Comment by Theodores | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Theodores | Hacker News Reader

This is a eulogy for the 'headphone jack' and not 'analogue audio out'.

How many Sony Walkman tape players and their clones did I break and where did they break? The headphone jack.

How many headphones have I broken and where did they break? The headphone jack.

As a student playing around 'on the decks' I found that anything with a headphone jack was liable to be responsible for that mains hum.

I have fond memories of using the headphone jack of the 32x CD ROM that was in the front of that 'Compaq' PC that cost many thousands. But when was the last time I touched a CD? So that is another headphone jack we thought we needed but didn't.

Had we moved to a magnetic latch as per the Apple power arrangement then I think that I would have got burned a lot less with the soldering iron and the purchase of hi fi kit and caboodle. Maybe with some optional VGA style screws if you really want the connection locked down hard. This could have been a much more 'jogging friendly' solution, waterproof too.

I mourn the loss of analog audio but not the headphone jack. Maybe the latter is responsible for the demise of the former and maybe there was vested interest in the Walkman era in having the universal but breakable headphone jack.

Incidentally the headphone jack seems much better engineered in computers and phones than in 1980's era Walkman style tape players. Maybe there was some lightbulb style conspiracy to ensure that headphone jacks only lasted '1000 hours' before failing, therefore maintaining sales of new tape players.

Maybe if we switch from headphone jacks to a comparable digital method. But headphone jack to Bluetooth tends to create more problems than it solves, in my opinion. The only situation where wireless has clear advantages is when cable creates additional noise (e.g. running).

I recently acquired a pair of high-end earphones, and while the audio quality itself is excellent, there's noticeable background noise on low volumes or during track skips, not to mention the microphonics effect. It's likely coming from the cable itself, which thankfully I can exchange, but the fact that a high-end product exhibits this behavior is concerning.

I'm very much in favor of keeping the headphone jack, but we'll look back at these analog issues the same way we currently think about needle static from record players.

> the same way we currently think about needle static from record players.

At the moment there seems to be a group of people thinking about it with nostalgia.

I'm very curious as to why you think the cable is the issue.

Cables and switches always break first. It's the same in power tools - any component that you have a 200-pound gorrilla mucking around with every day will eventually break. You can mitigate this, but you can't eliminate it. It doesn't mean they're bad design.

That said, I think a good, working bluetooth solution would be something I'd prefer. I like analog jacks, but honestly, cables are a bad solution for wearable devices.

> a 200-pound gorrilla mucking around

There's the AvE influence.

That man is honestly the most entertaining and informative tv-show I've ever watched.

Guess what's going to break first in all bluetooth headphones, potentially much much much sooner than headphone jack ever breaks for people?

The microscopic lithium battery crammed into the case - non replacable, usually in difficult environment and if it fails you have to buy new headphones. This is far far worse choice for consumers than normal cable-based headphones.

I don't disagree, but I think that's more because it's hard to make a shitty headphone jack, whereas it's easy to make a shitty bluetooth headphone set. If somebody actually sat down and made a good bluetooth headphone, with the same kind of robustness and repairability that you get from high-end hearing aids, then it would simply be better than a jack.

A bad technological culture makes technology it can't mess up seem better than it actually is.

If someone made a pair of headphones to the same standard as high-end hearing aids are made, the price would surely be similar - and that's just way too much to pay for headphones for most people.

Let me put it this way - if I buy a $50 pair of bluetooth headphones and a $50 pair of normal headphones, put them both in a box and opened the box in 10 years, the first pair will be unusable due to the built-in battery, while the second pair will continue working just fine. Sure, maybe a $200 pair of headphones would have a replaceable battery - but I find it extremely difficult to spend so much money on a pair of headphones.

A replacable battery doesn't cost 150$. It's just one screw. The reason why headphones are much cheaper than hearing aids is mainly economies of scale.

I think the main reason why headphones often suck are cultural, not mechanical. If you make stuff in capitalism, it being cheap is always a great selling point, even if it craps out after a couple of weeks of use. So you get the whole market crowded with useless junk, and well-made stuff gets crowded out. Stuff that, from a technological perspective, is outdated, works better than new stuff because of this culture. It doesn't mean that the new technology isn't better. It just means that, with an attitude like ours, we could make crud using any technology.

> Maybe there was some lightbulb style conspiracy to ensure that headphone jacks only lasted '1000 hours' before failing

Jogging damages them.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com