quite typical - when I was a toddler, they bought a number of LPs with radio dramas for kids on them, music for kids &c - the stereo was basically the entertainment hub.

Today my family and I - wife and three kids aged 10, 12 and 16 - have between us, let's see, 2xTVs, a 40" and an 85", the latter with a 5.1 system attached, both with Apple TVs, a stereo (making us an outlier!), three ipads, three smartphones, two dumbphones, a handful of radios, three - oops, four - laptops, a PlayStation, a couple of Nintendo Switches...

There's basically so many more options to spend our media time on, and at the same time there's way more leisure activities aimed at kids now than when I was a kid, so the kids are barely at home during the week (at least it feels that way!), leaving less time (methinks) for media consumption than only a generation ago, while at the same time having many more options.

So - basically, for many, only a generation ago, the stereo was the entertainment hub and you were kind of expected to have one. Nowadays the entertainment hub is some kind of internet-connected device, and a stereo is a niche product.

Re: Wired headphone sales are exploding

#649

Post by dbrgn »

volemo wrote: post #117
dbrgn wrote: post #57

An alternative to a wired dongle is a high-quality bluetooth amp, e.g. from Fiio. It's reliable, keeps your phone free from cables, but you can keep using your high quality wired headphones.

That seems a ~~wired~~ weird compromise to me: you get the downsides of Bluetooth (inherent latency, potential codec quality loss, spectrum congestion — I occasionally experience interference and dropouts in crowded areas) but still have a wire hanging from your head and another battery to keep charged. :/

Latency doesn't matter for music and Fiio supports both LDAC and aptX.

Keeping the battery charged is a weak point though, agreed.

Re: Wired headphone sales are exploding

#650

Post by thom »

cj wrote: post #168
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…

Instead of "Candles are a superior way to light a room" you can say "Candles are a superior way to create a romantic vibe in a room". Candles/Vinyl can be superior if you clarify the metric you're optimizing for.

I’m sure somebody posted a link to E-Prime here recently (a form of English where all forms of ‘to be’ are forbidden) and this conversation is a wonderful example of the kinds of conflicts that it helps avoid.
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