I think this is a fantasy. How many decades have there been high-quality headphones for this to be a thing that you think is supposedly the traditional way to do it? Did your parents hand you down their headphones? Surely your grandparents didn't hand down theirs? So it maybe happened once? For a few people?
Let's calculate -- about 320 days a year * 14 hours a day * 19 years = 85k hours.
I think this represents about correctly how much time I spent with these.
I change pads, I open it every couple of years to clean dust and hair and I have fixed broken cable twice (by shortening and giving it new plug).
Other than that they still work perfectly.
They say things aren't designed to last or to be repaired anymore, but some things are, and they're great!
In addition to Sennheisers, I've had good experience with AKG spare parts availability, too.
To be fair, I also have a pair of AirPods Pro (not Max), which I only use on-the-go and for (mostly work-related) phone calls.
'Sure can do, but if you're willing to shell out another $11, we'll sell you a pair of drivers, wrapped in a headphone-shaped box - it even comes with a cable, ready to plug in!'
So, I guess AKG are like any other brand - after market is considered 'free money' and an invitation to fleece the customer...
(Though in fairness, for such a cheap-ish pair of headphones as the K240, the logistics of even keeping a spare inventory probably makes AKG lose money on selling me a new driver, even at the $70-ish price point I was quoted for a driver which goes into an $80 pair of headphones.)
Most companies don't bother keeping spare parts these days and if you, for some unknown reason, want to maintain your cheapish vintage cans, you should be AMAZED they still keep them in stock. Because they are definitely not making any money on it.
Beyer is the kind of thing nascent audiophiles liked about 15 years ago because they sounded very detailed, but people are better at measuring now, there are newer competitors like planar magnetics (eg Hifiman), and if you compare them now it's obvious that the detail is fake. It's an artifact called sibilance that just happens to sound good, like vacuum tube distortion.
I had some friends come in with newer headphones to compare (one with Audeze) and their amps and I was not impressed. It may be that I am just so used to my phones.
Now, I also own other phones. I currently own four pairs of Bose headphones. One (SoundSport) for running, and three QuietComfort which I bought as new generations were produced. These I used when I travel because DT 990s are 250 Ohm and require a bit of stationary hardware to work.
I also have one pair of Beyerdynamic DT 770 PRO which I bought more recently and use when I need to isolate from environment for some reason.
None of these other headphones are as good as DT 990s IMO.
Not really surprised about this, I have never been particularly impressed by Bose except for their noise canceling.
It also sounds quite detailed in the treble range, but if you listen to something like Sundara you realize the detail doesn't actually exist and it's more like a sharpening filter. Sundara also has replaceable audio cables and of course it's easier to drive.
My dt880's sound great - I bought them after auditioning a lot of different modern headphones.
I have some closed planars as well, but I don't enjoy the closed-in feeling that much.
The padding has failed, and been replaced, twice. That cost me just under AUD 100 each time.
The cable has failed, and been replaced, also twice. That cost me an eye-watering AUD 270 each time.
All up, these headphones have cost me approximately $240 on an annualised basis. In my opinion, the sound quality is more than worth this ongoing expense. I spend 10x more on coffee!
I got the AirPod 2 when it was released, almost exactly two years ago. They cost me about AUD 250. Annually this is AUD 125, which is half what the Sennheiser costs. I use the AirPods at work, often up to 8 hours a day.
For comparison, the wired Apple headphones have these "soft" cables that crack in well under a year, and cost $50 to replace. They're e-waste too!
People seem to have this knee-jerk reaction about Apple and e-waste, which to me is just nonsense. Especially Airpods, which are a fantastically well engineered product in my opinion.
But I've had my AKG K240's for years and they're tireless. Not suitable so much for running around town, but they've been made since the 70's nearly to the same spec. The cable is removable, so are the ear pads and both replaceable.
And they aren't even expensive, relatively speaking. Great for mixing and general listening. Can't say enough good about them, really. https://www.akg.com/Headphones/Professional%20Headphones/K24...
edit: My opinions are so very different from an article another user posted about the same (which strangely runs counter to the larger, repeated experience and sentiment). They've always been lauded for their very open, lively soundstage and even, clear response.
My parents old Marantz receiver goes for $800 on eBay these days. I think we pitched it somewhere around 1994 for a setup from one of those Best Buy Sunday flyers.
The speakers were nice when new, but after 20 or so years, the rubber around the cones began to deteriorate and the cloth covers frayed and developed runs. Even these M-Audio studio monitors I picked up in around 2005 are starting to have issues with the plug jacks.
I imagine it's worth with headphones ear cushions are usually made from synthetic materials that tend not to wear well. Plus they get moved around a lot and are at risk of getting dropped or crushed. I can't say that I've owned a pair of headphones that received frequent use for more than 15 years.
Replacing ear cushions is even easier than that: you order replacements, pull off the old ones and tug the new ones into position. It takes slightly longer than changing the batteries in a remote control, but much less time.
I have a 60W stereo amplifier from the 1970s that works and sounds great. I have an FM tuner from the 1960s of excellent quality.
I no longer have cassette tape decks, but I have a reel-to-reel machine from 1962.
There are speakers from the 1960s and 70s that are worth owning and using; there are lots from the 80s and 90s that are not.
There is so much to expand on there, too. Commoditization, while democratizing in some senses, loses the plot often.
(Say, a Fiio X3duoo player ($75), a 128GB microSD card ($25), and one of N different Chinese IEMs depending on preference, all under $100 and most under $50. TRN V90 is about $40 and does a respectable job.)
There are SM58/57 mics being handed down to grandchildren.
It's worth getting old headphones if they were the real top of the line like Stax electrostatics, since you can't afford new ones, but those were especially poorly built back in the day.
As for open headphones like AKG, people praise them for critical listening but I've found they're not good in realistic situations where there's any background noise at all. I can't get a separate soundproofed listening room in my apartment, so if the fridge decides to turn on, I can't hear the bass in an open headphone anymore.
On the headphone side, the technology has gotten massively between in the last 30 years, so all my headphones are from the 1990s or later, but for speakers, tower/cabinet speakers from the 1970s are still functional and good.
My primary set of headphones were purchased new in 2007. It's been 13 years, and they still work perfectly fine. The amplifier they're plugged into was manufactured in 1976 and has had a set of NOS Sylvania Green Hornet tubes swapped in.
Almost everything else has gotten better, or at least a lot cheaper and less trouble for comparable quality. But speakers haven't.
Mind you a lot of that old stuff was crap too.
That said, speakers have gotten a lot better since the Dynaco A-25 came out. They cost $160 for a pair in 1969, or about $1,100 in 2020 by the CPI. You can buy a pretty damn good system for $1,100.
Each one of them has wound up needing the plug replaced, and in the case of the Sennheisers, the connection of the wire to the ear cup just got intermittent, even with replacing and tweaking. One set of the SR60s also has an intermittent connection in one of the wires near the split. I was pondering pulling themm apart and grafting in another cable, but the ear cups don't seem to come apart.
So, yeah, they last a while, there are some replacement parts, but at some point they're still e-waste.
On the other hand, making the shift from crappy earbuds to good headphones probably saved my hearing, and I wish I'd done it sooner.
It warms my heart to see youtube reviewers who encounter them and are shocked at how good they sound for the price.
The company that makes those speakers has long since gone out of business, but they still work and sound out of this world. I think this stands in sharp contrast to some of the practices we see today, e.g. Sonos intentionally bricking their old speakers.
Headphones are perhaps a little more fragile, but NAD isn't even particularly expensive.
The grandparent's complaint holds true for home theatre equipment as well, with constant standards churn driving flipping of high-priced and mostly sub-par components (much HT gear, even extremely expensive, big name gear, is very sub-par repro-wise: Arcam and Marantz will sell you HT processors that struggle to accurately reproduce a CD-quality stream; the most recent "8k" recievers from Yamaha, Denon, etc, don't even implement 8k correctly); most of that is driven by copy protection as much as anything else.
That's pretty standard even in newer Sennheisers. I think HD 650 and above you get the big plug. Some might come with two cables, one with a standard plug and one with the bigger.
But I believe there's no difference in listening experience. The bigger plug is probably a lot sturdier though. I've had some 3.5 mm jacks bend on me. Can't imagine that on the good ol' 6.3. I have totally busted a 6.3 mm to 3.5 mm adaptor though.
That's actually not true. That plug is commonplace on a lot of music equipment, DJ mixers, etc. that are still manufactured and used commonly today.
I figure there has to be some reason for it in an age when companies are constantly cutting costs.
I doubt many people are trying to drive HD-650's with a phone anyway.
For very long cables or high RF you might want a kind of cable called "balanced", which comes in every size except 3.5mm. Some audiophiles think these make headphones sound better, but it's probably not true.
I have basically worn one of those two pairs of headphones every single day at work since I bought them; I guess I've just had good luck.
HD 559: 6.3 mm plug.
HD 560 S: 6.3 mm plug.
HD 569: 6.3 mm plug + 3.5 mm plug.
HD 579: 6.3 mm plug.
HD 599: 6.3 mm plug + 3.5 mm plug.
HD 600: 6.3 mm plug.
HD 650: 6.3 mm plug.
HD 660 S: 6.3 mm plug + 4.4 mm balanced.
HD 800 S: 6.3 mm plug + 4.4 mm balanced.
HD 820: 6.3 mm plug.
So really the 3.5 mm cables are an exception that are also bundled with Sennheiser's audiophile-tier headphones and absolutely everything has a 6.3 mm plug out of the box.
Never had original 8xx cables to check but I would be surprised if they weren't the same.
HD 559: https://assets.sennheiser.com/img/18214/product_detail_x2_de...
HD 650: https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/61vm4c%2Bhb...
HD 660 S: https://assets.sennheiser.com/img/25816/x1_desktop_sennheise...
HD 800 S: https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/cVSs2jBo28NYKPkdGtZhnR.jpg...
I'm not seeing a lot to back up your claims. Especially since a lot of those headphones come with a 6.3 mm to 3.5 mm adapters.
Edit: the 3.5mm male to headphone is Sennheiser 81435 [0] the 6.3mm male to 3.5mm female that fits over it is Sennheiser 562507 [1].
[0] https://en-us.sennheiser.com/cable-3-m-35-mm [1] https://en-us.sennheiser.com/accessories--adapter-jack-63s-j...
Incidentally, one of the reasons I got the HD650 was how my headphones/headsets broke every other year and all I could do was trash them and get new ones. That, and I enjoy listening to music and the usual stuff <100 Euro sounds like garbage. Now I've got something more "SO-friendly" than my "two towers" ;-)
If I bought airpods today, they'd likely be useless within 5 years.
A few years back I replaced the foam ear pads and also swapped the cable out with one that has a lightning connector on the end so that my wife can plug it into her new "courage" iPhone.
In contrast, my bluetooth earbuds died after about 3 years of use. (Although, to JLab's credit, they replaced them with a new, better pair.)
I imagine I won't be replacing them because they break, but rather because I want to get something better. However, the 598s sound pretty great to my ear so there's not really a huge incentive for me to get anything new.
Technology can be made to serve our needs.
Giving too much credit to Apple. The battery will die in 3 years even with very limited usage. If you use it daily it only barely last longer than a year. Replacing Battery cost $49 each.
The AirPod is one of the worst purchase I had from Apple.
I have a quarter of century old Beyerdynamic cans that still sound fantastic. I am not seeing their end-of-life any time soon, except the pads are probably going to need a change.
'Quarter of a century' sounds dramatic... but it's just two and a half decades and less than a third of one lifetime... not passing down generations.
Closest we've come to this is old pairs of Sennheiser HD580. Very high quality plastics, still get scraped and loose over time. Full steel or aluminum construction holds up much better.
The materials for the main part of headphones would last probably indefinitely if kept in dark, dry place, undisturbed.
On the other hand the foam that is part of the pads lasts months to maybe couple of years depending on use.
If you bought ones with leather it will last for many decades IF you know how to take care of leather.
If you avoid throwing, dropping or otherwise banging headphones on things, don't come outside in them and don't stretch the headband more than is absolutely necessary to put on your head I estimate they can be maintained practically forever (definitely more than user's lifetime).
Maintanence:
- keep them clean with dry cloth,
- use something to clean/protect leather from drying out,
- replace pads maybe every year or two,
- replace pads on headband maybe once every 10 years,
- disassemble completely to remove hair and other detritus, probably every 5 years
- fix the cable that tends to break after prolonged use, I am gentle so maybe once in 7 years.
This is history of maintenance of my headphones which I use every day, entire day.
Are headphones Lindy-estimatable? That I don't know.
From Wikipedia:
January 3 – Motorola introduces the Motorola StarTAC Wearable Cellular Telephone, the first clamshell mobile phone.
September 26 – Nintendo introduces in American market the new game console with the name Nintendo 64.
But what's that got to do with headphones?
Yes, that is Wikipedia page for 1996, not for "80s or whatever".
But what have the internet and clamshell telephones got to do with headphones?
"In 1996, just 20 million American adults had access to the Internet," (https://slate.com/technology/2009/02/the-unrecognizable-inte...)
So... again... which of my statements is inaccurate?
I wrote: "quarter of century ago most people even if heard about the Internet they haven't had a chance to use it yet".
How does that conflict with AOL or the quoted above that at that time only 20 million, less than 10%, of Americans had access to the Internet (and access isn't the same as using it)?
Also, this is for USA. The rest of the world did not have anywhere near that much access to the Internet.
Not sure why you've now decided to go for snark and being snide?
> 20 million American adults had access to the Internet
That seems like a lot of people to me?
But what has any of this got to do with headphones?! Why are you telling me about when models of telephone came out or when people had access to the internet? The thread is about how long headphones last.
> That seems like a lot of people to me?
Yes, that's true. 20 million Americans is a lot of people.
But in 1996 the population of US was about 265 million, so I was completely right to say that "quarter of century ago most people even if heard about the Internet they haven't had a chance to use it yet".
> Not sure why you've now decided to go for snark and being snide?
Not sure why you have decided to oppose what is clearly true and accurate statements with illogical sentences. You could have just ignored it or even downvoted if you decided it worsens overall quality of HN content.
But you decided to write false, illogical responses and you should by now know how it ends on HN.
A generation is roughly 20-30 years - people don't tend to have kids at the end of their lives.
I highly doubt these new headphones with non user replaceable batteries would survive 2 years of daily usage, that would be 2+ full cycles per day for the airpods, seeing how tiny the batteries are I don't think they'd perform very good after even a year
That said being able to just buy a new cable and whip the old one off is far nicer than having to buy a whole new pair of headphones.
I replaced them with cheap knockoff cables and they're lasting much longer. I haven't replaced them for years now
Meanwhile, I'm on my third replacement airpods (thankfully all covered by warranty, but not much longer!)
I like the headphones because they don't wear me down on long continuous usage and the sound is great to my not-golden-ears.
They cost about 350 euros back then and now perhaps paid 50 euros to get them back into shape, so pretty good for a music lover. I have even used them in office space, even though they are semi-open. Luckily the sound isn't leak too noisily on my usual listening levels.
I get that earbuds' 5-hour listening time is borderline annoying and if it drops to 3 or 4 hours you've got a real usefulness problem, but 20 hours has quite a lot of headroom for battery degradation unless you don't sleep.
Personally, I used one pair of ath-m50x's for about ten years. I just replaced it with some Beyerdynamic's, which I expect to also last at least ten years.
All of the Bluetooth headphones and speakers I've bought have lasted less than a few years. Half the time the batteries fail (and often aren't user-replaceable), the other half it's some component I'm unable to diagnose myself.
The real problem is: For every pair of even $100 headphones, how many $10 headphones do you think are sold? The waste isn't coming from AirPods, it's coming from the $10 set that wasn't designed to last longer than an airline flight
(and yes I'm sure someone will link some cult favorite cheap headphone that's a drop in the bucket compared to how many at the price point are practically disposable)
And sure, maybe Apple does make their devices easier to recycle, but there are still 2 R's that are more important: reusing and reducing. If you can reduce the amount of times someone needs to replace their product, you are having a much greater environmental impact than slightly more recyclable aluminum. That's why my Thinkpad x201 is still a more eco-friendly choice than the M1: it's carbon footprint is inherently lower.
---
Also, a quick bit on the economic strata comment: I come from a relatively lower-income family, but we still did cherish the few nice things we had. My dad passed me down his pair of AKG open-backs with a new DAC for my 13th birthday, and I never really thought of it as that weird. I think your optics are a little out of tune.
My dad still has the headphones he bought in the 70's. He's replaced the pads and the cable.
Good audio equipment is built to be repaired and can last indefinitely when maintained.
Audio fidelity hit its stride decades ago. 40-50 year old stereos are still sought after, not because they look nice and are classic like a vintage car, but mostly because the sound quality is still excellent today.
But how do you connect them to your phone. I wish this wasn’t a thing.
They behave a bit like Yamaha NS10 monitors in that anything that sounds good in them, will sound good anywhere.
They're also known as being pretty easy to fix, because you can find a replacement for virtually every part of them, and they're sold brand new to this day. Plenty of people that own this specific model have had them for more than a decade.
Anyway, my parents didn't pass me down a pair of HD 25s, but my pair (whose initial release is older than I am) is definitely going to be usable for my kids. Whether they'll want to use them or not remains to be seen.
The question is rarely the lifetime of the device. It's usually the lifetime of the interface. Or in this case, a headphone jack. 1/8", 1/4", etc... This is what normally gets obsoleted rather than the device itself. For headphones, the big switch is from wired to wireless. And I think that's where you'll see the shift. Yes, you can get a bluetooth adapter for traditional headphones, but they aren't great, and if you have audiophile wired headphones, you won't be happy with the sound. And so, the device won't be obsoleted because they fail, but rather the preferred interface changes to something that's incompatible. Maybe audio was lucky that there were adapters available for the first shift from 1/4" to 1/8"...
In this regard, I think the audio world is just catching up to their other brethren in the tech world.
AFAIK the turntable and cassette player have had some minor repairs but nothing else has needed maintenance since purchase.
I'm also currently listening to music through a pair of HD202s I bought in 2007 which have copped endless abuse.
I've also got the Meze Classic 99 and they're even more solid. At 3 years old, I've not had to change the cable nor the pads, infact I've also got a backup cable that cable with them. I could easily see them lasting decades if looked after carefully.
Not quite generational inheritance but I can't think of anything else I bought back then that I still use. It's pretty satisfying when I think about it.
I have pair of Monsoon Speakers bought since College (2000), so that's over 20 years. They still work great, just an headjack input, volume/bass control. Simple and they are connected to my PS4.
I have a dell monitor, bought in 2006, still working great with my mac. I bought an LG 4k one last year, and the Thubderbolt port just failed. Right now it is staying as a dead weight, and I am deciding if it is even worth fixing (or it can be fixed).
Some accessories do last decades. Apple accessories are made to last for 2-3 years and discarded after as they are not easily serviceable.
I still have the Koss headphones I bought in the early 1990's. They still work, though they need a 50¢ phono adapter to plug into current gear. Also, I had to send them back to Milwaukee twice to be repaired. But Koss did it for free both times under the "lifetime warranty" program.
Did your parents hand you down their headphones?
Yes.
Surely your grandparents didn't hand down theirs?
No, they didn't. Mostly because headphones weren't invented yet.
My sennheiser HD600 was released 17 years ago. I've tried many other headphones over the years but it's the best I've heard from my very subjective ears. I've also changed almost every part from it due to wear and tear and it's amazing the amount of after market part you can find both from sennheiser and other vendors directly on ebay
I recently moved to Bose NC700s because ya, wireless sure is nice, but I'd be surprised if they last 10 years, much less 20. Still have the HD's though and use them now and then.
I don't know that there's some grand tradition of handing down audio gear over generations, but the point is good audio equipment lasts a long time if the properly cared for. if it sounded good new, it probably sounds good years later too (except tubes, these are consumables). there's no reason why headphones should follow the obsolescence cycle of computers.
Companies should be rewarded when producing something that last. Externalities and disposal should be included in tax rate.
In many other contexts 25 years would be referred to a "generation" or a "lifetime", I think this is more pedantic than it is a generous interpretation of GPs point, which was that It's an enormous increase in e-waste.