Posted by billybuckwheat 3 days ago
TikTok is a big reason wired headphones are popular. AirPod microphone quality is spotty and improving the quality is non-deterministic. With wired earpods, people put the mic next to their mouth and get above-average audio quality.
Like the article says, wired headphones have also become a fashion statement akin to vinyl culture.
They also project a clear message of “don’t bother me” when worn in public.
It's just much harder to get good sound quality when the mikes are by your ear rather than on a wire near your mouth
Not to mention that it completely removes the risk of running low on headphone battery mid-call
In the pro audio, wireless was never a thing with an exception of live shows where you’d might want to be free on stage but avoid stage monitors.
Notice that while Apple made everyone ditch the lovely 3.5”, on the MacBook Pros they’ve actually kept it and *improved* it.
As this is HN, I’ll focus on technical aspects I didn’t notice in the article.
- Active Noise reduction
While the article suggested the battery free magic of analog headsets. Flights are where the active noise reduction headsets shines. Active cancellation isn’t needed for studio environment but on the go it can certainly make your listening more pleasant.
- Hybrid devices There are several manufacturers with classical headset designs that also includes wired support with all modern features. This is a good balance in my opinion for benefiting from both worlds.
- Latency
Especially Bluetooth, our current consumer wireless is buffered and this latency is too much for creating music. Products such as GarageBand, Logic or FL Studio won’t be that useful for tracking with Bluetooth.
- Quality
Indeed, analog 3.5” audio is uncompressed vs Bluetooth. But it doesn’t mean the audio is superior for listening just because of that transition. Our modern devices are still mostly digital those days so there is DAC that takes those bits and converts them to analog (most of it today is done well as those chips are common) and the other step is the analog amplification. Audiophiles usually invest a lot in the headphones amplifier. Most android devices in the past were mediocre in that sense.
So while wired is a trend, the “dongle” of USB-C to convert the audio is still a major part of the quality we end with.
- Sharing is caring (my personal take)
The biggest frustration I feel with Bluetooth is that it’s now nearly impossible to use multiple headphones for listening. In the old days, you had a simple splitter and as long as both headsets were the same impedance, you can even have 4 people listening to the same content easily.
With Bluetooth, only Apple addresses this in a very limited manner with a lock in to specific models and up to 2 devices and no video calls or live audio support.
The Bose mobile app also allows me to use two pairs of Bose headphones on a single device, but still only 2 devices and AFAICT only for media consumption.
Of course, the company disappeared, and now in 2026, we have lesser tech than we had back in 2017.
If you're wondering "Well, how did a company disappear?!", feel free to take the most corpo/capitalist-dystopian guess.
If you guessed "They got bought out by Google - presumably for IP - with the founders joining Big G, and Google of course promptly shelved it and did absolutely diddly squat with it", congratulations, you win... frustration and disappointment, I suppose!
1 - https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/the-most-exciting-th...
Not "audiophiles" standard though from a sound engineer pov, it is very decent (especially compared to my other laptops)
Gee, is that the kind of stuff that makes people want this, rather than actual usefulness related reasons?
I want it because I don't want yet another thing to have to charge, and because I'd want to be able to throw some cheap headphones in my backpack that I can use the one time in a month that I actually need them in combination with a phone (which of course isn't possible anymore today)
Also, why are ANC headphones today worse for gaming than in the year 2018 when they supported aptx that had less lag? Technology is going backwards?
I've had to ally myself with a brand I've once sworn off just to get a flagship model Android with a headphone jack. Killing Reader is a greedy betrayal (they were pushing us onto Plus, the whole social web thing) but removing headphone jacks from Pixels is a cowardly betrayal! Eyeing you too there, Samsung. You and Google both have made it extremely difficult to maintain a modicum of principle in today's consumer landscape! You made me justify my purchase with a utilitarian "Better the jacked devil than the blue-toothed one".
(And before you ask, I only generally buy flagships because I upgrade my phone like, every five years, and in my experience flagships are just more bang for buck. YMMV tho.)
Anyway, honestly, wired is not perfect. Wired and wireless each have their inconveniences it's just that I'm more willing to put up with the inconveniences of wired. Wired connections have known failure modes, something which I really value in tech. I have a Sony WH-1000XM3 which can work both as wired and wireless and I love it for that.
Long live wired connections! Here's to a future with cheaper flagship models with a headphone jack!
>"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!"
If your tastes in music are not mainstream (and mine definitely is not), mainstream headphones will ruin your music more than you realize - for years I just thought that was how recorded music is supposed to sound, and it wasn't very good. Trying a neutrally-tuned headphone can change your (musical) life. Unfortunately, very few wireless headphones are tuned that way.
Edit: Part of why I never looked into it sooner, I had heard so much about "audiophile snake oil" over the years, I thought that was all there was. That exists, but there plenty of headphones marketed to "audiophiles" that are legitimate.
There are some models but none really explore their possible advantages (battery, ux, single signal source).
I lost single wireless earpiece multiple times making the rest useless. This won't happen with wire. With wire its also so much easier and quicker to take them off they will just hang around your neck. There is reason why many workers in loud environments prefer earplugs wired together.
My impression is that apple hyped the airpods so well that people forgot about other possibilities. And when Google included cool headphones with cables people thought they have to cut them… that was when industry decided its dead segment.
I also have to say i haven't checked this for two years but there seem to be some new models now (under banner of neckband earbuds). So maybe there is something nicer now.
It doesn't provide full volume output under Android, though.
Otherwise, the CS43131 DAC powers some great designs. I can't comment on their durability, though. https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/j...
I am hesitant to buy Apple accessories like these as I am having quality concerns. Specifically the macbook chargers I've encountered are far less rigid than Lenovo Thinkpad chargers (at least before they switched to USB-C). I never felt Apple did a particularly good job with cables and connectors when it comes to longevity.
Wireless headphones take up much less space. I can put them in my pocket trivially.
Wireless headphones can tell me where they are and if I've left them behind.
Wireless headphones don't have a piece of plastic that dangles on my neck, shoulders, and face. As someone with sensory issues, this is genuinely important.
I've never had to spend five minutes untangling the cords for my wireless headphones.
I've never accidentally snagged the cable on my wireless headphones, causing them to snap off.
I can put my phone in a waterproof case in my backpack and protect it while walking. I don't have to do cable management to route the wire.
It's fine to prefer the wired headphones. I fully endorse that for you. Maybe drop the hyperbole about how wired headphones are strictly better?
And I hate it: latency, glitches, randomly just deciding not to connect anymore, deciding to connect in the lower-quality headset mode when I want to listen to music, and refusing to switch to the high-quality mode, battery running out at inconvenient times, the cat knocking them off my nightstand and under the bed where I cant reach them. So many reasons to be annoyed by them!
But I hardly ever take out my wired headphones anymore, and I'm not sure why. Back when I got my first phone without a 3.5mm jack, I just kept a little USB-C adapter in the little pouch/case that held my wired IEMs, and it was fine. But at some point I bought a new phone, and there was a deal on cheap (or free?) wireless earbuds with it, and I really just stopped using wired headphones for the most part since then, even though the wireless ones really annoy me for so many reasons.
(I actually don’t like 3.5mm jacks as much as some people do, though, as my experience has been the ports get janky over time if they’re under any strain at all, which they will be on a mobile device and which is always a back-of-my-mind source of stress when using them, but quarter-inch jacks are awesome)
Wireless can't get caught on doorknobs or other protrusions.
I don't have to plug them in. I put them in my ears and they work.
They automatically work with multiple devices. I put them in and make a phone call. I put them in and take a video meeting on my computer.
There certainly are advantages to wired headphones and more power to you if you prefer those tradeoffs. But it's bizarre to call wireless "strictly inferior." It should not be difficult to find at least one thing about them that someone might find to be superior.
I went looking for the state of the art in headphones and bought (1) a set of AirPod Pros and (2) a recent Sony headset.
My feelings about the AirPods are terribly mixed.
10 years ago I think the best reason to spend $250 instead of $25 on a set of Bluetooth headphones was that the $250 device would pair properly with multiple devices whereas it might take you 15 minutes of screwing around to unpair and repair the $25 headphones every time you need them. But hey they are so cheap maybe you can pack one for each device you have and not worry about it.
Today it is the other way around, somehow $25 headphones "just work" with Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, Steam Deck, whatever. After I disabled the microphone and switched to the microphone on my camera, the AirPods got reliable with Windows. Inside Apple's ecosystem it tries really hard and almost works, yet the $25 headphones "just work" and don't seem to be trying so hard. I don't get messages warning me that somebody else's $25 headphones are following me around but my iPhone tells me that about my AirPods all the time but I think it is a KPI for somebody in Cupertino that I see the word "AirPods" as much as possible.
Now the sound quality of the AirPods is just great, I'll grant that, but I'm not going to be one of those annoying youngsters who is as hard as hearing as the oldest oldsters because I have some genetic polymorphism that makes me produce copious amount of earwax that eject the AirPods from my ears if I move too much. My doc says one of these days my ears are going to plug up and I shouldn't get so excited about it.
If you still want to make the old headphones work these welders are a godsend, and with some small amount of diy work of cleaning, sanding and buffing you can easily hide these welds.
I personally like to leave them though since they accent that something that was once broken is whole again, and that it has a long history!
Sony experia, Asus zenphone, Motorola Moto G, and a few others
They're rare nowadays, but they're inherently superior when it comes to audio just working
Probably need to start shopping again soon cause updates stop in June.
Right now, since I buy audio files anyways, I've mostly been relying on a tiny audio player that can also act as a Bluetooth receiver for my phone.
I'm not well versed in the world of port design, but what comes to mind is a little shallow magnetic nub with a couple of contacts on it. Easy to clean, impossible to break by accidental torquing, not deep enough to get stuff stuck in it.
The cool thing is that whatever the new design is, making adapters for 1.44mm to the new thing is dirt cheap since it's still just an analog connection.
Would you share more? I've never had an issue with a USB-C cable. Helps to buy well constructed ones with legit specs.
And when usb-c phones disconnect just a little, usually the phone will pause the music completely and disconnect, whereas the aux headphones will just keep playing. So if the connection isn't perfect, the usb-c cable becomes unlistenable because I can't walk 20 steps without it pausing.
edit: I've tried many cables and dongles, so if you don't have this problem, it might be just that I move around more? Biggest problem for me is commutes and walking around.
Compared to 3.5mm where the frustrations I remember were usually limited to sometimes getting a bit of a crackle or one of the audio channels dropping out and worst case scenario you just unplugged it and put it back in and it usually worked. With USBC you have to wait to see.