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Comment by ho_schi | Hacker News Reader

3.5 mm jack

Nasty. Yes ;)

I'm sorry but it solves these problems and I think most of us have more prominent issues. Bluetooth - and even overpriced Apple products - are usually working well with one connection only. And the headset profile needs to sacrifice quality for voice input. This is to large degrees a question about priority of the user. If you need good or even excellent quality - opt for a good headset and a jack.

Yes. Some issues can be solved with higher priorities by Apple. Or Apple doesn't care because it is good enough. Maybe Apple need an argument for another bad proprietary protocol to make things worse. I would be happy if I can switch my mouse from Logitech (Bluetooth) between two laptops with coupling them entirely again.

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Let's stop to admire the excellent UX of the 3.5mm jack * tactile feedback when connected (it clicks, you hear it & feel it). * "find my device" : just pull on the wire * quickly switch between devices * instant pairing

We just need a marketing guru to sell people on the 3.5mm wired headphones

It rotates and has no direction, so you can untwist your headphone wire without unplugging it, and plugging it in is foolproof.

It had some issues where in unplugging and plugging the cable would cause voltage spikes because the pins would get dragged across the wrong connectors and not all be disconnected at once. Which is why you hear that pop when using loudspeakers and (un)plugging the cable. This apparently lead to damage of the speaker over time as well.

Which many devices solved by not sending output to the connector until after it sensed resistance on the pins, then enabled the audio output. So, another problem solved by 3.5mm jacks!

God I miss having a real connector on my phone :(

iPhone SE 1st Gen here ^^

Handy in sense of being small enough for a pocket, I can keep it with me during sport and don't feel the need for a Smartwatch. WiFi, Bluetooth, Jack, Accelerometer and GPS. The new iPhones use the same case again, their just bigger, with breakable glas on the back and more expensive. I will not buy a new one - their degraded in all terms.

You also forgot about not having one more battery to keep charged.

excellent point. and no one seems concerns about volatile lithium batteries in their ear canal

We really might need one if chip shortages are gonna be a problem.

None of the AirPod annoyances are as bad as having your headphones yanked violently out of your ears when the 3.5mm cable catches on a door handle.

For me, most of the AirPod annoyances individually are worse than cable yanking. Taken together, it's no contest.

A true professional routes the cable through their shirt, from their neck down to their pocket, to avoid this problem.

A shirt provides too much friction thus there is a constant feeling of having the earphones pulled down (especially when moving the head)

The clips that let you fasten it to the collar of your shirt are life changing. Completely elimates the weight of the rest of the cord from your ears and any weirdness when you move your head. I wish more headphones and IEMs came with one in the box.

That's debatable. As far as I'm concerned I prefer being annoyed by my occasional lack of care rather than wondering what software quirk makes my phone call come out of the wrong device. At least I can identify the cause quickly and make my best to avoid the issue.

1. A detachable cable will pull out easier than pulling your headphones off.

2. Run the cable of appropriate length inside your shirt or jacket with enough slack to move without restriction but without a bunch of extra slack.

I carry my backpack or have a jacket on me at almost all times, and having the headphone cable holes in each has prevented this from happening anywhere as often as it used to. Plus the reliability of wired headphones has reigned supreme that I sold my AirPod Pros a few weeks ago after they sat for about a month or two between use, while my corded headsets are used almost daily.

If you're walking around, yeah, sure - wireless all the way.

But for desk use, I don't see the appeal of wireless, given all of the tradeoffs.

Even for desk use, wired headphones feel like being leashed to the desk. It's amazing to be in a meeting and then be able to just mute yourself and walk off to have a drink while still listening in.

Until you get just far enough away that they disconnect and your internal computer speakers start blasting the meeting conversation through the room.

Airpods connected to an Apple device have uncanny range compared to what I'm used to with other bluetooth pairings

The range on airpods is shockingly good.

Somewhere in my audio setup there is a ground loop. I don't know where, and I'm yet to be able to work out what is causing it. But that alone makes wireless appeal at my desk very much.

Those are a pain. I get around them by using optical or USB when possible. But, not always feasible.

Meh, if they're $5 headsets/earbuds they at worst harm themselves (so I pop out another $5 headset to last 1-3 years without issues)

If you have an IEM with a sturdy cable wrapped around your ear, snagging it on a door handle yanks the connector out of the Lightning to 3.5mm adapter instead.

In the winter, with all the various layers over my ears and possibly tangling with the cord? Cord all over the place while I'm biking or running? I definitely do not miss cords.

3.5mm is not anywhere near as standardized as Bluetooth.

- no standard way to have a microphone

- balanced vs unbalanced cables are electrically different (and can damage the headphone)

- high and low impedance headphones are also electrically different (affecting sound quality and volume)

- phone can't implement safe hearing limit laws or any of the hearing health features because it doesn't know how loud the headphones are

Plus there's cable microphonics and the ports on both sides can wear out.

Ooof you could never convince me again to tether my head to my phone with a cord. No way!

Nice! I love the 3.5mm jack solution.

All we gotta do is solve the “I got my cable caught on the door knob as I walked by” issue and 3.5mm will be perfect.

Putting the phone in pocket and wire under shirt helps but not 100%

What happens if I’m wearing a dress?

Selling me on going back to wired is like telling me to use an Ethernet jack on my laptop for optimal performance.

Haha I still use Ethernet for a bunch of computers in my room (5+) but only use wireless headsets.

Of course wifi is more than fast enough

Another option is 2.4 GHz wireless, which is common in gaming headsets, at least, for low-latency / high-quality audio. The downside is it requires a dongle.

>Another option is 2.4 GHz wireless

Sorry to break it to you but Bluetooth also operates on the 2.4GHz ISM band. Those 2.4GHz dongles you're talking about is basically a custom wireless protocol that doesn't follow Bluetooth or any other open standard or OSI stack but is most likely based on some internal protocol of what the three major chip makers in the 2.4GHz space offer (Texas Instruments, Silicon Labs, Nordic Semi) .

I think the world needs less proprietary standards, not more, where the dongle is paired to the device in factory and if you loose the dongle then most likely the headphone or peripheral is instant e-waste.

So I'll stick with Bluetooth for the time being thank you very much.

The reason "2.4 GHz wireless" is an option is the very proprietary standard right there, or rather the static pairing coming with it. The absence of Bluetooth connection negotiation/switching/… removes an entire class of bugs and annoyances.

>removes an entire class of bugs and annoyances

Bugs and annoyances which not everyone is having. Stripping out functionality to crush bugs is like removing your stomach to get rid of a stomach ache.

There are cases and classes of hardware where Bluetooth is not ideal and 2.4GHz proprietary standards are used (low latency audio, gaming mice, concert/conference audio. etc.) but those devices already exist on said proprietary standard instead of Bluetooth since they're usually not meant to be paired with changing hosts/clients all the time like most bluetooth devices, so what's your point? Do you want proprietary dongles to ship with every pair of earphones?

2.4GHz proprietary standards are no magic silver bullet either. Sure, compared to Bluetooth they can have the advantage of latency and bandwidth depending on how you implement said custom protocol in firmware, but it's ultimately the same damn overcrowded ISM band shared with the billions of devices everyone has everywhere (Bluetooth phones, smartwatches, headphones, cars, IoT devices, security systems, and, the 400 pound gorilla in the room, motha-friggin-Wi-Fi) . So due to pollution on the 2.4GHz spectrum you'll end up with potentially similar issues like Bluetooth devices except now you have a proprietary standard to deal with.

If you need good audio in one home location, then the dongle is just fine. My best audio, speaking and listening, is a gamer wireless over the head/around the ears thing with a microphone that can extend to where my mouth is that I bought off my son after he switched to some fancier thing with a YouTuber style mic. It has a base station that plugs into USB and also charges a second battery so I can talk and listen continuously. At work, sounding clear and not having your sound break is quite useful. Also for online games. If it’s just pod cast listening and yelling at kids to text when they get there or whatever, maybe it isn’t as important as these other features.

But also, in general, they say perfection is reached when there is nothing left to remove. Extra features often mean something is wrong with the design. Even with programming languages, it is vastly better for the default response to requested new features is “no.”

>If you need good audio in one home location, then the dongle is just fine

Well yes, for things that tend to stay in the same place no need use Bluetooth at all. Not denying any of that, but which of those are issue that have to do with Bluetooth?

>But also, in general, they say perfection is reached when there is nothing left to remove. Extra features often mean something is wrong with the design.”

Perfect is the enemy of good here. Bluetooth wasn't meant to be the perfect way of connecting devices, that's impossible, it was developed back in the late 90's for connecting millions of mobile devices to each other over a standardized, cheap (in terms of silicon die area) and most importantly, low power connection (batteries were small back then), and it does all that pretty decently. Sort of a jack of all trades master of none.

If you're looking for perfect solutions then you should be looking elsewhere and that's why proprietary solutions exist and there's nothing wrong wioth that.

>Sorry to break it to you but Bluetooth also operates on the 2.4GHz ISM band.

Right, but "2.4 GHz wireless audio" is what to search to find information and non-BT products.

It is interesting to see your comments about Bluetooth. I appreciate the standard. It's useful. But as a user I like things that just work, and Bluetooth audio has been subpar in my experience.

Sample size of one, but my experience with non-BT wireless headsets is superior to Bluetooth headsets in pretty much every way: no pairing issues and no BT profile switching madness with varying audio quality when I want to use a mic. I get low latency, high quality (even lossless) audio. On my particular headset, replacement dongles can be purchased and you pair it with the headset once (I've not had to do this myself yet though).

I would love to only use Bluetooth everywhere, but it is not without its shortcomings.

They put the complexity in to the dongle which if done right, just works. It's why I choose to use the usb dongle for my mouse/kb even when they support bluetooth. Because bluetooth works most of the time while the dongle works all of the time and doesn't have compromises like "It doesn't work here because the OS bluetooth stack isn't loaded yet"

Bluetooth almost needs to be lifted from the OS and become part of the higher firmware so it works everywhere.

BT-W3 could be a solution.

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