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Maybe I'm just old, but I really like the simplicity of wired headphones. No pairing nonsense, and no tracking (at least from the headphones).
by timw4mail 5y ago
Maybe I'm just old, but I really like the simplicity of wired headphones. No pairing nonsense, and no tracking (at least from the headphones).
- toast0 5y agoNo lag, no charging, compatible with almost every device that makes noise on a regular basis. Not compatible with recent iOS devices, any Cisco iOS devices, about a years worth of higher end Androids, one flavor of Nintendo GameBoy advance (GBA SP, I think), and some Speak & Spells (modern ones don't have a jack, but some of the antiques do).
- strogonoff 5y agoAdd a small portable DAC/amplifier and you get every benefit of wired plus superior sound quality. With one I started randomly telling apart new notes and passages from individual instruments in songs I heard tons of times before. This is with Ikko Zerda, picked up because it’s what was in stock, most likely this device isn’t special and anything is an improvement over built-in jack. (Lossless music and inexpensive SE215.) Meanwhile, most popular audio codecs that work over BT cap bitrate, making lossless truly useless; most headsets and phones don’t support LDAC, and if you get a lucky combination that does music will likely stutter if you’re anywhere close to a busy area of the city or if your phone is in the wrong pocket. (Where some wireless headsets do win is state of the art active noise cancellation, -30 dB when you’re in a really noisy place without an option to use IEMs or earplugs can be a bliss.)
- sslayer 5y agoAs "Technologist" I hate that we are so quick to dismiss solid, reliable technology in favour of the latest and greatest.
- Abishek_Muthian 5y ago> Where some wireless headsets do win is state of the art active noise cancellation Also audio amplification apps provide hearing aid features on even basic TWS earphones while a typical hearing aid can be very expensive. I was tracking this need on my validation platform[1] and it's one the top most visited problem thread consistently implying many are searching for enabling hearing aid features on their wireless earphones. [1] https://needgap.com/problems/22-enabling-hearing-aid-features-on-tws-earphones-audio-hearingaid https://needgap.com/problems/22-enabling-hearing-aid-feature...
- rootsudo 5y agoMost devices do not have an physical 3.5 plug anymore. Adapt or stay in an older (possibly more insecure) device ecosystem.
- JChase2 5y agoOr you can use an adapter.
- kop316 5y agoMy Pixel 3a, Pinephone, Librem5, Laptop, Xudoo, and Desktop still have them?
- MisterTea 5y agoYou do realize they make lightning/USB-C adapters to 3.5mm as well as splitters to allow for a chargers in parallel. > Adapt or stay in an older (possibly more insecure) device ecosystem. Gaslit by bigtech.
- vincentmarle 5y agoTo go full circle: You can use a bluetooth receiver with a 3.5” plug
- sodality2 5y agoCan you MITM, deauth-bomb, or uniquely identify a 3.5mm jack?
- amelius 5y agoI bet someone could still track you. Headphone wires can presumably act as antennas, and your specific music preference could be detected from a distance and used as a fingerprint.
- mey 5y agoOr more simply, track the actual phone if it doesn't have all it's radios off.
- est31 5y agoThat's why phones have got MAC address randomization.
- LukeShu 5y agoI have a phone that has a FM radio, but it only works if headphones are plugged in (whether or not you tell it to have sound coming out of them or the speaker)--it uses the headphone wire as an antenna!
- LeifCarrotson 5y agoAny conductive object can be an antenna. However, effective antennas are approximately 1/4 the wavelength of the radio signal being transmitted, or 1/2 the wavelength for a dipole antenna. Headphone wires, approximately 2m in length, could be effective antennas for 40 MHz or 80 MHz radio signals. (80 MHz, you'll note, is close to the 87.5 MHz-108.0 MHz FM radio bands, which might give you a clue why some phones with built-in FM receivers require the headphones to be plugged in). However, music has frequencies in the range of a few dozen hertz to a few kHz, which is in the "ELF" and "VLF" extremely or very low frequency bands. Some communication occurs at these frequencies, but it requires high-power transmitters with antenna arrays that are massive civil engineering projects tens of kilometers long rather than 2m long. These transmit to submarines towing long wires at small, inefficient fractions of the target wavelength, because these frequencies can penetrate saltwater. Also, the headphone cables are not a single wire, they're a pair a pair of wires, each side carrying both a signal and the return or ground loop. You might be able to inductively couple to this loop, like you would inadvertently if you're running unshielded, separated speaker wires near unshielded, separated 60 Hz power cables with poor grounding - but at that point when you're running the receiver wire a few millimeters away from the target's headphone cable, I think they'll notice and object to your tracking attempts...
- brandonmenc 5y agoWho else here has stockpiled backups of their favorite wired-only noise canceling headphones just in case? When my last pair of Bose QuietComfort 25s bites the dust, I'll probably stop flying altogether.
- sails 5y agoI got tired of repairing them and the noise cancelling in the newer models is much better. Bittterly I've moved to Bose 700 after my 2nd QC25's noise cancelling died.
- brandonmenc 5y agoThere is hope - I just discovered that the QC45 has just been released and the form factor is identical to the QC25, with bluetooth and no built-in voice assistant.
- sails 5y agoThat is fantastic news, my primary gripe with the 700 is that the NC doesn't work in wired mode. Doubtful if they will change that though. Any source on removing voice assistant?
- brandonmenc 5y agoThe chart comparing it to the 700 indicates the lack of voice assistant on the QC45. The PDF instruction manual states: "You can use the headphones powered on or off when the the audio cable is connected." I'm hopeful this all means what I want it to mean. https://www.bose.com/en_us/products/headphones/noise_cancelling_headphones/quietcomfort-headphones-45.html https://www.bose.com/en_us/products/headphones/noise_cancell...
- sails 5y agoThanks, really hopeful. Not clear if powered on means NC, because that would be very good. I'd use my old QC25 cable with the mic in that case. ""You can use the headphones powered on or off when the the audio cable is connected."
- Taylor_OD 5y agoI didnt get a certain android phone because it didnt have a headphone jack. Cut to a year later and I have only used wired headphones when I forget to charge my bluetooth headhpones. Pairing is annoying but its just the electronic version of unplugging the headphones from one device and plugging them into another.
- bsksi 5y agoMaybe I'm just young, but I really like the simplicity of wireless headphones. No wires.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- drdeadringer 5y agoWhat is complicated about wires? Plug-and-go. Any day I'll trade any complaints about "spaghetti" against blutooth connectivity, having to charge yet another one more device, the possibility of loosing the base media device because you absent-mindedly left it on the subway chair next to you whilst offboarding onto the platform...
- bsksi 5y agoPlug and go. And then they tangle. And then the weight of the cable pulls your ears down constantly. And then you have a string of cable all day dangling below your shirt that sometimes gets stuck on things. Thanks but no thanks. Humanity has moved on.
- true_maybe 5y ago> Humanity has moved on Pedantry aside, the parent comment is clearly in the set of humanity alongside yourself, and they made a clear argument for wires. While you might disagree with wires, this dismissive comment was unnecessary.
- kiliancs 5y agoSpeaking about the subway, I used to commute taking various types of trains and walking, and the wires were always in the way of my normal movements. I can't say how many times the earphones ended up unplugged, often painfully, also meaning everyone could now hear what I had been listening to—which felt like an invasion of my privacy as well as an annoyance to others. Even sitting (train, work desk, etc), I can't count how many times this has happened to me.
- 5y ago
- LightG 5y agoI generally agree ... however, the one point that lets wired down is their durability. I spent 10 years not changing my favourite wired headphones (replacing them probably 10 times in that period). I've been with my (pretty damned cheap) bluetooth headphones for 2 years now. Zero issues.
- cbm-vic-20 5y agoOddly enough, I've had the opposite experience. I've tried wireless headphones, but inevitably, they break in subtle ways- like becoming unable to hold a charge, or not supporting more recent codecs. I don't yank on the cords of my wired headphones, and they work for decades.
- jcynix 5y agoI prefer wired headphones too, especially in crowded trains (European) where everyone competes for a slice of wireless bandwidth. I'm expecting some wireless congestion sooner or later ;-) At home wireless is useful sometimes, e.g. when I need to move around while listening during a video conference.