Please can we get jacks back.
The audio quality on these battery powered blue tooth headphones is fucking awful. IM not a purist by any stretch, but a decent pair of head phones is a whole other world of music vs anything AirPods like.
The audio quality on these battery powered blue tooth headphones is fucking awful. IM not a purist by any stretch, but a decent pair of head phones is a whole other world of music vs anything AirPods like.
So, the 3.5mm jack can die. I'm now on team "dual USB ports" to solve the charging-while-listening issue. Let's go team!
USB-C to 0.78mm 2-pin or USB-C to MMCX
basically a DAC cable, not a huge fiio dac thing.
There are very interesting in-ear earbuds, but the whole subculture only handles 3.5mm, relying on the phone audio section.
EDIT: I like this list (just one guy):
https://crinacle.com/rankings/iems/
EDIT: I guess I should add his other list:
Isn't that exactly why audiophiles - in the broadest sense, not just the golden cable types - stick with jack headphones? The DACs and amps built into headphones, or even earbuds, being very likely subpar compared to the one they can pick separately.
Headphone DACs/amps have been a thing forever and they're typically the size of a pack of cigarettes.
(Disclaimer: I made peace with BT since getting the Sony WH-1000XM4 earbuds, and later WH-1000HM4 headphones. I got them originally for the noise cancelling and LDAC support, but they're good enough that I don't hear a major difference with my friend's fancy Audio Technica)
I've still got a phone with a headphone jack, clinging onto life so not something I've investigated. Surely that's going to be the direction for folks who want an analogue socket?
https://www.head-fi.org/showcase/categories/headphone-amplif...
They range from desktop-sized, to dongle-sized, e.g.: https://www.head-fi.org/showcase/penon-os133-type-c-to-3-5mm...
(I know the head-fi forums have a certain... reputation, but I'd rather link them than one of the SEO spam lists)
The point is, the handset's output over USB-C is digital! You're not stuck with whatever analog components it includes (or doesn't), those can be swapped out pretty easily.
But you still can't charge it while you've got your headphones in.
I wouldn't call myself an audiophile, but my hearing is pretty good and I'm sensitive to quality loss
Funny that you picked these, I have had 5 different people tell me to try them, and I own a pair.
I have some pretty broad musical tastes. If I throw on some modern, electronic music, or anything pop, these do a pretty good job.
The moment I dip into jazz, into anything where the range between the quiet parts and the loud parts (read pre 1990) is large they just dont perform any more. No amount of EQ is going to make up for that missing range.
The best example of this that I can give is Caltrains A Love Supreme. On something good there is a looming undercurrent in the track, the humming is alive. The track is lifeless on every bluetooth headphone I have heard. Hell even my Sonos speakers in the kitchen do a better job.
https://suno.com/song/2bd9142c-c41c-48fc-b28f-157239b50aee
The prompt was “A jazz instrumental that combines the sensibility of ‘A Love Supreme’ with the feeling of the Caltrain transportation system.”
I cant believe I listened to all of that.
Based on the output they need to train the model again, and remove all the mannheim steamroller.
But you can’t really find a decent budget option on bluetooth. I hate mine and only use them for audiobooks. You could find reasonable budget wired earbuds even 15 years ago.
As it turns out, the unexpected benefit of not having wires is that the cord doesn't get caught on everything all the time, and that's good enough to overcome the poor battery life for me.
On a similar note, 80% of the time I'm wearing my Sony linkbuds -- the ones with the "they have a hole in them" passthrough, even though they have the shortest battery life of the multiple sets I own.
Realistically, beyond the (not dismissing) "they are trash when the batteries die" aspect of things, taking your headphones out for 10-20 minutes every 4 ish hours... Is probably a good thing for our ears and minds alike.
I actually bought a few pairs of these because I'm afraid they will discontinue them. Their newer model does not have the hole.
What wireless 'buds have only 2 hours of battery life when for just playback?
Even worse, considering that they have to include DACs for speakers anyway, they still refuse to route analog audio out to the type-c connector - just to ensure that cheap passive adapters will not impede their shameless grift.
https://www.anandtech.com/show/10719/usbif-publishes-audio-o...
If this is so non-trivial, Chinese OEMs like Huawei have in fact succeeded in analog output. This is despite the fact that their receptacles are on a 50mm long flex PCB, you don't need another 2 signal layers or an extra daughterboard.
The laws of physics are the same everywhere across the world. Just because Apple is incompetent, it does not imply everyone else is.
Here's the rationale than USB-IF gave in the ECN:
>> Few hosts support analog audio accessory. Those that might could be confused when connected to a device supporting corrosion mitigation, but no detrimental behavior should be seen. This should be a corner case of a corner case so likely zero to very low ppm of this condition. Note, any compliant host that supports analog audio accessory today is also required to support digital audio accessories, so there should be no impact to users."
I believe they are referring to Audio adapter accessory mode. What is so complex about two resistors on the CC1 and CC2 pins?
There's no grift here, shameless or otherwise. Apple stopped shipping a headphone jack on their phones for iPhone reasons, and the other manufacturers eventually followed suit because, for all the people on HN who complain about missing headphone jacks, consumers don't actually want them anymore.
The first two generations were notorious for connectivity glitches, but the TW3s appear to have fixed everything by. Great ANC, battery life, ear fit.
They even added multipoint through a free software update that came out about a year after launch.
I have heard a lot in the past few years of people praising cheap IEM's (I still don't get the difference between IEM's and a pair of wired headphones) and am curious to refresh my iPod Classic to use with some but I wouldn't know where to begin.
If you still like you want to use your wired headphones, something like the Fiio BTR5 is pretty excellent - you can use it either wired via USB-C for highest quality, or via bluetooth for convenience.
It makes very little sense to buy a network-connected device which can’t be updated. And if you say “put Linux on it” it could be argued that you don’t know what tools like phones are for.
TLDR: you get a pocket laptop instead of a phone, despite owning a "phone"
Yes, exactly, thank you. You get a project that never ends instead of a useful tool. Maybe that’s what you want, and that’s fine if so, but that’s not what I want.
I mean, all the power to you if you use it as a daily driver, but I also own one and it’s just a toy, it is so slow.
I always felt that we basically "lost" with open source: Intel did the Management Engine and phones stuck everything in the baseband.
There's no real possibility of having fully software-hackable hardware. Someone else ultimately has control of all hardware, if they want to exercise that control.
One Linux you can still select the internal microphone even with something plugged in the jack port and the mic is still usable.
Whatever OS you're using, you're not magically going to regain access to a physically disconnected signal.
IE an untrusted process running should be able to pick the inbuilt mic.
Maybe linux has permissions around device inputs that can be used to stop this but if a person is worried their untrusted laptop might be listening to them then I suspect such a permission layer is already breached.
At least, that's how my mind parses it. I don't know their actual intention for certain.
Another alternative is 3.5 mm to Bluetooth adapter from your headset. Though those are usually (?) male, and hence only work on a female 3.5 mm.
You can buy these for a couple of EUR/USD on Amazon from any Chinese brand. Fairphone themselves also sell a 3.5 mm to USB-C adapter. But this does not have USB-C pass-through.
These all do have a disadvantage: physical bloat / potentially making device less comfortable.
For example, Sony's headphones have lossless Bluetooth, and so do Samsung's, and the quality of the headphones themselves is quite good, even by audiophile standards, for in-ears.
You can also get bluetooth adapters for traditional IEMs, Fiio and KZ sell good ones.
At the end of the day, there really is no technical reason why bluetooth headphones have to sound any worse than wired headphones.
Maybe, but there are no high end TWS headphones. None of them stand up to even $200 wired IEMs.
>You can also get bluetooth adapters for traditional IEMs, Fiio and KZ sell good ones.
I wouldn't call any of the TWS adapters for IEMs good. I have the Fiio ones, they are a pain in the ass to use and connect. And everyone I've heard from says the KZ are worse than the Fiio ones, so I'm not going to try them.
Get a Bluetooth DAC instead like the Qudelix 5k or Fiio BTR series.
> At the end of the day, there really is no technical reason why bluetooth headphones have to sound any worse than wired headphones.
True, true. I just wish they'd make good bluetooth headphones. I'm sick and tired of dealing with adapters, even the bluetooth ones.
That's completely subjective - Crinacle for example is a popular reviewer and disagrees. By all objective measurements they stand up to many 200$ wired IEMs.
> I wouldn't call any of the TWS adapters for IEMs good. I have the Fiio ones, they are a pain in the ass to use and connect. And everyone I've heard from says the KZ are worse than the Fiio ones, so I'm not going to try them.
> Get a Bluetooth DAC instead like the Qudelix 5k or Fiio BTR series.
I've personally had no issues with use or connection with my KZ adapter - my girlfriend still uses it, and doesn't report any issues (beyond battery life, as it's been 4 years now). I imagine it might also depend on the phone.
> True, true. I just wish they'd make good bluetooth headphones. I'm sick and tired of dealing with adapters, even the bluetooth ones.
I guess it's up to subjectivity. I personally find my wf-1000xm4s and xm5s really quite good after AutoEQ. I'm not the only one either, plenty of reviewers find them, once EQ'd (which is super easy on Android), to be competent IEMs, even compared to other 200$+ wired IEMs.
That's so long as you don't use an iPhone. If you do use an iPhone then yeah, you're screwed as you can't avoid audio compression and you're reliant on manufacturer EQ (though it's perfectly fine for Sony)
AirPods Pro Gen 2 are extremely competitive in audio quality and support lossless (when used with Vision Pro)
Even not so good TWS headphones are more expensive than pretty good wired headphones.
> Sony's headphones have lossless Bluetooth, and so do Samsung's
Unlike Bluetooth which you have to pray to god that it will pick the best codec, wired connection is already lossless.
> there really is no technical reason why bluetooth headphones have to sound any worse than wired headphones.
... until you enable microphone, then it turns into a potato 16kHz mono stream. A successor codec was only finalized in Bluetooth 5.2 and I don't believe there are major earbuds that support LC3 yet.
I would expect so, it's just a more complicated and expensive product to make. Even so, nowadays the difference is quite small.
> Unlike Bluetooth which you have to pray to god that it will pick the best codec, wired connection is already lossless.
I don't have to pray, there is a toggle switch for lossless audio, I just have to select it. It's easy to verify which codec is being used too, it's right there on the app.
And while a wired connection is already lossless, you can risk having a crappy amp on cheaper devices, and often you also have to deal with microphonics from your cables (especially those that have a mic built in). So while it can be as flawless as a lossless codec, it's not always.
> ... until you enable microphone, then it turns into a potato 16kHz mono stream. A successor codec was only finalized in Bluetooth 5.2 and I don't believe there are major earbuds that support LC3 yet.
Sony's headphones do support LC3 as of last week (it came in an update), but yes that's still a valid point as it's only recently being addressed.
Also, is that latency significant in the first place? Don’t you base it on some bad hardware?
As an aside, mobile games aren't the only thing people play on their phones. I emulate every game console I ever owned on my phone as well as using it for a PC display over Sunshine.
It sounds so much better than using the 3.5mm jack given the use of the onboard DAC.