We used to have earbuds that don’t need to be charged because they had a headphone jack, didn’t get lost so easily because they had a cord attached to a headphone jack, never lost the bluetooth connection because they had a headphone jack, and they cost less because they had a headphone jack. https://bsky.app/profile/daisyfm.bsky.social/post/3l3mfjc6sn62k
What I hate is my car finally caught up and now has an aux jack for listening to audio from my phone but now my phone doesn’t support it, so I still can’t listen to anything on my phone in the car.
if you need to have a phone to fill out a job application then the whole thing needs to be available to someone at the poverty level and wireless earbuds are not a survival item, listening to music or speaking quietly is a pretty basic thing someone who can afford earphones in the four to nine dollar range should be able to attain
What no one ever seems to say is that this is the exact opposite of being waste conscious. How do you think you keep outdated tech in your phone? It still has to be made somewhere, right? So somewhere a factory still has to be tooled up and making these parts instead of something else.
You often hear this complaint about the waste of old earbuds and them becoming trash, but what about the factories still making trash? Is a factory still making VHS tapes really benefiting the world? Or are you just making trash because you’re nostalgic and can’t let go?
Old wired earbuds were riddled with problems. They were a NIGHTMARE. So much so that selling cheap ones next to the gum in checkout lanes was commonplace and still is because they were basically considered disposable/limited lifetime. You often rated earbuds based on how long before they crapped out as the main feature. In their time they were already a huge waste product. Now that we’ve advanced past them for the most part, they’re just trash that some people can’t let go.
But they did tangle all the time. That was annoying.
And the cord would sometimes break inside/connector went bad.
Yeah, you’d snag the wire or slightly bend the connector and then you were just playing a game of making sure it stayed plugged into the exact right angle.
Had to make sure there has just the right tension on the left wire or you’d only get half the track. Bonus points for weirdly mixed stereo where that just sounded shit
and then you’d just replace them with one of the other three dozen you bought from Wal-Mart for five bucks back in 2016
And people wonder how the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and others like it came to be 🤦
hey I’ll have you know I keep all my broken earbuds in the same box in the garage with all the other cables and assorted dongles I can no longer identify and will likely never use, like any responsible citizen should
If you think Bluetooth earphones won’t also be in that pile once the batteries stop holding charge after 2 years, you’re in for a world of dissapointing sex
My AirBudz are over five years old and still play for like five hours before I need to charge them… and I used them 40+ hours daily for all of those years.
How are your days 40+ hours long
We must know the secret of your 40+ hour days. Are you on Earth? What’s the battery tech like on your planet? We could use some help.
My point wasn’t wired vs wireless. It was disposable crap that breaks vs corporations not deliberately making crap the only thing most people can comfortably afford.
But they need to skimp on those few milligram ounces of solder per bud, so that they can make one extra low quality bud!
Or rather so they can make the same number of buds and double or more the profits for the amoral shareholder dividends.
I don’t think earbuds make up a significant percentage of the patch to be here virtue signaling and shaming people for what they were encouraged to do by corporate greed. Your source says the great majority of the patch comes from agriculture and fishing.
I don’t think earbuds make up a significant percentage of the patch
Cheap and disposable plastics and electronics IS a significant part of the world garbage problem and yes, plastic particles is MOST of the garbage patch specifically.
be here virtue signaling and shaming people for what they were encouraged to do by corporate greed
Whoa, dude, hold your horses! I’m in no way blaming consumers. Making consumer electronics cheap crap that breaks easily and everything of decent quality prohibitively expensive is 100% on the greedy corporations, not their victims the consumers.
Your source says the great majority of the patch comes from agriculture and fishing.
Ok, admittedly a poor choice of example. Doesn’t invalidate my intended point though, however ill-stated heh
This is tough -
Making consumer electronics cheap crap that breaks easily and everything of decent quality prohibitively expensive is 100% on the greedy corporations, not their victims the consumers.
(US here) Gets me thinking about dollar store headphones. Consumers could buy decent headphones for about $10 direct from overseas. When that’s equivalent to more than an hour of wages, there’s still demand for the $1 version. Should this need not be met out of a sense of social responsibility?
(I don’t have a perfect answer myself)
Econ 101 on my mind here btw:
The problem is that our economic system has encouraged an environment where reputation is a thing to be immediately cashed out. You can’t even know if those $10 earbuds are any better than the $1 version.
When people talk about disposable plastic they don’t mean electronics like earbuds. They mean packaging, plastic bottles, plastic bags etc.
I’m here for the wired headphone -> pacific garbage patch vs lithium battery child labor -> wireless headphone fight 🍿
Or we could just have quality standards and price controls so that regular people can afford decent headphones that don’t break all the time whether they prefer wired or wireless 🤷
And a worldwide ban on child labor, of course.
Don’t fool yourself. Slave labor of children is not exclusive to batteries. They make most of the world’s textiles, for example.
https://www.dol.gov/agencies/ilab/reports/child-labor/list-of-goods-print
Did I give you the impression I was fooling myself, or were you just speaking to the wider audience?
The wording implies that the wired headphones weren’t manufactured using child slave labor.
Somewhere the discussion chain has the following transition:
-> Hitler
You think wireless earbuds are better?? lol
Earbuds? Yes.
Real headphones? Nah
I’d imagine the limited lifespan of their batteries and the fact that they have ones to begin with would be of bigger concern
That’s fair. My first pair still works awesome after five years, and I’ve used them for 40+ hours a week for that whole time. I only have a new pair because I needed ANC, but I still use my old pair to sleep.
Again, wasn’t making a wired wireless argument. See my other reply itt for elaboration.
You might want to edit the comment since in the context it definitely sounds like saying wireless would be better
Not really, no. I’m responding to a comment about cheap buds that break too easily, which isn’t exclusive to wired ones.
There’s literally no mention of the wired vs wireless aspect in my comment or the one I’m replying to.
Or if you buy the better ones you can usually replace the cord with a new one, making it work again.
The TWS equivalent to that is one of the buds no longer turning on. I just had to RMA a pair because of that.
Yeah! That’s why I loved Sennheiser IEMs, they had oval cables that never tangle up, no matter what you do. Still have a pair for my Switch
Loved those as well and I am very angry they are no longer sold (at least not here). Even Sennheiser doesn’t escape the enshittification for their mid-range earbuds
Remember when they got stuck somewhere and yanked out of your ears? Somehow my Bluetooth headset don’t get that because it has Bluetooth
I hate it when the Bluetooth gets caught on the door handle and rips my blue tooth out
You know you don’t have to dangle cables about willy-nilly at full length? You can partially wind them up or tie a loose knot so they’re effectively shorter, or hold them in place under clothes or a peg or anything. I thought this was self-explanatory?
I know, but I still don’t miss it. Tbf I also switched from earbuds to headset at the same time
As a runner I hated cables. All the time I’d be in the middle of a run and my hand would catch the cord mid stride and yank them out of my ear.
I do this simple trick (Warning: YouTube video), and my cables don’t tangle at all, unless of course I forget to do that. It might cause cable to break more easily, but idk., my earphones tend to break just before warranty ends, which is fine for me.
Only because people couldn’t be bothered with learning the over-under cable coiling method.
All these people saying they like wireless earphones are completely missing the point. Devices with headphones jacks can do both. Taking away the headphone jack means you have to rely on wireless earphones, which have all the issues the post describes.
But Apple was so BRAVE when they removed the jack!
I wholeheartedly agree, I use Bluetooth most of the time, but I want wired to fall back on. When I’m on the go, bluetooth works just fine, but when I’m sitting down at home I prefer to use my full-size Roland headset on both my PC and my phone. No latency, and superior sound quality.
Bless the few companies out there still putting them (and the SD card slot) into Androids, but even they’re getting more and more scarce. I need to upgrade soon and I’ve never felt my opinions were so limited, let alone combining with other things like network compatibility, unlockable bootloader, etc.
It used to be anti-Apple. You use to have so many options, and so much freedom.
Soo… Sony, oppo, realme & HMD (Nokia brand)? That is about it right for new phones I think?
Motorola has a few as well.
Wdym, there are adapters and natively wired USB-C headphones.
i really don’t want to have to carry one more piece of junk, and while USB C is way better than alternatives, bending the dongle in your pocket while it is attached to the phone is a scary thought, wired earbuds make a hard right turn right out of the socket. The socket does fill with lint, I kind of get it that removing reduces loss of the phone from water damage or related assembly costs to making the socket not-a-water-vector
Those adapters are complete and utter shit
Because of….? Anyway I have headphones that have a lightning jack and don’t need an adapter.
You mean the proprietary ones that came with your iPhone? Well that covers every use case anyone could ever have.
It certainly covers the use case for an iPhone, right? Not sure what you’re trying to say. If you don’t have an iPhone why would you care if iPhones have 3.5mm jacks?
apple also makes a usb-c one, apparently it works reasonably well and is an actual DAC unlike some which are weird passive adapters that don’t work through hubs.
IDK. I use one and have no problem with it. My car’s bluetooth is rather unreliable at connecting, so I just us a USB C->aux cable. I’ve got no complaints. Is it as good a signal as a properly paired bluetooth digital audio connection? No. But it’s certainly as good as the old aux->aux cables I used back in the day.
Adapters are a cop out. Just put the adapters in the phone. It also means you can’t charge and listen to music.
Also while there are some natively wired usb-c headphones, I can’t think of any. Any decent headphones will use a standard 3.5 or 6.5mm audio jack, and then the dac being built inwith those usb-c headphones means you can’t use a seperate dac, it means you can’t plug them into studio gear. It’s just so incredibly limiting.
There is already a universal standard (3.5mm/6.5mm jack) it carries analog audio, why change to a digital connection which requires digital to analog conversion? Why not let the user be able to have a dedicated piece of gear to do that if they wish.
No professional equipment, or even semi professional equipment uses usb-c. It’s a good old fashioned analog audio jack and it’s like that for a reason
I use an adapter from Walmart and it works better than a regular aux plug in a car? Do you think that the audio signal is boosted over type c?
Maximum volume depends on which specific DAC adapter you got.
It also means you gotta rely on the sound quality of the smartphone. I carried an Oppo HA-2SE strapped to my phone just because I wanted better. Wireless earbuds are just like carrying a Fiio BTR-5 and some good IEMs but without all the fuss. Totally has it’s own brand of fuss though.
Correct. That’s why I will NEVER buy brand new wireless earbuds from Apple, Samsung, or any other phone manufacturer. Oh, you took the aux port out of your phones? Go fuck yourself. I will not financially reward you for limiting my freedoms.
Currently I use Jabra Active 8s. The Jabra Active 10s are supposed to be so much better, but for the price, the 8s are just pretty good.
maybe you’re completely missing their point
What point? That the removal of a feature like the headphone jack is a good thing?
no, that the inconvenience of wired earbuds outweighs any advantages. which would still apply to a different port
wdym? you can still use wireless with a phone that has a headphone jack.
I didn’t say you couldn’t? my point was that the people you were complaining about were merely saying they don’t like wired buds. that’s it. stop trying to infer a deeper meaning
It also destroyed the “pass the aux cord” when driving with friends.
“Hey, I want to show you a song. Pass the aux cord.”
Plugs
Plays
Now:
“Hey, I want to show you a song. Let me connect to your car’s Bluetooth.”
“Oh, I can’t while the car is driving. Can you pull over for a minute?”
“Which submenu was is it in? Bluetooth or Settings?”
“Do you mind if I remove one of the devices already connected?”
“Oh, it just auto-connected to your phone instead.”
“Here, I’ll just send you a link.”
“Your phone locked. Can you enter your password again?”
“Oh, you don’t have [streaming service] premium? We’ll have to sit through an ad first.”
What do you mean used to? I still do. IEMs with replaceable cables are nigh on indestructible.
Yeah this is just another case of apple diehards forgetting the rest of the world exists. Almost everyone still has earbuds with cords.
Hardly just Apple. Android phones have been shifting to removing the headphone jack as well. The workaround is meant to be to use a USB-C dongle, but I ended up just getting multiple bluetooth headsets. I miss my wired earbuds though, that I could hang from my ear when I needed to talk to someone, and never had to worry about charging.
Have been? It’s already done for the most part. AFAIK, there’s only one, maybe two companies still making phones with headphone jacks. Drives me up a wall, I fucking hate it.
Not only has it already been done, but it happened for most android phones pretty much the model year or two after apple did it. Enough time to get all their snarky ads in, let apple take the heat, and adjust their plans to follow the business model exactly - push people away from included headphones and towards their own +$100 Bluetooth headphones.
And the thing is, I love Bluetooth headphones. I used to love wired but the convenience is just too hard to beat. But everyone is price gouging the shit out of them compared to what it costs to produce. Granted I run mine very hard at probably an average of 10-12 hours a day split between two pairs at work and home, and I got around 10,000 hours out of my AirPods 2 before they died so I definitely got my moneys worth. But I refuse to pay $100 when I can get a knock-off pair for $4 that sound 95% as good with surprisingly similar battery life.
I recent got some AirBudz pros and there’s a mode I can turn on where they go quiet when I’m having a conversation, which is neat. I never really use it though, because if I have them in, I don’t wanna talk to people.
Really? From personal experience it’s completely the opposite. Almost everyone I see wearing earbuds are wearing wireless ones and it’s not just Apple users with their air pods, it’s android as well.
Yeah, I earbud daily at work without having my phone on me at all times. Audiobooks are great for crunching mind numbing data.
Eh. I went for TWSes for my latest purchase because I wanted anti-wind ANC. I still have a wired pair (and one of those silly USB adapters) for long-term operation, though.
How are you liking the ANC? I feel like it’s a cool concept that can work well but that my noise isolation from a tight fitting pair of plugs works nearly as well without the complexity or extra battery requirements
Modern ANC is impressive.
When I’m on my bike I actually have less wind noise with my earbuds in than with my bare ears, which was a pretty odd feeling at first.
I also have a pair of over-ears, Sony XM5s, which have even better ANC. Used those while vacuuming and didn’t hear the motor of the vacuum cleaner. I heard its wheels, though. Freaky.
Of course all of this is tied to the usual Bluetooth headphone drawbacks so YMMV.
ANC is so fucking cool. When I upgraded my earbuds to ANC and first put them in, I thought the fans in my room turned off. Then my partner said something and I had no idea what they said. I got them to delete an annoying coworker from my life when I had to go into the office and they did the trick nicely.
I’ve thrown away so many headphones because the cable frayed though. There’s always some downsides.
What do y’all do to your headphones that this is a major issue? I’ve never really had wireless headphones and I think I’ve maybe had one pair of wired ones that had that issue in my life.
Normal use
But like… Clearly there’s something we’re doing differently here.
Pocket? Idk, it seems natural to me that moving around with a device in your pocket, plugged into a pair of headphones would cause bending and twisting of the cord, which would wear it out over time.
And lots of other stresses, like accidentally getting them caught on something and yanking them out of your ears, wrapping them up to put away in a bag/pocket, etc. It’s no wonder I wore out so many pairs.
OTOH, the only wired listening device I own now is a headset that I wear at my desk, which I expect to last forever because it’s subject to none of those stresses.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Guess I’ve just been lucky. I assume some people might also pull out the cable at the cord instead of at the base, I’ve seen that happening with charging cables sometimes.
At the moment I also have to use a little C to 3.5mm adapter and could maybe see that taking some damage but so far so good.
I could see the (USB-?)C adapter taking the worst of the wear-and-tear, and maybe being more resilient than plugging the 3.5mm directly into the device. Imagine the travesty if it turned out that USB-C adapters turned out to be the solution to fragile headphones all along!
Are you taking a belt sander to it? That might be the difference.
price is probably a big one, a $3 $10 $20 and $100 earbud will last wildly different amounts of time.
I’ve found any type of exercise wearing wired phones wears them out fast.
Okay that’s a fair point my lazy ass had not considered. Although cycling hasn’t caused me any issues.
Just buy ones with detachable cables, or, better yet, mod headphones to use standard connectors such as MMCX (a set of Koss KSC75s). This also allows for different male connectors (3.5, 2.5, 4.4, quarter inch, XLR…) to suit different needs. There’s even bluetooth cables that can plug into otherwise wired headphones. Audiophile world > convenience world.
Modding headphones is way beyond my skillset and time I can invest.
Then just buy a set with detachable cables by default. I only suggest it for the KSC75 because they’re so good sounding and comfortable for cheap.
I’m just not so sure it’s worth it. If the cable frays, I still have to pay $ to replace it every time.
Some of my cables are in the $100 range. They aren’t fraying for many years, they’re outstandingly well built. This is the benefit of detachable cables, is the ability to buy third party. Apos makes a really nice, durable cable, that never gets bent out of shape. The point is that you never have to replace the entire unit.
Lithium ion batteries will degrade over time. It’s an inevitability. The cost of replacing an entire set of AirPods is far more expensive than replacing one cable every thirty something years. They’re unrepairable.
The AirPods Max are an excellent example of the issue. Big, expensive headphones that have peak battery capacity for three years, if you’re lucky–as opposed to the Sennheiser HD600, a set that people have daily driven for thirty years straight, sometimes replacing a cable, sometimes replacing an ear cup. Components, versus entire units.
I’d rather my headphones not be a subscription service.
And they would inevitably get tangled up in your pocket every time and you had to deal with the cord somehow when you connected, usually under your shirt or something. I went through a new corded headphone every 3 months or so. Meanwhile, the free pair of airpods I got from work are still going after ~5 years.
I’m going into my third pair of ear buds because the batteries only survive for 1h after 2-3 years if you are a heavy user, my wired JBL is still going strong.
I remember they used to last me for years around 2005-2010. Now it is like every year at latest i need to get new ones because the cable got fucked.
I bought a pair of wired earbuds off of wish or temu, something like that, they were like eight or nine dollars.
Honestly compared to any Bluetooth headphones I’ve used, equivalent or better sound quality. And the wire can be pulled out and replaced for just a buck if need be. I’ve had them for 2 years now and they have been wonderful.
Also Moto phones with their operational 3.5 mm jacks for the win.
They also didn’t add an extra layer of compression between the player and your ears - because they had a fucking headphone jack and wires that could transmit audio data without compression.
On the other hand, bluetooth headphones never catch on a doorknob and yank out of your ears
Meh. I don’t miss getting the cord caught on door handles and having the earbuds violently yanked from my ears!
I didn’t believe the hype about wireless headphones until I bought some with noise cancelling and all that for around $130.
Pros:
1 - You don’t realize how “tethered” you feel on older headphones until you really try to use wireless headphones. There’s a certain freedom you feel when you realize you can place your phone on a hotel table but lie down in bed.
2 - Noise cancelling and noise passthrough is a transformative experience when travelling or find yourself abroad. Airports are much easier to feel relaxed in when 80% of the noise or so can be filtered out as you wait for your flight to board. Additionally, the flight experience is less annoying (no engine drone gets through, even passengers can mostly be ignored) but you still have the option for pass through if someone absolutely needs to talk to you.
3 - Many of these headphones come with some kind of EQ feature, which can occasionally mean that you get speakers with more tunability and thus slightly better bang-for-buck that works globally across apps.
4 - Audio quality. Since these are expensive drivers, you’re often going to get better sound quality than those cheap 30 dollar throw aways were ever going to give.
Cons:
1 - Latency. These things could never be used in professional audio situations other than listening to a pre-rendered song for quality judgements. I don’t thing gaming would be nice with these either, even if I’ve tried (and failed) to play counter strike on these on occasion to keep noise levels down.
2 - Mic quality of the built in is lacking on my particular headphones (Sennheiser CX Plus). They’re really only intended to capture the outdoor for noise cancellation IMO, not the greatest for calls or recordings. They’re servicable, but it’s the area I’d like the most upgrade (and it would probably improve noise cancellation features as well.)
3 - Environmental / Sustainability Concerns: Other than people just “losing” these devices with built in batteries that are bad for the environment being a problem in and of itself, there are other long-standing concerns I have about these devices. They often require proprietary non-open software to configure, meaning if the software gets delisted, you will no longer be able to configure them until someone comes up with some kind of alternative using reverse engineering (good luck). Batteries are likely to degrade over time, meaning you’ll eventually end up with a worthless ear bud on the left or right and the only solution will be to throw them out. These things are often pretty bad scoring on repairability metrics, and I can’t even blame the companies producing them here because they’re so small.
4 - Despite passthrough being a feature, it’s hard to convey to people that you can actually hear them through the device. There should be some kind of blinking light on the outside that indicates that passthrough is enabled or something.
So I actually do love these devices, but #3 of the cons is really the biggest real issue I have with them. If they’re going to cost over 100 dollars, I would like to know that these things won’t just become ewaste in the same way that cheap crappy wired headphones end up being as well (which sea life often chokes on or gets tangled up in.) If they costs a premium, I would really like to know that they aren’t a figurative dead end when they eventually fail.
Tbh I like the convenience of not being physically attached to my phone when listening to music. That said, the removal of headphone jacks from phones is a disgrace.
And they knotted up in your pocket/purse
A friend was complaining that he was always losing his air pods. I told him about my awesome idea to sell a little cord that would connect them so they were easier to keep track of.
He was like, ‘Dude! That’s a great idea… You’ve got to start selling those before someone beats you to it-’
Then it dawned on him and he called me an asshat.
