A few reasons I can think of:
- Many wired headsets don't have batteries. You can't forget to charge it ...
- They don't auto-connect, when you don't expect. It's clear if it's connected to the phone or the laptop.
Wired headphone sales are exploding
711–720 of 752 posts
Re: Wired headphone sales are exploding
#712Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is worth pointing out that not all parts age equally well. The cushions especially are not that durable and should be considered consumables. Sennheiser provides replacements should you need them. The effect they have on the sound is much bigger than you might think.
> The cushions especially are not that durable and should be considered consumables. This is because they're mostly synthetic "leather", which doesn't last long. Everyone is probably familiar with how synthetic leather starts to flake off. Icky. If you get some pads made from real leather (usually lamb is the go-to choice) they'll last virtually forever. However since real leather is heaver and less porous, this chan…
Is there any way to preserve those synthetic materials and gain a longer shelf life (eg. 15+ years)? Eg. Heat sealed foil bags with excess air removed, or even filled with nitrogen? The idea is to buy several spare consumables when you first purchase the equipment, and break them out at regular intervals.
I have the same problem with vulcanized coatings that go sticky after several years (looking at you, 3D Connexion SpaceMouse, Saitek X52, etc).
Re: Wired headphone sales are exploding
#713This 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…
And latency!! Anything that needs to be real time is impossible without wired headphones. Even the lowest latency wireless is noticeable.
> real time is impossible without wired
Surely you can do real-time with analog RF?
Re: Wired headphone sales are exploding
#714Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The cushions especially are not that durable and should be considered consumables. This is because they're mostly synthetic "leather", which doesn't last long. Everyone is probably familiar with how synthetic leather starts to flake off. Icky. If you get some pads made from real leather (usually lamb is the go-to choice) they'll last virtually forever. However since real leather is heaver and less porous, this chan…
Is there any way to preserve those synthetic materials and gain a longer shelf life (eg. 15+ years)? Eg. Heat sealed foil bags with excess air removed, or even filled with nitrogen? The idea is to buy several spare consumables when you first purchase the equipment, and break them out at regular intervals. I have the same problem with vulcanized coatings that go sticky after several years (looking at you, 3D Connexion…
You can remove the sticky vulcanised coating by rubbing will isopropanol or acetone. It's a bit of work, but beats throwing a working device out.
Re: Wired headphone sales are exploding
#715Earlier 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.
Do the old iPods still hold battery well?
You can buy good quality replacement batteries. I got Cameron Sino "CS-EC003XL". It lasts at least a week before needing a charge, depending how much you use it.
Re: Wired headphone sales are exploding
#716For me, wired multi-driver armature IEMs (in-ear monitors) are the best thing to happen in the audio field since the arrival of neodymium magnets. For a fraction of price of professional monitor speakers, you get the closest thing to direct hardware-to-brain audio transmission. It's precise and fast transient-wise. No reflections, no phase problems, nada. You can choose exactly the type of frequency response you need…
Looking at the prices on that list, the ones near the top are several k$, but so are many in the middle and bottom, and amongst them are ones costing many times less, leading one to think that there really is no correlation between price and performance.
Yes, the main metric to use when choosing an IEM is performance/price, not performance alone, as in everything else generally.
Sometimes a Matrix glitch occurs and someone produces a total outlier, like Philips SHE3580, a $10 little wonder I used for many years to write music, and the mixes produced with those translated literally everywhere without any surprises (in audio engineering, translation is the ability of an audio track to sound as close as possible to the sound engineer's intent on as wide range of audio equipment as possible).
They had a single diaphragm drive, which is usually regarded as slow and less precise than other types of drivers, but they sounded very linear and only slightly less precise than many much more expensive models with multiple balanced armature drivers.
I believe, their performance/price ratio was closer to infinity than anything out there on the market.
But alas, built with biodergadation or planned obsolescence in mind, they finally deteriorated mechanically to the point of falling apart completely.
Re: Wired headphone sales are exploding
#717Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The cushions especially are not that durable and should be considered consumables. This is because they're mostly synthetic "leather", which doesn't last long. Everyone is probably familiar with how synthetic leather starts to flake off. Icky. If you get some pads made from real leather (usually lamb is the go-to choice) they'll last virtually forever. However since real leather is heaver and less porous, this chan…
Is there any way to preserve those synthetic materials and gain a longer shelf life (eg. 15+ years)? Eg. Heat sealed foil bags with excess air removed, or even filled with nitrogen? The idea is to buy several spare consumables when you first purchase the equipment, and break them out at regular intervals. I have the same problem with vulcanized coatings that go sticky after several years (looking at you, 3D Connexion…
If you manufacture something it's nice to ask what part breaks first and consider making it easy to replace.
Re: Wired headphone sales are exploding
#718This 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…
Higher sound quality? I'm not sure the DAC powering the wired headphones would be any better (at powering those specific headphones) that the one built into the wireless ones, that's a baseless claim.
There is digital compression, but the original media you'll play will already be compressed, and good-enough digital compression is not noticeable unless you're using a good DAC with a good pair of studio headphones.
If you're in professional audio production, get a decent DAC and something like the M50x headphones, if you want to play stuff off your phone, just use a wireless option.
Re: Wired headphone sales are exploding
#719One thing people are missing about audio jack is. It's only analog system in the digital smart phone. I hope we find better solutions.
Re: Wired headphone sales are exploding
#720This 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…
> "Too many android phones copied Apple and ditched the venerable audio jack" I understand this is a personal preference, but I never understood the anger some people had over the removal when it's as easy as just using a small USB-C to 3.5mm audio jack converter to use wired headphones.
Given the responses here (and the downvoting) anyone would be forgiven to think I had something personally to do with the removal of the audio jacks, rather then you know.. only saying I do not personally understand the anger involved with the whole thing.
Hope the soft skills of those involved are better when interacting in person.