With completely wireless earbuds, the rule is: when the battery fails, they have to be disposed of. Not so with the Fairbuds, that allow you to replace batteries in just a few seconds. Combined with a repairable design, the earbuds should therefore have an extremely long lifetime.
It depends on the proximity of metal to skin mostly. If you use giant cans with huge ear pads, you’re fine. If you use in-ear reference headphones, the metal mesh over the speaker is close enough to the earhole to jump the gap. It also depends if the headphones are plugged into a device on your person versus say, a desktop DAC. And if you use a chair with wheels that roll across plastic, etc. etc. A lot of variables. I still enjoy using wired for audio quality, I just have to make sure I don’t plan on moving and/or discharging my bodily static periodically on a grounded surface.
ESD is such an hilarious annoying thing, I once touched a cell phone and the entire display oozed to black starting from the point I touched and then oozed back to picture. Another time, I ESD’d a wall thermostat so hard that it reset back to factory defaults. I may actually be a Van De Graaff generator.
Edit: Just remembered a third, touched a light switch screw one day and static snapped me with enough juice that 200 nearby LED lights blinked on for a split second, and then back off.
Would wearing one of those grounded ESD leashes prevent this? It’s kinda silly, but if it works I’ll absolutely put one of those lil fuckers at my desk.
Funny you mention, I just recently got some ESD shoe harnesses to try out and see if they’ll drain it enough to reduce the shock. May have to go full ESD lab with grounded work pads and everything at some point hahaha.