7 ms·

I'm not an eldery, and I prefer a jack socket. I just don't get the benefit of bluetooth in most situations. Jacks are more reliable and definitely plug-and-pl

I'm not an eldery, and I prefer a jack socket. I just don't get the benefit of bluetooth in most situations. Jacks are more reliable and definitely plug-and-play. Unless it has a physical failure, your jack socket always just works. As you state it, bluetooth requires you to "Turn on Bluetooth on your phone, then turn on your headphones, then hold down the button to pair, etc", for no benefit. Oh, and now you need batteries on your headphone. Look at professional musicians: you won't find anybody connecting his guitar to the amp through bluetooth. They are using good old wires and jack sockets: why is that? Are they too old?

simonh 8y ago
>why is that? Are they too old? Latency. When you're making music and interacting with it directly, you can't afford any noticeable latency. When you're passively listening to it, that doesn't really matter. For phone/tablet users the main place this matters is games, due to their interactive nature.
- laurentl 8y ago
  Don’t forget video. Bluetooth adds latency, and “true wireless” (no cable between the earbuds) adds another layer of latency as the signal has to be sent from one earbud to the other. Noticeable enough that you have to manually add delay between the video and audio tracks, if your player allows it.
  - TeMPOraL 8y ago
    Exactly. I bought Bluetooth headphones to listen to music at work & home, and it was all fine... until I decided to watch some TV shows in my free time. It was then that I realized I have 0.5 - 1.5s lag in audio (growing with time), which made movies unwatchable. Very quickly I bought two pairs of wired headphones instead.
    - rikkus 8y ago
      Something very wrong in the stack there. There should be a delay in the video in order to compensate for the latency sending the audio to your ears (Bluetooth does not add much here but it all adds up) and you should experience no latency.
  - Wowfunhappy 8y ago
    > and “true wireless” (no cable between the earbuds) adds another layer of latency as the signal has to be sent from one earbud to the other. This can be solved if both earbuds connect directly to the main device, no? This is how the Airpods work.
- williamdclt 8y ago
  Reliability, too. I don't trust bluetooth at all. And price: a jack is dumb tech and cheap (cheap anough that I always had about 10 extra jacks of all kinds with me when I was doing a gig). But to be fair, wireless transmitters/receivers do exist for musicians. They don't use bluetooth ofc, but that means that the latency can be bearable with wireless. It's made for live playing though (freedom of movement), no point using that in studio
  - TeMPOraL 8y ago
    Yup. It's not the radio that causes the latency, but the software stack. You absolutely can make low-latency and just-works wireless solution for musicians, but it's name will not be Bluetooth.
  - Spooky23 8y ago
    Reliability is huge. The bluetooth implementations all suck. My $40k car is about as reliable and predictable from a bluetooth perspective as Chinese knock-off Jawbone copycat from 2007.
    - falcrist 8y ago
      WHY is this still the case? I mean, Bluetooth is fundamentally just a communications protocol broadcast with some kind of antenna. Yet I don't have these kinds of issues making wifi or cell service work. Who decided to use such a flaky protocol for audio and such, and then remove the reliable connection?
      - Spooky23 8y ago
        It’s like many things designed by committee of stakeholders with very different needs. Everyone gets what they want, except for the end user!
      - tjohns 8y ago
        The problem with Bluetooth is the stack is too complex. Too many application-specific profiles baked directly into the protocol, which in turn need to be dealt with by device manufacturers. Bluetooth basically handles everything from OSI Layer 1 through 6 at the same time. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Bluetooth_profiles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Bluetooth_profiles Add to that great complexity at Layer 1, and constantly changing specs. Bluetooth 1, 2, and 4 are all radically different than each other. Compare with WiFi, which only has to do one thing (Layer 1-2). Cellular is much more complex, but that's why releasing a new phone involves endless rounds of (usually mandatory and very strict) carrier certification.
- SilasX 8y ago
  And speaking of latency, technology has broken in another respect here: rhythm games. If I play Dance Dance Revolution from a PS2 on a flatscreen, they add so much lag that the visuals are unusable, even in video game mode. Others have told me they have the same problem even on games for newer consoles intended to played on such TVs. So I end up needing to find a CRT to play them. I also saw this on the Nintendo Wii emulations of SNES games on new flatscreens.
  - Wowfunhappy 8y ago
    Audio and display lag in rhythm video games is a 100% solvable problem provided: 1. The amount of lag is consistent (check, as long as you're not using Bluetooth) 2. The game is not key-sounded (pass for DDR) 3. You know how much lag there is. Since rhythm games are deterministic, you can just offset the visuals and audio output to compensate for the delay. Keysounded games are imperfect, but it's rarely an issue unless there's a lot of lag. The real problem is #3. Without extra, expensive equipment, there's no way to know exactly how much lag there is. It's annoying that the only real problem comes down to an inability to measure.
    - brokenmachine 8y ago
      Interesting. You'd think HDMI would be able to use ARC to send a signal back, since the TV would know the exact moment it is displaying the image.
      - Wowfunhappy 8y ago
        You could also solve the problem with a hardware database. For instance, I know my projector is delayed by 22ms because multiple reviews mentioned it, so that's the value I use in Project Diva. You can't find this info for most TV's. Unfortunately, no one with the resources to really tackle this problem seems to care enough to do it. I should also note that what many games do do is offer some type of user calibration, ie, press the notes with as good timing as you can manage, and we'll assume the average is the amount of delay in your setup. This kind of works sometimes, but it's imperfect for obvious reasons.
C1sc0cat 8y ago
And they don't have some of the audio problems the blue tooth and USB have. I am having a lot of trouble with my works laptop /docking station using usb for skype - To the point where I am going to try brining in a real sound card and use one of my Shure dynamic mics with a 1/4 inch jack
- slfnflctd 8y ago
  Squelchy artifacts in music were noticeable over bluetooth in a 2016 model year rental I drove recently. Sound quality was definitely superior with an aux cable. I will almost certainly never buy a phone without that jack.
HappyFapMachine 8y ago
Eeehhh...wireless is a usual thing in the music industry, just not via Bluetooth.
jamesrcole 8y ago
> Unless it has a physical failure, your jack socket always just works. What does that mean? What would it mean if I said "Unless it has a physical failure, your car always just works"? I've had lots of problems with wired headphones and jacks. More often it's the headphone that's the problem, but I've have several issues with the jacks themselves. They can get stuff jammed into them, but they can also just not work properly. I don't know why exactly, but I've had it happen.
- sacado2 8y ago
  > What does that mean? It means you can have two perfectly functional wireless devices and not be able to make them communicate at all, but it won't happen with an analog wired connection.
  - jamesrcole 8y ago
    Surely you wouldn't accept "Unless it has a connection failure, your wireless headphones alway just work". Because it's implying it has more reliability than it actually has. And the reality is that wired headphones don't always just work either. I've had heaps of problems with the headphones themselves, and several instances of issues with the jacks.
    - Spooky23 8y ago
      Apple designs experiences, and your argument (which is a valid one) boils down to your use cases align with Apple's target. Like anything, wireless have pros and cons. The big pro is that it's fully portable and gives you a freedom of movement that is difficult to match. Most of the cons are associated with poor care (corrosion, stuff jammed in there) or poor quality devices (which is a "con" shared with wireless). There are real cons as well. Wireless devices are 5x more expensive than a wired device of equivalent quality, is susceptible to a variety of forms of interference, introduces pairing problems particularly as devices age (ie. A 6-10 year capital asset like a 2014 Honda Odyessy may randomly not work with your iPhone Xs), higher latency, unpredictable latency with different endpoints, etc. The rage issue here is that by taking away the jack, your profoundly reduce the flexibility of the device. The only meaningful benefit is to drive revenue for Apple's secret weapon -- high margin accessories. Those $30 earbuds have a cost that is probably <$3.
ubermonkey 8y ago
>I just don't get the benefit of bluetooth in most situations. Aside from exercise, there isn't one. OTOH, as you note, there are a large number of serious drawbacks -- battery failures being the biggest and most obvious. The other thing is that, heretofore, you could rely on a dumb audio jack if you wanted to play music with almost any device. Now you're limited to things with Bluetooth, and you have to extend some amount of trust in making that connection. I use almost exclusively higher-end headphones -- say, $300 and up. Bluetooth has effectively zero presence in that market. There's a reason for this. I also own AirPods, but their job is about 60% gym and 40% conversations. For serious listening, I reach for the Grados or the Etymotics or the Sennheisers.
mikestew 8y ago
Look at professional musicians: you won't find anybody connecting his guitar to the amp through bluetooth. The first example that comes to mind is Angus Young, who has said that he considers his wireless rig to be part of his "sound". If any rock musician qualifies as "old", well, Angus ain't running around on stage like he used to. Anyway, that's just one example. Pros use wireless rigs all the time. They're not BT, though.
Wowfunhappy 8y ago
Far too much of my life has already been wasted on pairing, unpairing, and re-pairing various Bluetooth devices. And I don't even use Bluetooth headphones.

simonh 8y ago

>why is that? Are they too old? Latency. When you're making music and interacting with it directly, you can't afford any noticeable latency. When you're passively listening to it, that doesn't really matter. For phone/tablet users the main place this matters is games, due to their interactive nature.

laurentl 8y ago
Don’t forget video. Bluetooth adds latency, and “true wireless” (no cable between the earbuds) adds another layer of latency as the signal has to be sent from one earbud to the other. Noticeable enough that you have to manually add delay between the video and audio tracks, if your player allows it.
- TeMPOraL 8y ago
  Exactly. I bought Bluetooth headphones to listen to music at work & home, and it was all fine... until I decided to watch some TV shows in my free time. It was then that I realized I have 0.5 - 1.5s lag in audio (growing with time), which made movies unwatchable. Very quickly I bought two pairs of wired headphones instead.
  - rikkus 8y ago
    Something very wrong in the stack there. There should be a delay in the video in order to compensate for the latency sending the audio to your ears (Bluetooth does not add much here but it all adds up) and you should experience no latency.
- Wowfunhappy 8y ago
  > and “true wireless” (no cable between the earbuds) adds another layer of latency as the signal has to be sent from one earbud to the other. This can be solved if both earbuds connect directly to the main device, no? This is how the Airpods work.
williamdclt 8y ago
Reliability, too. I don't trust bluetooth at all. And price: a jack is dumb tech and cheap (cheap anough that I always had about 10 extra jacks of all kinds with me when I was doing a gig). But to be fair, wireless transmitters/receivers do exist for musicians. They don't use bluetooth ofc, but that means that the latency can be bearable with wireless. It's made for live playing though (freedom of movement), no point using that in studio
- TeMPOraL 8y ago
  Yup. It's not the radio that causes the latency, but the software stack. You absolutely can make low-latency and just-works wireless solution for musicians, but it's name will not be Bluetooth.
- Spooky23 8y ago
  Reliability is huge. The bluetooth implementations all suck. My $40k car is about as reliable and predictable from a bluetooth perspective as Chinese knock-off Jawbone copycat from 2007.
  - falcrist 8y ago
    WHY is this still the case? I mean, Bluetooth is fundamentally just a communications protocol broadcast with some kind of antenna. Yet I don't have these kinds of issues making wifi or cell service work. Who decided to use such a flaky protocol for audio and such, and then remove the reliable connection?
    - Spooky23 8y ago
      It’s like many things designed by committee of stakeholders with very different needs. Everyone gets what they want, except for the end user!
    - tjohns 8y ago
      The problem with Bluetooth is the stack is too complex. Too many application-specific profiles baked directly into the protocol, which in turn need to be dealt with by device manufacturers. Bluetooth basically handles everything from OSI Layer 1 through 6 at the same time. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Bluetooth_profiles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Bluetooth_profiles Add to that great complexity at Layer 1, and constantly changing specs. Bluetooth 1, 2, and 4 are all radically different than each other. Compare with WiFi, which only has to do one thing (Layer 1-2). Cellular is much more complex, but that's why releasing a new phone involves endless rounds of (usually mandatory and very strict) carrier certification.
SilasX 8y ago
And speaking of latency, technology has broken in another respect here: rhythm games. If I play Dance Dance Revolution from a PS2 on a flatscreen, they add so much lag that the visuals are unusable, even in video game mode. Others have told me they have the same problem even on games for newer consoles intended to played on such TVs. So I end up needing to find a CRT to play them. I also saw this on the Nintendo Wii emulations of SNES games on new flatscreens.
- Wowfunhappy 8y ago
  Audio and display lag in rhythm video games is a 100% solvable problem provided: 1. The amount of lag is consistent (check, as long as you're not using Bluetooth) 2. The game is not key-sounded (pass for DDR) 3. You know how much lag there is. Since rhythm games are deterministic, you can just offset the visuals and audio output to compensate for the delay. Keysounded games are imperfect, but it's rarely an issue unless there's a lot of lag. The real problem is #3. Without extra, expensive equipment, there's no way to know exactly how much lag there is. It's annoying that the only real problem comes down to an inability to measure.
  - brokenmachine 8y ago
    Interesting. You'd think HDMI would be able to use ARC to send a signal back, since the TV would know the exact moment it is displaying the image.
    - Wowfunhappy 8y ago
      You could also solve the problem with a hardware database. For instance, I know my projector is delayed by 22ms because multiple reviews mentioned it, so that's the value I use in Project Diva. You can't find this info for most TV's. Unfortunately, no one with the resources to really tackle this problem seems to care enough to do it. I should also note that what many games do do is offer some type of user calibration, ie, press the notes with as good timing as you can manage, and we'll assume the average is the amount of delay in your setup. This kind of works sometimes, but it's imperfect for obvious reasons.

C1sc0cat 8y ago

And they don't have some of the audio problems the blue tooth and USB have. I am having a lot of trouble with my works laptop /docking station using usb for skype - To the point where I am going to try brining in a real sound card and use one of my Shure dynamic mics with a 1/4 inch jack

slfnflctd 8y ago
Squelchy artifacts in music were noticeable over bluetooth in a 2016 model year rental I drove recently. Sound quality was definitely superior with an aux cable. I will almost certainly never buy a phone without that jack.

HappyFapMachine 8y ago

Eeehhh...wireless is a usual thing in the music industry, just not via Bluetooth.

jamesrcole 8y ago

> Unless it has a physical failure, your jack socket always just works. What does that mean? What would it mean if I said "Unless it has a physical failure, your car always just works"? I've had lots of problems with wired headphones and jacks. More often it's the headphone that's the problem, but I've have several issues with the jacks themselves. They can get stuff jammed into them, but they can also just not work properly. I don't know why exactly, but I've had it happen.

sacado2 8y ago
> What does that mean? It means you can have two perfectly functional wireless devices and not be able to make them communicate at all, but it won't happen with an analog wired connection.
- jamesrcole 8y ago
  Surely you wouldn't accept "Unless it has a connection failure, your wireless headphones alway just work". Because it's implying it has more reliability than it actually has. And the reality is that wired headphones don't always just work either. I've had heaps of problems with the headphones themselves, and several instances of issues with the jacks.
  - Spooky23 8y ago
    Apple designs experiences, and your argument (which is a valid one) boils down to your use cases align with Apple's target. Like anything, wireless have pros and cons. The big pro is that it's fully portable and gives you a freedom of movement that is difficult to match. Most of the cons are associated with poor care (corrosion, stuff jammed in there) or poor quality devices (which is a "con" shared with wireless). There are real cons as well. Wireless devices are 5x more expensive than a wired device of equivalent quality, is susceptible to a variety of forms of interference, introduces pairing problems particularly as devices age (ie. A 6-10 year capital asset like a 2014 Honda Odyessy may randomly not work with your iPhone Xs), higher latency, unpredictable latency with different endpoints, etc. The rage issue here is that by taking away the jack, your profoundly reduce the flexibility of the device. The only meaningful benefit is to drive revenue for Apple's secret weapon -- high margin accessories. Those $30 earbuds have a cost that is probably <$3.

ubermonkey 8y ago

>I just don't get the benefit of bluetooth in most situations. Aside from exercise, there isn't one. OTOH, as you note, there are a large number of serious drawbacks -- battery failures being the biggest and most obvious. The other thing is that, heretofore, you could rely on a dumb audio jack if you wanted to play music with almost any device. Now you're limited to things with Bluetooth, and you have to extend some amount of trust in making that connection. I use almost exclusively higher-end headphones -- say, $300 and up. Bluetooth has effectively zero presence in that market. There's a reason for this. I also own AirPods, but their job is about 60% gym and 40% conversations. For serious listening, I reach for the Grados or the Etymotics or the Sennheisers.

mikestew 8y ago

Look at professional musicians: you won't find anybody connecting his guitar to the amp through bluetooth. The first example that comes to mind is Angus Young, who has said that he considers his wireless rig to be part of his "sound". If any rock musician qualifies as "old", well, Angus ain't running around on stage like he used to. Anyway, that's just one example. Pros use wireless rigs all the time. They're not BT, though.

Wowfunhappy 8y ago

Far too much of my life has already been wasted on pairing, unpairing, and re-pairing various Bluetooth devices. And I don't even use Bluetooth headphones.