Hacker News Reader

Comment by SteveGerencser | Hacker News Reader

I use headphones exclusively outside on our farm. All of the equipment makes a lot of noise and decent headphones help with the noise. And because my wife gets the 'new tractor' with a cab, radio, and AC, I get the 'old tractor' and get to sit out in the sun from sun up to sun down during hay cutting 3 or 4 times a year. I've yet to have a pair of headphone last a full day. This could be cool and keep me from having to keep 3 pairs on hand.

I freely admit that I am an outlier, but I'm used to people not understanding that a large segment of the popular leads totally different lives with totally different needs than most people.

View on HN

There are lots of (expensive) headphones that will last 30 hours or more of playback, including the excellent Sony mx 1000 line. They have great noise cancellation, and older versions are often on sale for a significant discount.

You'd think someone would have come up with some form of auxiliary power pack for headphones, maybe one of those dual-battery solutions where you have a small cell on either side and can replace them in turns to keep it nice and balanced while still being able to keep using it all day long. Maybe the market is too small, or it already exists and we don't know about it yet.

Sounds like you just want the ability to swap in a charged battery with minimal downtime?

Pretty sure those exist already, I know Steelseries produce some headphones with that feature.

That's pretty neat, they even look like BL-5C batteries (if you squint..) https://steelseries.com/gaming-accessories/battery-pack

Didn't know they actually went through with that. I was thinking along the lines of those very old laptops that had dual NiCd banks so you could swap them without shutting down.

Bose QC were powered by removable battery until the QC 35. I'm sure you can still get a QC 25 online somewhere.

I took apart an old bluetooth speaker set, took the gumstick receiver/amplifier/battery charger combo, and slapped that into a set of headphones with an 18650 cell on each side. Lasted days straight. That was a decade ago. I'm surprised nobody's bothered to make large cans with large battery capacity.

I think the last part is important though “large segment of the popular leads totally different lives”. That’s mainly why I said average, I’m more than happy to be proven wrong but if your statement is true, the statistics will show it. Like if the average is 5% outdoor +/- 2%, then it’s obvious that a large segments doesn’t necessarily have a different need.

But this is why small companies are so important. A small company that knows it's client base well, even if it's husband and wife farmers that have a product need, that can still be hundreds of thousands of people and make it not only a successful company, but one that serves these small "outliers".

Long tail yadda yadda.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com