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Wired headphone sales are exploding

bbc.com

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Re: Wired headphone sales are exploding

#691

Post by pharrington »

gzread wrote: post #338
mcdeltat wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes that's my point with the "if"! And in general I largely agree with you. The parent comment basically argued vinyl is superior because when artists used vinyl the resulting music was creatively better (because of whatever process). Sure, but then you can't selectively ignore the great music that has been made with other recording technologies. I can point to a lot of good music recorded on tape or digital. Unless…

> There is no magic sauce killer feature unique to vinyl. Old-school DJing! Imagine carefully positioning the laser on a CD...

Lt Cmdr Data goes hard AF on the decks.

Re: Wired headphone sales are exploding

#692

Post by 6yyyyyy »

Copernicron wrote: post #405
ahhhhnoooo wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vinyls are not necessarily the inferior technology. Given the choice, I'd prefer to play vinyl in some cases. In social settings vinyl's short length and need to be flipped creates a dynamic social environment. Someone has to regularly choose new music to play, acting with intent to do so. Someone has to regularly walk to the machine. These create dynamism and flow. CDs are much longer, and less tactile. There's less…

I would argue that vinyl sounds better thanks to the Loudness War[0]. CD is technically superior and should sound better but it's been compressed to hell and back during mastering in ways that vinyl simply can't be due to physical limitations. All that wonderful technology and they can't simply let it be so we get good sound quality. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war

You can fix this by dubbing the vinyl onto a CD-R. It'll sound identical and you won't need to mess with the turntable more than once.

Re: Wired headphone sales are exploding

#694

Post by y0eswddl »

PlanksVariable wrote: post #580
computator wrote: post #350

This trend story about wired headphones is possibly a "submarine" story as Paul Graham calls it[1], like a headline that "Suits make a corporate comeback": "The suit is back," it begins. Trend articles like this are almost always the work of PR firms. Once you know how to read them, it's straightforward to figure out who the client is. With trend stories, PR firms usually line up one or more "experts" to talk about t…

So who is the client? In all of the article’s photos of celebrities, they’re wearing Apple EarPods. Is Apple trying to convince people to buy their $19 EarPods instead of their $250 AirPods?

Actually, yeah. It's better than the customer spending that $20 elsewhere.

And there's potential for upsell in-store and on the website.

If people are defecting to wired from EarPods, it makes sense to try and position themselves in thought next to wired ones as will

Re: Wired headphone sales are exploding

#695

Post by numpad0 »

gzread wrote: post #347
numpad0 wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was the solution to the "analog loophole" "problem". The idea of the "loophole" is that the hole must be plugged shut to eliminate piracy.

Not true, since Bluetooth to 3.5mm adapters exist, and they've long given up on full-assing audio DRM anyway.

Lots of 2010s phones had SCMS-T support. App developers could require it for Bluetooth output. Though, collecting voting by wallet against it had done its job.

Re: Wired headphone sales are exploding

#696

Post by Fnoord »

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…

1) My Bluetooth over-ear headset can also do 3.5 mm. Detachable. My smartphone can do USB-C to 3.5 mm.

2) In-ears are comfortable to lie in bed with. Cables are unsafe here (compare with 'lost of earplug' argument).

3) Batteries need to be user serviceable (see iFixit), but so should cables be. See my point #1.

4) Not all Bluetooth protocols are equal, and pairing is a matter of a couple of seconds just like taking the headset or attaching the cable.

5) You can also make a wired headset wireless if the cable is modular. Small 3.5 mm to 3.5mm or USB and then usb2bt with a battery.

6) All headsets require maintenence in form of cleaning or replacing the (fake) leather.

7) Bluetooth has security issues. Tracking, for example, but also the stack is a security nightmare. You generally cannot physically replace the Bluetooth chip on client or peripheral, as they're usually baked in the hardware (e.g. in WLAN chipset of smartphone, tablet, laptop). Sometimes it is possible to use a modular device such as USB-C/USB-A. Then you can replace or add a stack.

Each has their pros and cons.

Re: Wired headphone sales are exploding

#697

Post by eimrine »

skeeter2020 wrote: post #436
ziml77 wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here. Wired headphones never lasted anywhere near as long for me as wireless ones. Any with inline controls were especially prone to failure.

or in my experience active use can damage the headphone jack, which is much, much worse

LOL! Literally 5 minutes of soldering work. There is no even need to buy a new jack, just clean the old one from old resin.

Re: Wired headphone sales are exploding

#698

Post by otabdeveloper4 »

atoav wrote: post #672
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 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.

All analogue oscillators and filters are based on nonlinear feedback loops.

Those nonlinearities can't really be modeled mathematically.

We very carefully tune these things to a narrow range of stable parameters so that they sound more "digital", but really it's the unstable parameter ranges that make music interesting.

Re: Wired headphone sales are exploding

#699

Post by otabdeveloper4 »

atoav wrote: post #674
gzread wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 som…

> But quite frankly vanilla conditions are exactly what 99.9% of the musicians will use the gear with

Any filter resonance or guitar distortion/overdrive is not a "vanilla condition", so you're absolutely wrong.

In fact, the extreme conditions is precisely the reason why normies even listen to music. Nobody would care for electric guitar if it wasn't overdriven.

Re: Wired headphone sales are exploding

#700

Post by userbinator »

duskdozer wrote: post #283
luag wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is in-ear ok? With IEMs, you'll get passive noise canceling that I've found more than enough for most situations. I have a pair of IEM with the usb-c converter attached most of the time for use with phones. Give Truthear Hexa a try.

For me, it isn't, I need ANC also. This is the thing sticking me with wireless because as far as I can tell, the best ANC are all wireless.

Try different tips --- IEMs are supposed to seal to your ears like earplugs.
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