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My favourite part about wires is that there's never interference or poor connectivity. Aux headphones, ethernet cables, wired mouse and keyboard - all so much m
by SECProto 4y ago
My favourite part about wires is that there's never interference or poor connectivity. Aux headphones, ethernet cables, wired mouse and keyboard - all so much more painless.
- noirbot 4y agoI dunno, if you haven't run into audio or video interference on a wired device, you're lucky or have quality cables. I've definitely picked up radio stations on headphones or had nearby electrical currents induce an annoying buzz in a microphone or distort a video signal.
- jakear 4y ago> I've definitely picked up radio stations on headphones Not exactly the same, but makes me reminisce the days of the iPod nano. It offered FM radio using the headphone cables as an antenna. I haven’t seen that supported anywhere since, which is a shame because I’d really like to get local stations on my phone.
- csdvrx 4y agoCheck Chinese phones brands like Xiaomi or Ulephone: https://www.amazon.com/Ulefone-Power-Armor-13-Smartphone/dp/B09B9YRFD2 https://www.amazon.com/Ulefone-Power-Armor-13-Smartphone/dp/... https://crgsoft.com/the-list-of-2019-smartphones-that-have-fm-radio/ https://crgsoft.com/the-list-of-2019-smartphones-that-have-f...
- toast0 4y agoFM radio using headphones/headset as antenna is a common feature in phones. I've seen it on feature phones in 200x, and on some Androids as well. Only you can decide if it's important enough to outweigh other must have features though. There are also lots of apps to stream local radio if you have a consistent data connection (doesn't need to be fast, though)
- SoftTalker 4y agoThe FM receiver is (or is claimed to be) better for battery life than using data to listen to local radio.
- elpescado 4y ago...and certainly better for your data plan.
- p_l 4y agoIIRC, USA pushed for some time for inclusion of radio receiver as mandatory, while GP mentions the need to support DAB if selling to France, resulting in weird situation where it might be software "fuse" involved.
- roywiggins 4y agoI think some (most?) of the Moto G line still support FM radio this way. https://www.reddit.com/r/MotoG/comments/u2dvvp/any_current_moto_phones_have_a_fm_radio_cant/ https://www.reddit.com/r/MotoG/comments/u2dvvp/any_current_m...
- tn1 4y agoAs others have said it's very common. You can even filter phones on GSMArena by it, looks like there's 6000+ in their database, including recent releases: https://m.gsmarena.com/results.php3?chkFMradio=selected https://m.gsmarena.com/results.php3?chkFMradio=selected
- pinewurst 4y agoMost phone chipsets actually implement this functionality. However the carriers tend not to approve its enablement.
- joshspankit 4y agoI actually just built a $4 FM receiver kit that uses the headphones for the antenna. It was very common in previous decades because it was cheaper and allowed more room in the device (the alternative was the metal “pull to extend” antennas).
- TaylorAlexander 4y agoMy mom's cheap new flip phone has this feature, so they're still shipping it on new devices.
- interestica 4y agoI had an android phone about 5 years ago that could pick up over-the-air video broadcasts using the headphones as the antenna.
- sudosysgen 4y agoA surprising number of phones have that feature but it's often disabled in software (especially in North America). Sometimes you can force enable it.
- diffeomorphism 4y ago> I haven’t seen that supported anywhere since, I had that come with a cheap motorola phone (3 years ago or so) https://www.motorola-support.com/uk-en/?page=topic/applications/fm-radio-app/device/motorola https://www.motorola-support.com/uk-en/?page=topic/applicati... So not ubiquitous but not that rare either.
- ta8903 4y agoI know you have a bunch of responses already but I got to say this, every single phone (dumb and smart) that I've used or seen used by my immediate family and friends has had this feature, I'm more susprised by the implication that there are phones that don't!
- Findecanor 4y agoHere in the EU, it tends to be disabled in software even if the hardware has it. I blame the French. They introduced a law that forbids radio receivers that don't support DAB radio, as a way to make the newer DAB format take off. But globally, DAB never did so phone hardware don't have it. In the EU, distribution chains often cross borders and it would be too bothersome to have models with special firmware just for France — so instead, nobody gets FM-radio.
- chmodux 4y agoMy Xiamoi Redmi Note 8 Pro that I bought from Orange (french telephone provider) here in France in 2020 definitely is currently receiving FM Radio (uses the headphones for reception) and it is even documented on their site https://assistance.orange.fr/mobile-tablette/tous-les-mobiles-et-tablettes/installer-et-utiliser/vous-divertir/musique/xiaomi-redmi-note-8t-ecouter-la-radio-fm_305073-841091 https://assistance.orange.fr/mobile-tablette/tous-les-mobile...
- Glawen 4y agoIt's a very recent law introduced because until recently, virtually no radio supported DAB. I bought last year a DAB compatible radio for my car, only to realise that it is worse than FM :)
- 2143 4y ago> It offered FM radio using the headphone cables as an antenna. That was common on phones in general. Headphones acted as antenna. If you open the FM radio app without connecting wired headphones, it'll ask you to connect it. This was common in Android phones as well. My current Android phone does not have headphone jack. And I can't use FM radio (although there are services that play radio over the internet, but that isn't really the same...). ------ About phones which have the capability but which are disabled, I wonder if it's because of security implications. Where I live, the allowed frequencies were from 87 MHz to 108 MHz or something. Consumer FM radios could only be tuned in this range. That's because on frequencies outside this range, other transmissions — for example, police transmissions — might be taking place. The aforementioned allowed range is different in different countries. Also, in my country long long ago (like, ≈50 years ago) you needed to get the permission of the government (via a license or something) to get a radio. You couldn't just go to a store and buy one. That changed later, however. Now that I think about it, it might have something to do with semi-secret transmissions happening on frequencies outside the allowed range. A friend told me it's possible to take apart the radio and tune to non-standard frequencies because in most radios the "dial" to select the allowed range really works by physically jamming the dial with another block. If you remove that block, you could keep turning that dial. Haven't tried this myself, so take that with a pinch of salt.
- Godel_unicode 4y agoThis is the reason that balanced headphones are nice, the ability to reject many kinds of noise induced into the wiring.
- phaedrus 4y agoGot any tips for eliminating or mitigating the interference? Recently some retiree in my area got himself a new, illegally-high-powered CB radio so he can talk to truckers from his house. It comes through on the wired headphones I wear while working from home.
- ungamedplayer 4y agoIf its not massively out of spec, get a ferrite ring for your cable.
- sentientslug 4y agoContact the FCC
- znpy 4y agoGet law enforcement involved. That retiree might be transmitting way above the allowed transmission power.
- CobaltFire 4y agoFind a HAM in your area and ask them to do a "Fox Hunt". Many enjoy hunting people violating the laws and giving a detailed report the the FCC, which has some rather impressive fines that they DO levy.
- wrycoder 4y agoFirst, HAM is not an acronym. It’s ham, a friendly joke referring to amateur radio operator. Second, hams are not vindictive people, and most interference issues are sorted out locally, possibly with support from the ARRL. Some sources of interference can be very hard to find. The FCC only levies massive fines when their instructions are being ignored. They don’t play games, that’s true.
- ungamedplayer 4y agoGet a ferrite ring for your cable, solves more of these issues than you'd imagine. Or a clip on, something like this : https://www.cablechick.com.au/cables/ferrite-core-rfi-and-emi-noise-suppressor-cable-clip-5mm.html https://www.cablechick.com.au/cables/ferrite-core-rfi-and-em...
- dmix 4y agoI had no idea these existed. This is going to moving make my tube amp so much less annoying. Thank you. https://resources.altium.com/p/how-do-ferrite-beads-work-and-how-do-you-choose-right-one https://resources.altium.com/p/how-do-ferrite-beads-work-and...
- projektfu 4y agoAn isolation transformer might also help.
- fifteenforty 4y agoThey used to be common on USB cables, especially USB A to B cables for printers. Not sure why they disappeared.
- neurostimulant 4y agoThose are ferrite cores? I thought it was covered solder joint or something.
- stoobs 4y agoNope, clipped or glued ferrite, you used to also get them on power cables for certain devices
- q-big 4y ago> Not sure why they disappeared. Likely cost savings combined with design considerations ("these knobs look ugly").
- SECProto 4y agoThe only incidence of wired interference I have personally experienced was a ground loop in a car (car cigarette lighter-usb adaptor-usb cable-phone-aux cable-aux input on car stereo). I seem to recall fixing it with a <$5 component that isolated the signal, this was about 10 years ago and other vehicles I've owned haven't had the same issue.
- macNchz 4y agoIt’s been almost 15 years but I do remember always knowing when my pre-smartphone cell phone was about to ring. It’d make my stereo system buzz loudly moments beforehand.
- NikolaNovak 4y agoI remember that! I wonder what it was - the actual signal sent or something in phone's reaction?
- runnerup 4y agoObviously the phone caused it. The signal from the tower wouldn’t be any different from all the other calls going to all the other phones on your block. They didn’t have beamforming that narrow.
- neurostimulant 4y agoThere were even led accessories you can attach to your phone that will light up when the phone is transmitting a signal. Basically just some leds attached to some coils to harvest energy transmitted by the phone.
- eropple 4y agoA bad ground in a USB power brick made Spanish talk radio leak into my video mixer's audio interface. Through the chassis, the BlackMagic SDI card, the SDI card, and the BlackMagic HDMI->SDI converter being powered by the cursed USB brick. That was a bad time.
- aspyct 4y agoMy personal best is receiving German radio (I'm from Belgium) through my Logitech 5.1 sounds system. Only when the volume was at minimum or maximum. So odd.
- xxpor 4y agoThat just means you're not running enough power through them ;)
- denkmoon 4y agoHaving just spent several hundred $ to eliminate EMI from my audio setup, I wish it were true :')
- nulld3v 4y agoAre you sure it was EMI and not ground loop?
- rob_c 4y agoLol, frankly I doubt many can tell
- denkmoon 4y agoBoth, I believe. Had ground-loop from my setup involving a very cheap passive mixer and a an asortment of other cheap crappy usb dacs, and there was definitely some EMI involvement as you could hear it change as I moved my cables around the tangled mess of other high speed data cabling. Don't have the equipment to test or diagnose, but empirically, having moved to using balanced cabling from point of analog conversion all the way to amp input, there's no sounds coming out of my headphones that shouldn't be.
- mirntyfirty 4y agoI think the lack of batteries is my favorite part...but the connectivity isn’t too far away in 2nd.
- mr_toad 4y ago> all so much more painless. Until you have to do the dusting, and you’ve got a tangle of cables in your way.
- chipotle_coyote 4y agoThere are definitely some asterisks there. :) I have a pair of desktop speakers that have both a USB input (to an onboard DAC) and an analog input; originally, I had the USB input connected to an iMac and used the analog input to plug into my work laptop. Recently, I swapped the iMac for a Mac Studio and a Studio Display, and figured that I could just unplug the Thunderbolt cable to the display from the computer and plug it into the laptop. I kept using the analog cable, though, because I wanted to keep the speakers directly plugged into the computer rather than the hub on the display, probably due to irrational audiophile-esque superstition that this would make the sound laggy or the highs less chocolaty or whatever. (More seriously, I've heard of DACs having stuttering issues when they're run through hubs, and hey, I had the cable, right.) And the first time I plugged the analog cable into the same laptop that I'd been using, the only difference being that the Thunderbolt cable was also plugged into it, it was terrible. Despite the audiophile joke above, I don't mean terrible in some kind of "this cable is making the sound subjectively worse" fashion, I mean terrible in a "when no sound is playing, I can hear grinding electrical noise going BZZZZZbzzzzGRRRFTTTTgrrnkFFFFNK constantly" fashion. The problem was clearly the Thunderbolt cable, even though it wasn't involved in the audio circuit at all. It's like it had turned into its own little RF interference generator. While I only had the one Thunderbolt cable so I couldn't swap it, the interference went through two different analog cables. (This is not as weird as hearing RF interference over one specific pair of headphones from a headphone amp when nothing was playing but only when I was using a specific USB cable running to the same outboard DAC, which also happened to me years ago.)
- SECProto 4y agoSounds to me like a ground loop. so you're right, I have had that issue once in my car (different grounding potential between the cigarette lighter output and the stereo aux input)
- ascagnel_ 4y agoUnless I'm mistaken, Thunderbolt is fiber optic; if it's fiber optic, it shouldn't be generating any EM or RF interference.
- 4y ago
- wvenable 4y agoI have terrible connectivity and interference with wires! As soon as I stand up my headphones become violently disconnected from my computer. Cables also interfere with each other and all the other items on my desk.
- bmitc 4y agoDid those headphones cost more or less than AirPods? Somehow, musicians and producers have worked for decades with wired headphones just fine. Beyerdynamic headphones can go for less than $200 and have a long straight cord or a coiled cord that stays out of the way.
- lghh 4y agoI personally wouldn't want to run in those headphones.
- least 4y agoMusicians work with wired headphones because they largely have to, not because it's intrinsically better. You don't even need to be a musician or producer to experience the drawbacks being attached to a cable can have. It's just different sets of compromises.
- helmholtz 4y agoIt is intrinsically better though. Wired sound infinitely nicer sounding, and with much lower latency. Will we ever have a day when wireless will be sufficiently low latency?
- powersnail 4y agoIt certainly does with my speaker. I can't charge the Anker speaker while using AUX, because it just sounds like a broken TV shouting at me.
- SECProto 4y agoMy speakers and headphones don't need to charge, which eliminates that opportunity for a ground loop.
- esperent 4y agoLiving in a country where ground wires are not installed as standard, oh you are so wrong. Anything that has a wall plug carries crazy levels of background hum to any audio equipment I plug into it. I'm sure there is something I could buy to fix that (I can't fix the electrics though as I'm renting). On the other hand, instead of doing loads of research and buying new equipment, I can just connect my headphones or speakers by Bluetooth and the noise is gone. Now I have to deal with the annoyances of Bluetooth which are not zero either. But it's a great tradeoff for me.
- SECProto 4y agoI've lived in a country without ground wires (japan), and used desktop speakers and headphones without issue.
- esperent 4y agoI'm in Vietnam. Possibly it's something else with the power grid causing interference? Any device with metal sides (like a mac laptop) also constantly gives tiny electric shocks to people.
- ncmncm 4y agoBuy a 1:1 transformer. Plug it into the wall, and plug in a power strip at the other end.
- esperent 4y agoThanks for the suggestion, I had not heard of this before.
- Marsymars 4y agoI have a pair of wireless RF headphones. They’re awesome - the base connects via optical, so no interference of any sort, the signal range is fantastic, the lag is minuscule, the pairing with the base is always automatic and perfect, and they take rechargeable AAA batteries that can recharge within the headphones when they’re on the base, or can be easily replaced.
- olliej 4y agoThe speakers attach to my computer when I was a teenager produced static when scrolling content of windows, so I would disagree :D
- danmur 4y agoMine get knocked out by cats running over my desk sometimes, that must count as interference
- IG_Semmelweiss 4y agoPlenty of intereference from door handles. Backpacks are also a recurring offender. Many pieces of clothing... or objects you regularly traverse, can become a wire trap. Those objects are the bait & fishing rod, and your wires are the fish :)
- SECProto 4y agoBit of observer bias here, as I don't listen to headphones while out and about.
- devy 4y agoCategorically false. A high bandwidth data cables (aka wires) does introduce RF noise / EMIs. That's why ferrite bead were invented to reduce the noise. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferrite_bead https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferrite_bead The reason some ethernet cable and audio cables don't have ferrite beads is because they have internal metal mesh EMI shielding. But not all cables have that.
- SECProto 4y agoCategorically false but at least functionally true for me.
- torstenvl 4y agoI used to be able to tell I was about to get a GSM text message by the way my (wired) computer speakers would make a distinct quiet staccato crackle sound.
- neurostimulant 4y agoI recently started playing GTA 4 and it has this noise when you're driving in a car with radio on and about to get an sms or call in the game. Made me feel nostalgic.
- blowski 4y agoThere was even a song that featured it. https://youtu.be/K20BS-1BPjk https://youtu.be/K20BS-1BPjk
- teekert 4y agoHaha, came here to post that song... Anyways, I still hear this every now and then (the sound, not the song) with my Ford C-max 2006 sound system and iPhone 12 mini, but nowhere near as often as back in the 90's and 00's. Back then I also had a separate vibrating module I'd put in my cell phone pocket (many pockets available at that time, Nokia 3210 did not vibrate), it would always vibrate before any ringtone (self programmed AirWulf) would start (of course).
- wodenokoto 4y agoWhy did that stop happening? I remember back in the early 2000s you might even come across a live concert where an incoming text message got caught in the PA and broadcast to the entire audience.
- davnicwil 4y agoWow. I've just for the first time ever realised that you might be able to derive the content of the SMS from the specific pattern of interference you would hear on speakers. Like, it seems plausible that is the case. Is that what you mean here by broadcast - or just the fact there was a message was broadcast?
- grumpyprole 4y agoNot always true. The USB-C port is already loose on my Android phone after only 1 year of use. I cannot use it with a DAC on the go for music, as the slightest wobble will cause a disconnect. I never had this issue with headphone jacks, but even so, wireless has some advantages.
- LinAGKar 4y agoTry cleaning lint out of the USB port
- grumpyprole 4y agoI've tried compressed air. I still suspect mechanical wear. The port is after all, extremely small and intricate and of questionable design.
- LinAGKar 4y agoI don't know if that's enough, there wouldn't be much airflow at the bottom of the port. I've used a needle to clear out the compressed lint stuck at the bottom, and that made it hold the plug much better. But I suppose it could be mechanical, though that hasn't been my experience.
- globular-toast 4y agoI had the same experience. I thought the USB-C plug was terrible and I was cursing it for being so badly designed. I tried different cables but even the better ones (better in terms of not falling out) eventually would fall out. I then used a pin to mechanically remove the lint from the port and I was amazed at how much came out! After that the plugs went in so much further and are completely secure. Nowadays I don't get so much lint build up, probably because I work from home. Compressed air will never get it out. It gets really compacted in there. Don't be afraid of using a needle, the port is quite rugged. Just avoid the contacts in the middle.
- 4y ago
- k8sToGo 4y agoI would not call cable management painless. Especially at the desk where every little thing needs a wire. But that is just me.
- chrisandchris 4y ago> My favourite part about wires is that there's never interference or poor connectivity. [...] What a happy world. There's enough interference in cabling, but most time it's not enough to cause any issues. Had a case once where an AP with PoE did not work properly (started, then died, repeat) and the issue was that we had to much cable somewhere and rolled it. Interference caused issues, despite using STP and Cat. 6...