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Wired headphone sales are exploding

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Re: Wired headphone sales are exploding

#671

Post by iamdamian »

graypegg wrote: post #489
nvarsj wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Possibly it's a paid for ad. But the trend is real, at least among Gen Z/Alphas. I recently modded an iPod Mini 2nd gen for my daughter and put Rockbox on it. The thing is amazing, and I am thinking about buying an iPod classic myself. The touch wheel interface is one of my favourite interfaces ever.

First off, you're a kickass parent, that's an awesome thing to do for your daughter. How easy is it to sync with music she wants to listen to? I haven't touched Rockbox in quite a while, but I imagine it's still expecting DRM-free audio files of some sort right? Other than bandcamp I can't think of any good source for finding some beyond ripping audio streams and organizing it yourself.

Apple’s music has mostly been DRM-free since 2009!

I love this about Apple and give them as much of my business I can to show that there is still a healthy market outside streaming. (7digital is another good source, although more expensive than Apple. They offer FLAC and 320kbps.)

Makes me wish e-book stores would get onboard…

Re: Wired headphone sales are exploding

#672

Post by atoav »

otabdeveloper4 wrote: post #214
atoav wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adressing your points: Music may have been a bigger culturual force during the heights of vinyl record sales. Whether that translated to better music or whether it is some form of survivorship bias: I don't know. In fact I doubt it. But there is something to the music that happened when it was new, e.g. Punk music was better when everybody was still trying to figure out what is punk and what isn't, while today it fee…

> Digital is endlessly flexible Not really. Analog electronic instruments are based on non-linear feedbacks loops. Those are pretty much impossible to emulate digitally without emulating actual electric circuits and current flow. (Yes, I know, irrelevant to the vinyl discussion.)

I happen to both teach electronics on a university level and DSP program, so I will add a [citation needed] to your statement. Yes, there are analog circuits whose edge case percularities have not yet been adequately represented in digital circuits. But much of that is nor whar the layperson would even use and beyond any limits of perception.

Re: Wired headphone sales are exploding

#673

Post by bluGill »

Lio wrote: post #541
bluGill wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He said tape not cassette. Tape would mean real to real tape in this context - cassette doesn't make sense. Tape can be wider than cassette, only two tracks, and run faster - all give you a lot better sound quality. Not as good as a good digital system and it costs more but still very good.

I actually still have an old Grundig reel to reel somewhere, although I can't claim it as ever really hifi. I would stand by recording to reel to reel tape for quality being even less common recording to cassette tape. Quality domestic reel to reel decks were just not that widely owned here. Maybe it was different where you lived.

They we never common from what I know. However again the context is people who care about sound quality and in that group I believe they were much more common.

Re: Wired headphone sales are exploding

#674

Post by atoav »

gzread wrote: post #340
otabdeveloper4 wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Digital is endlessly flexible Not really. Analog electronic instruments are based on non-linear feedbacks loops. Those are pretty much impossible to emulate digitally without emulating actual electric circuits and current flow. (Yes, I know, irrelevant to the vinyl discussion.)

I used to think that, and indeed a computer can run any equations you want. However with analogue you're getting a bunch of interesting-sounding equations without having to think of them and write them down, and that's the "analogue sound." Analogue circuitry isn't a perfect math processor the way digital is, only an approximation, and the deviations from perfection are useful. Especially if you get into synths. A di…

Coincidentally my statement comes from the position of someone who has been building and designing analog synths for years and teaching exactly that on the university level.

The analog part of a synth can be meaningful and sometimes it is. But very often it is really not or can be adequately (or more then adequately) emulated digitally.

As a noise musician I am also aware that a lot of the interesting behavior of some circuits only comes to light under extreme conditions. It is a long standing pet peeve of mine that equipment tests always only test the gear in vanilla conditions. But quite frankly vanilla conditions are exactly what 99.9% of the musicians will use the gear with

Re: Wired headphone sales are exploding

#675

Post by xorcist »

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…

> Charging may seem like a minor inconvenience,

It won't once they're five years old!

I'm not against battery powered headphones, but I won't even take a second look at them if they don't have a battery type that is likely to be available in a decade or two, and isn't inconveniently glued shut. That leaves me very few options.

When I find a pair of cans I like I'd like to keep them. The idea that my tools have planned their obsolensce in advance seems completely ridicolous to me. I would never buy a nice guitar if it had a lifespan shorter than my own, for example.

Re: Wired headphone sales are exploding

#676

Post by tptacek »

kasey_junk wrote: post #361
bigstrat2003 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wired headphones are also 1/10 of the price of airpods. So they still come out ahead on the cost of ownership front.

What high quality wired headphones (that you’d drive with a dedicated amp and have a replaceable cable) cost $55?

For context, I was generally using H6's, HD-280s, and HD-550s (when open-ear "ear-mounted speakers" are OK). The price point here is $100-$300. All of them have replaceable cables, but none of them are standard cables, so you have to stockpile extra cables for them.

The audio quality difference between that class of headphone and Airpods Max is within the threshold of "speaker cable differences". All 4 of them put you in territory where source quality and delivery is the primary issue.

Re: Wired headphone sales are exploding

#678

Post by dehrmann »

pxoe wrote: post #469
dehrmann wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I compared the mic quality of Airpods Pro 2, Airpods 4 ANC (similar), and freebie Apple 3.5mm wired earbuds. The earbuds won. My limited research suggested either 1) compression and transmission take a lot of power, so the Airpods don't do as good of a job as something with a bigger battery can afford to, 2) the mic position is worse, or 3) Bluetooth doesn't have enough bi-directional bandwidth for two good signals.

4) The Bluetooth standard is just kinda bad. Technically there should be enough bandwidth for better quality audio, but the existing profiles like headset mode drop audio quality down to 8-16 kHz sampling rate in mono, not just for mic but for audio you're listening to as well. It's a huge flaw and it's been bad for decades with seemingly no improvement at all (at least certainly not in a way that could be widespread…

I tested with a Macbook, so I'm a little surprised Apple didn't do proprietary magic to fix it.

Re: Wired headphone sales are exploding

#679

Post by summm »

fhcbix wrote: post #369
adzm wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And latency!! Anything that needs to be real time is impossible without wired headphones. Even the lowest latency wireless is noticeable.

Not trying to argue against your point, but most of the Bluetooth latency comes from the codec, not from it being wireless. Bluetooth LE Audio comes with LC3 which supports a codec latency of as little as 2.5 ms.

Yeah but many devices still do not support it, and if they support it, then badly, or they hide it.

There is not even a USB-Bluetooth adapter that would enable LE Audio on Linux. (Besides the hacky ones that contain a full Bluetooth stack and present as USB-Audio, but those come with their own problems.)

Re: Wired headphone sales are exploding

#680

Post by raw_anon_1111 »

my123 wrote: post #643
raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No. It existed with one special adapter.
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