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One really interesting effect of the AirPods - is that its changed the paradigm - where the default choice of headphones is Bluetooth. I personally own a pair

One really interesting effect of the AirPods - is that its changed the paradigm - where the default choice of headphones is Bluetooth. I personally own a pair of Beats fit pros - which are great for running, Zoom calls. But I recently acquired a schiit vestri and I pair these with some old wired seinheisers (HD1). I cannot overstate the drastic difference in quality. It is quite absurd (but categorically true) that the quality of audio that folks were generally listening to in 2005 was better than what we are doing today.

nosioptar 26d ago
I got a pair of Bose qc-25 and a fiio q1 for about the price of a set of earbuds. (Bose were refurbs from bose's ebay store and fiio was closing out the q1 at the time.) That combo kicks the everloving shit out of any Bluetooth headphones I've tried.
- cyberpunk 26d ago
  Wait until you upgrade to a set of grados :}
al_borland 26d ago
I would venture to guess that the average user can’t tell. Most of the time, I’m just looking for some background noise, not a listening experience. The speaker on the iPhone is good enough for that. I have a pair of wired Seinheisers, and they sound great, but 99% of the time, my priority is convenience, and anything that makes sound will do.
bpev 26d ago
You say that as if this wasn't completely to plan. The release of the first airpods and the first iPhone sans headphone jack were at the same time. It was brute-forced.
toasty228 26d ago
$19 iems sound better than airpods, the bar is that low, but normies don't care, most probably listen to spotify on auto and get 96kbps anyways. When the batteries invariably die after 2-3 years they'll send another $150 to Tim Apple while their old airpod finally become the e-waste they were destined to be
- purpleflame1257 26d ago
  Now John Apple.
- nbf_1995 26d ago
  Tim Apple stepped down. It's John Apple now
  - leoooodias 25d ago
    Turnips
  - excalibur 25d ago
    Young Johnny Appleseed
- dsr_ 26d ago
  To be clear, Truthear Gates cost almost $23 with the microphone option when they are not on sale... but yes.
  - ta8903 25d ago
    Hey, I have those :) To be fair the microphones on cheap IEMs always suck, and you're probably better off using the mic on your device.
- Aurornis 25d ago
  > $19 iems sound better than airpods, the bar is that low, but normies don't care, I have several sets of high end headphones and have spent more on audio equipment than I probably should. I enjoy my AirPods very much. They're great. They don't replace full-size headphones, but that's not what I bought them for. I find all of this brand-bashing and talk about "normies" to be funny. The AirPods lineup is actually really enjoyed in the kinds of audiophile circles where they actually measure stuff and don't care which logo is on the box. I don't get the comparison to the $19 IEMs because they're completely different product than the AirPods.
  - 25d ago
bethekidyouwant 26d ago
If you are using apple then its AAC from your phone directly to your headphones… so not seeing where the quality drop would come from.
jihadjihad 26d ago
We've been over this for a couple decades now. The average consumer simply cannot tell the difference between lossless and compressed codecs. Even back 20-25 years ago when people carried around CD players, vanishingly few people batted an eye when those went the way of the dodo and devices started getting loaded up with shitty 128 kbps MP3s. The difference in quality mattered far less than the convenience. There are many, many people who are even technically minded who would be surprised that their expensive AirPods Max cannot reproduce lossless audio from Apple Music when used wirelessly.
- WarmWash 26d ago
  >The average consumer simply cannot tell the difference between lossless and compressed codecs. The average audiophile can't either. Don't believe me? Try it for yourself, bust out your most expensive DAC and headphones, but be careful, you can't unexperience this https://www.foobar2000.org/components/view/foo_abx https://www.foobar2000.org/components/view/foo_abx
  - kazinator 26d ago
    You can totally tell, at lower bitrates. People used to share songs as MP3 files using 128 kbps rates, and you could easily hear whooshy/chirpy artifacts in those at times. Modern codec at a decent bitrate: inaudible. Ironically, it could be the expensive DAC and headphones that helps the codec conceal itself. That is to say, an audiophile who prefers gear that causes pleasant distortion might hear a difference through that gear, because the codec doesn't account for trying to mask its artifacts through equipment distortion (perhaps distortion in the ear itself only). Say the codec removes something from the signal on the psycho-acoustic hypothesis that it is masked by something louder occurring close to before or after. That hypothesis is correct under hi-fi conditions, but suppose that the user's distorting tube power amp brings out that something, making it audible. Then removing it is potentially audible!
    - Stevvo 26d ago
      A lot of the time people were sharing transcodes because they didn't know any better. Same thing happens for video content today, e.g. most video on X looks like 240p because of it.
chis 26d ago
The connection type has nothing to do with it though. Modern bluetooth is basically transparent with 256kbps AAC, like you'd have to be an omega-expert listening in a silent room to identify it vs lossless. Certainly the difference you're noticing is just the headphone quality. Honestly for me the Airpods 4 with ANC are one of the greatest feats of audio engineering ever. For such a tiny form factor they reproduce really great sound, big soundstage, AND they have good ANC without needing a closed earbud seal. They also have internal mics that listen to the response of your ear to adjust the sound profile, which you can hear happen in real time after bumping the earbuds. Obviously you can get better sound if you make different tradeoffs and wear over-ears, but they are absolutely cutting edge for what they are.
- thefz 26d ago
  Nah put on some quality headphones and the sound stage will blow your head off.
  - jack_pp 26d ago
    Comparison is the thief of joy. I remember when I first got a 1080p display, comparing it to my previous 480p one the difference was amazing, but before I got the 1080p display I had no problem with my old one. All that to say.. what's best, cheap, no wires, no headaches and happy or expensive, wires, having to download music and make a library etc and always looking for the next high, the next minor improvement? One of the happiest days of my life was when I listened to my music on a 10$ mp3 player with 2$ earphones after 3 months of not listening to it. So yeah, you may be right, even though I've tried 3000$ open-ear audiophile headphones, with an amazing amplifier, listening on tidal and it didn't blow me away but even if it did, I'd be stupid to even try, then I'd know what I'm missing and craving a 5000$ setup when I'm already happy with the 1 inch box I can easily carry wherever I go.
    - OGWhales 25d ago
      > what's best, cheap, no wires, no headaches and happy or expensive, wires You can get great sounding wired iems for very little money, while wireless earbuds are usually pretty pricey for anything not crummy. Cables are indeed annoying, but so is your earbuds being dead because you forgot to charge them. The battery problem gets worse too as they age. If you want reliable, cheap, good sounding music it is pretty hard to beat chi-fi iems.
drop_star 26d ago
Im used to listening to a staticy job site radio half way across the shop. I dont really care about the quality as long as its better than that. I feel most people are the same.
alexjplant 26d ago
> It is quite absurd (but categorically true) that the quality of audio that folks were generally listening to in 2005 was better than what we are doing today. I seem to recall most people being perfectly content with 128kbps MP3s on iPod earbuds back in the day. Only audiophiles/nerds (of which there seem to be more now) were into actual headphones and amp setups and there's never been greater market choice in this regard.
stouset 26d ago
I'm reminded of a quote: "the best camera is the one you have on you." People ditched their digital cameras en masse when smartphones became popular. Not because the smartphone cameras were better, but because they were convenient. The market has spoken. People drastically prefer the convenience of Bluetooth over the quality that comes along with having to constantly untangle wires or having audio cut in and out from failing wires. On top of that, universal adoption of noise cancellation has resulted in dramatically better quality in practice than what people were using in 2005. Yes, wired headphones with noise cancellation are even better, but not to a point that people are willing to sacrifice the convenience of going wireless.
- twright 26d ago
  I think this is a great explanation. To add to it, I believe there is something durability too. My basic Jabra wireless earbuds from 2020 are just now getting faulty (just battery stuff). In a similar time period from 2010 and 2015 I went through at least 6 pairs of wired headphones or earbuds, the jacks would fail or the wires would just stop working.
- erik 26d ago
  > People ditched their digital cameras en masse when smartphones became popular. Not because the smartphone cameras were better, but because they were convenient. The early 00's transition from CRT to LCD monitors was similar. The early desktop LCD panels were expensive, had worse refresh rates, worse contrast, and worse colour rendering. To this day, even very good modern displays struggle to match CRT motion rendering. But LCDs are so much thinner and lighter, and that was enough to overcome the disadvantages.
  - michaelt 25d ago
    CRTs were also small at any reasonable price. A 20" viewable area, 1920 x 1440 CRT in the late 1990s? $800 [1] and that was the king of monitors. A 22", 1920 x 1080 flat screen today? $65 [2] and considered the most basic, mundane screen out there. And inflation-adjusted? That $800 monitor was $1500 in today's money. [1] https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/comparison,497.html https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/comparison,497.html [2] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CVM2GJCN https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CVM2GJCN
randomfrogs 26d ago
Different people want different things. Whenever I wore wired headphones, I was always catching the wire on things, and I found them really inconvenient - to the point where when I bought a new phone the headphones just went into my pile of unused headphones. AirPods were a complete change for me - I use them constantly. The sound quality difference is irrelevant - I just won't wear wired headphones - the hassle isn't worth it for me.
- consumer451 26d ago
  Man, I am the biggest curmudgeon in this regard. I wear my old wired headphones, wire under my shirt, to a BT-BA001 "low-latency BT transceiver" in my pants pocket.
naet 26d ago
On my older android phone I always have problems watching anything with bluetooth headphones adding so much lag that the video gets very desynced with the audio. So I will continue to use wired headphones (now via usb-c adapter since the dedicated port is gone)
- DiggyJohnson 26d ago
  My 2016 Toyota Corolla has a 1.5 second audio lag and it’s my only issue with the vehicle. No clean way to update or upgrade just the Bluetooth component either.
leviathant 26d ago
I say this as someone with tens of thousands in audio equipment, as someone who can hear the compression warble in the hihats and the cymbals - audio quality with earbuds doesn't actually matter. It's like the argument for audio quality in cars - you're listening in a hostile environment, and convenience wins over fidelity. I remember walking to work one time with over-the-ear Sennheisers attached to my iPod and it felt ridiculous, and unsafe. I finally capitulated to earbuds when they started giving them away with the Pixel phones. The "find my" feature basically justifies the pro-prices, to me, because my biggest complaint about bluetooth earbuds in my own use case was how easily they're lost. I've lost and recovered my Pixel Buds Pro 2 a couple of times now. When traveling a lot by train and plane, the convenience of pocket-sized noise-cancelling earbuds has become worth it for me. But when I'm on meetings, I'm wired in. During the pandemic, I lost track of how many times my colleagues' Airpods would sputter out and die in the middle of a client meeting. Then they'd switch to wired headphones and their Macbook microphone. They sounded better, they could hear better, and there was no battery power sword of Damocles anymore.
- erxam 26d ago
  I agree. Hell, when I'm listening to music with my full-fat expensive setup, even the noise of the fans in my desktop computer is distracting and adversarial to the listening environment. Bringing those cans outside would be insane.
- Cruncharoo 25d ago
  Disagree slightly with audio quality for cars. I recently got a car with "good" speakers and the difference from regular car speakers is striking. Although I'm sure that the curve quickly flattens on spending more to get more quality, going above the base car speaker level has been awesome for me.
  - ryandrake 25d ago
    I think the point is that when you're driving (at least in a combustion engine car), the 60-70dB noise floor is so high that it almost doesn't matter how good the speakers are in an ideal silent, soundproof chamber.
juiceland 26d ago
>I cannot overstate the drastic difference in quality. Quality is governed by your subjective experience. The HD1s are tuned in a way that, paired with the Vestri and the files, creates the experience that you enjoy better. That's it. It's not about "better quality" and definitely not about "fidelity." You also paid probably $99 for something that Apple perfected and sells for $10 -- that USB DAC. Which is fine! You should spend money on things that make you happy. >The quality of audio that folks were generally listening to in 2005 was better than what we are doing today. This sentence doesn't have enough detail. What is quality supposed to mean here?
- blitzar 25d ago
  Upgrading to solid gold connectors with platinum wires will increase the audio "fidelity" noticeably (/s)
  - mastermage 25d ago
    You plebs use Gold I only use Diamond Coated Connectors. For CRYSTAL Clear Sound and fidelity.
    - 31carmichael 24d ago
      you're mistaken. Only proper blood diamond coated connectors increase the sound quality. lab grown with the same chemical and physical properties doesn't work.
bluescrn 26d ago
I used to obsess over audio quality. But then I reached my 40s, and it started to become clear that my ageing ears were becoming the limiting factor. Now I just embrace the convenience of Bluetooth and usefulness of noise cancelling. (But then again, even my AirPods or Sony XM4s are high fidelity compared to what many of the kids these days are listening with, small mono bluetooth speakers or playing music out of their phone speakers)
whycome 26d ago
Not just audio quality. Playback and consumption quality. My Winamp setup c 2005 was worlds better than what’s possible now on a typical listening device. Eq. Crossfading. Visualizer. All possible but not common
gwbas1c 26d ago
FYI: There are now lossless Bluetooth codecs if you care to find them.
napierzaza 25d ago
[dead]
Aurornis 25d ago
> But I recently acquired a schiit vestri and I pair these with some old wired seinheisers (HD1). I cannot overstate the drastic difference in quality. These sound better because they're $500 full-size headphones, not because they lack Bluetooth. > It is quite absurd (but categorically true) that the quality of audio that folks were generally listening to in 2005 was better than what we are doing today The AirPods use 256kbps AAC. If you set up a true ABX test, you would not be able to tell the difference between 256kbps AAC and lossless using the same gear.
vlod 25d ago
> where the default choice of headphones is Bluetooth. Unfortunately not giving wired headphones away (with the phone purchase) and not including the standard 3.5 mm headphone jack, means that 'normal' people just put their phone calls and play their video on speaker, to the annoyance of everyone (on public transport).
asdff 25d ago
It is even worse in home theater. People went from legit sound systems with an amp and speaker wire runs to actual speakers, proper audio channels, to what at best a sound bar from walmart and zero dynamic range.
- Blackthorn 25d ago
  I've intentionally killed the dynamic range of my system because sound engineers can't mix dialog for shit nowadays.
  - imp0cat 25d ago
    Precisely, it's a feature nowadays.
  - asdff 25d ago
    Are you streaming or are these blu ray? Streaming is trash ime.
  - mastermage 25d ago
    Looking at you Christopher Nolan
wat10000 25d ago
The average person was not listening to music with multi-hundred-dollar headphones in 2005. They were using cheap earbuds.
tristor 25d ago
> It is quite absurd (but categorically true) that the quality of audio that folks were generally listening to in 2005 was better than what we are doing today. I don't believe this statement is true, as someone who cares about audio quality and has been making my own audio equipment and buying high end audio gear since well before 2005. The bar for the average has raised considerably in the last 21 years, even though it was always possible to have better. I use AirPods when I'm traveling on a plane or walking/commuting by public transit and to take phone calls, when I want to listen to music critically I have a >$10k headphone setup that obviously puts a pair of AirPods to shame. They're not the same device for the same use case, and that doesn't make them somehow "bad". Use the right tool for the job.
mrheosuper 25d ago
>the quality of audio that folks were generally listening to in 2005 was better than what we are doing today Is it tho ? I remember back in the day, most of my music collection is in 128kbps mp3, well under the bandwidth of bluetooth
- 72deluxe 25d ago
  But did you notice at the time that it sounded chronically awful? Cymbals and hihats sound like someone eating with their mouth open.
brudgers 25d ago
I often use wired $10 Sony ZX headphones and for audio even those are vastly superior to any earbuds, including my AirPod Pros. The AirPods were the most convenient piece of electronics I’ve ever owned, but the sound is earbud quality.
dimitrisscript 25d ago
Can you get anc with wired ones?
mastermage 25d ago
As someone with probably already a bit of hearing damage and who is generally not an Audiophile. I remember when i switched from Wired Headphones to Wireless and man I cannot hear the difference. Which I assume many people don't either. For me it is no difference in hearing pleasure and much more comfort.
leokennis 25d ago
The average Joe, via AirPods and the like, in 2026 has access to vastly better audio than in 2005. In 2005, you had serious and expensive high end audio from the established brands (Sennheiser, Beyerdynamic etc.) and you had consumer audio for consumer prices that sounded pretty terrible: no bass extension, flat mids. In 2026 you have: - Serious and expensive high end audio from the established brands (maybe even some of the same models as 2005...) - A new category of convenience driven "mid-fi" like all the Sony, Bose etc. ANC headphones and AirPods Pro - often with the "laid back, a lot of bass, slightly recessed mids" sound signature but still producing very acceptable sound - Consumer audio for consumer prices, but now even the cheap earbuds and headphones (JBL, chinese brands etc.) sound by all means passable, are wireless, have good battery life I would say there has never been a better time to be a "good sound enjoyer" than now.
- ubermonkey 25d ago
  This is, in my experience, absolutely true.
- microtonal 25d ago
  The other day I needed something wired for reasons and plugged in some lightning EarPods (not AirPods!) and they sound crappy. These were the earbuds that came with iPhones and that most people used. You can now get AirPods Pro 3 or Galaxy Buds4 Pro for under 200 Euro that will not only blow away those old earbuds, but more importantly (since 200 Euro open back Sennheisers sound even better), the transparency mode on these buds are extremely good, so it's much safer to use them while listening to music or a podcast when cycling or running.
raverbashing 25d ago
Talking about sound quality: I'm surprised at how good the Apple event sounded, even on your average (wired) headphones Sounds much better than some 80% of YT videos
lucideer 25d ago
> It is quite absurd (but categorically true) that the quality of audio that folks were generally listening to in 2005 was better than what we are doing today. This isn't really true in any applicable way though. Firstly, most people in 2005 were ripping CDs onto their ipods at itunes' 128kbps default - you're still only getting 160kbps today if you're running the free ad-supported Spotify plan but more people are paying for full quality. More importantly though, the biggest impact on sound quality is noise isolation. People listen to music on the street, in an office bullpen, or public transport: in 2005 your wired sennheissers would need to be overear to deal with that environment in any reasonable manner.The ANC in even the non-pro in-ear airpods is giving you a night-&-day improvement.
skhr0680 25d ago
> It is quite absurd (but categorically true) that the quality of audio that folks were generally listening to in 2005 was better than what we are doing today. Comparing Apples to Apples, AirPods are definitely sound better and are more useful than the pack-in iPod earphones that everyone used back then.
ChrisMarshallNY 25d ago
I have a friend that was in the music industry for decades, and listening to music was a significant aspect of his job. To this day (he’s retired), he won’t use wireless (even ones with bespoke connections), or ANC headphones. I use AirPods when I take my morning walks. The shitty quality is actually a plus, because I can hear the cars that try to run me over (I walk at 5:30 AM, and people are not at the top of their game, at that time). I have a couple of pairs of Bose QC headphones, for in-home listening. There’s nothing [wireless] that comes close, for ANC. The new regular AirPods are interesting to me.
ubermonkey 25d ago
"It is quite absurd (but categorically true) that the quality of audio that folks were generally listening to in 2005 was better than what we are doing today." I'm trying very hard to understand what you mean specifically here. The AirPods Pro I use every day for casual listening are far and away better headphones than the wired earbuds I used in that context in 2005. The regular Airpods I bought my wife 3 months ago were a categorical improvement over the ones she'd lost in a move this summer, and they barely have ANC. Even the first iteration of Airpods exceeded the quality of equivalent wired in-ear buds available at the time. I recently came across my old Etymotic in-ear headphones, which were at one point a gold standard. The sound from my AirPods Pro is better, and the Apple option is FAR more comfortable in my ears. I'd argue that cost per unit of fidelity is lower now, in 2026, than it's ever been before. The level of playback a person can enjoy for, say, $500 today is wildly better than what was available for an inflation-adjusted equivalent amount of money in 2016 or 2006 or 1996. I also have Headphone Acquisition Disorder, for which there is no known cure. As a result I've had a number of fancy wired setups over the years, sometimes requiring a headphone amp. Owing to a lot of air travel, I bought the AirPods Max soon after they were introduced. I intended them to be airplane accessories for the most part, but the fact of the matter is that my $500 Sennheiser setup that required cables and an amp wasn't obviously superior to the Maxes. Once you factor in convenience, the Apple over-hear setup won the comparison in a walk. In the runup to our x-country move last summer, I sold off or gave away nearly all of the rest of my headphone horde; now, if I'm using headphones, it's one of the Apple options.
jelder 25d ago
I observed the same thing happening when we transitioned from analog land line telephones to everyone having mobile phones. The plain old telephone was crispy clean, and cellphone calls by comparison were just barely intelligible. It's so bad that I'm honestly surprised that texting didn't take over sooner. It wasn't until Apple FaceTime Audio that calls started to sound good again, and it still isn't the default.
corry 25d ago
For many people, it's not just Bluetooth - it's streaming itself and the lower bit-rate. i.e. Moving from wired headphones on a CD player in 2005 to AirPods (or knock-offs) and 96 kbps Spotify streams in 2026 is hurting you on 2 fronts. But then again - the convenience of having vast amounts of music at your fingertips and complete freedom to move around, carry your headphones in your pocket, etc - I think most of us would still make that tradeoff most of the time.
Rubberducky1324 25d ago
I had the same feeling (coming from NAD Viso HP50 wired headphones) that Bluetooth options just sucked. I recently got a pair of Focal Bathys wireless headphones, and they sound amazing.

nosioptar 26d ago

I got a pair of Bose qc-25 and a fiio q1 for about the price of a set of earbuds. (Bose were refurbs from bose's ebay store and fiio was closing out the q1 at the time.) That combo kicks the everloving shit out of any Bluetooth headphones I've tried.

cyberpunk 26d ago
Wait until you upgrade to a set of grados :}

al_borland 26d ago

I would venture to guess that the average user can’t tell. Most of the time, I’m just looking for some background noise, not a listening experience. The speaker on the iPhone is good enough for that. I have a pair of wired Seinheisers, and they sound great, but 99% of the time, my priority is convenience, and anything that makes sound will do.

bpev 26d ago

You say that as if this wasn't completely to plan. The release of the first airpods and the first iPhone sans headphone jack were at the same time. It was brute-forced.

toasty228 26d ago

$19 iems sound better than airpods, the bar is that low, but normies don't care, most probably listen to spotify on auto and get 96kbps anyways. When the batteries invariably die after 2-3 years they'll send another $150 to Tim Apple while their old airpod finally become the e-waste they were destined to be

purpleflame1257 26d ago
Now John Apple.
nbf_1995 26d ago
Tim Apple stepped down. It's John Apple now
- leoooodias 25d ago
  Turnips
- excalibur 25d ago
  Young Johnny Appleseed
dsr_ 26d ago
To be clear, Truthear Gates cost almost $23 with the microphone option when they are not on sale... but yes.
- ta8903 25d ago
  Hey, I have those :) To be fair the microphones on cheap IEMs always suck, and you're probably better off using the mic on your device.
Aurornis 25d ago
> $19 iems sound better than airpods, the bar is that low, but normies don't care, I have several sets of high end headphones and have spent more on audio equipment than I probably should. I enjoy my AirPods very much. They're great. They don't replace full-size headphones, but that's not what I bought them for. I find all of this brand-bashing and talk about "normies" to be funny. The AirPods lineup is actually really enjoyed in the kinds of audiophile circles where they actually measure stuff and don't care which logo is on the box. I don't get the comparison to the $19 IEMs because they're completely different product than the AirPods.
- 25d ago

bethekidyouwant 26d ago

If you are using apple then its AAC from your phone directly to your headphones… so not seeing where the quality drop would come from.

jihadjihad 26d ago

We've been over this for a couple decades now. The average consumer simply cannot tell the difference between lossless and compressed codecs. Even back 20-25 years ago when people carried around CD players, vanishingly few people batted an eye when those went the way of the dodo and devices started getting loaded up with shitty 128 kbps MP3s. The difference in quality mattered far less than the convenience. There are many, many people who are even technically minded who would be surprised that their expensive AirPods Max cannot reproduce lossless audio from Apple Music when used wirelessly.

WarmWash 26d ago
>The average consumer simply cannot tell the difference between lossless and compressed codecs. The average audiophile can't either. Don't believe me? Try it for yourself, bust out your most expensive DAC and headphones, but be careful, you can't unexperience this https://www.foobar2000.org/components/view/foo_abx https://www.foobar2000.org/components/view/foo_abx
- kazinator 26d ago
  You can totally tell, at lower bitrates. People used to share songs as MP3 files using 128 kbps rates, and you could easily hear whooshy/chirpy artifacts in those at times. Modern codec at a decent bitrate: inaudible. Ironically, it could be the expensive DAC and headphones that helps the codec conceal itself. That is to say, an audiophile who prefers gear that causes pleasant distortion might hear a difference through that gear, because the codec doesn't account for trying to mask its artifacts through equipment distortion (perhaps distortion in the ear itself only). Say the codec removes something from the signal on the psycho-acoustic hypothesis that it is masked by something louder occurring close to before or after. That hypothesis is correct under hi-fi conditions, but suppose that the user's distorting tube power amp brings out that something, making it audible. Then removing it is potentially audible!
  - Stevvo 26d ago
    A lot of the time people were sharing transcodes because they didn't know any better. Same thing happens for video content today, e.g. most video on X looks like 240p because of it.

chis 26d ago

The connection type has nothing to do with it though. Modern bluetooth is basically transparent with 256kbps AAC, like you'd have to be an omega-expert listening in a silent room to identify it vs lossless. Certainly the difference you're noticing is just the headphone quality. Honestly for me the Airpods 4 with ANC are one of the greatest feats of audio engineering ever. For such a tiny form factor they reproduce really great sound, big soundstage, AND they have good ANC without needing a closed earbud seal. They also have internal mics that listen to the response of your ear to adjust the sound profile, which you can hear happen in real time after bumping the earbuds. Obviously you can get better sound if you make different tradeoffs and wear over-ears, but they are absolutely cutting edge for what they are.

thefz 26d ago
Nah put on some quality headphones and the sound stage will blow your head off.
- jack_pp 26d ago
  Comparison is the thief of joy. I remember when I first got a 1080p display, comparing it to my previous 480p one the difference was amazing, but before I got the 1080p display I had no problem with my old one. All that to say.. what's best, cheap, no wires, no headaches and happy or expensive, wires, having to download music and make a library etc and always looking for the next high, the next minor improvement? One of the happiest days of my life was when I listened to my music on a 10$ mp3 player with 2$ earphones after 3 months of not listening to it. So yeah, you may be right, even though I've tried 3000$ open-ear audiophile headphones, with an amazing amplifier, listening on tidal and it didn't blow me away but even if it did, I'd be stupid to even try, then I'd know what I'm missing and craving a 5000$ setup when I'm already happy with the 1 inch box I can easily carry wherever I go.
  - OGWhales 25d ago
    > what's best, cheap, no wires, no headaches and happy or expensive, wires You can get great sounding wired iems for very little money, while wireless earbuds are usually pretty pricey for anything not crummy. Cables are indeed annoying, but so is your earbuds being dead because you forgot to charge them. The battery problem gets worse too as they age. If you want reliable, cheap, good sounding music it is pretty hard to beat chi-fi iems.

drop_star 26d ago

Im used to listening to a staticy job site radio half way across the shop. I dont really care about the quality as long as its better than that. I feel most people are the same.

alexjplant 26d ago

> It is quite absurd (but categorically true) that the quality of audio that folks were generally listening to in 2005 was better than what we are doing today. I seem to recall most people being perfectly content with 128kbps MP3s on iPod earbuds back in the day. Only audiophiles/nerds (of which there seem to be more now) were into actual headphones and amp setups and there's never been greater market choice in this regard.

stouset 26d ago

I'm reminded of a quote: "the best camera is the one you have on you." People ditched their digital cameras en masse when smartphones became popular. Not because the smartphone cameras were better, but because they were convenient. The market has spoken. People drastically prefer the convenience of Bluetooth over the quality that comes along with having to constantly untangle wires or having audio cut in and out from failing wires. On top of that, universal adoption of noise cancellation has resulted in dramatically better quality in practice than what people were using in 2005. Yes, wired headphones with noise cancellation are even better, but not to a point that people are willing to sacrifice the convenience of going wireless.

twright 26d ago
I think this is a great explanation. To add to it, I believe there is something durability too. My basic Jabra wireless earbuds from 2020 are just now getting faulty (just battery stuff). In a similar time period from 2010 and 2015 I went through at least 6 pairs of wired headphones or earbuds, the jacks would fail or the wires would just stop working.
erik 26d ago
> People ditched their digital cameras en masse when smartphones became popular. Not because the smartphone cameras were better, but because they were convenient. The early 00's transition from CRT to LCD monitors was similar. The early desktop LCD panels were expensive, had worse refresh rates, worse contrast, and worse colour rendering. To this day, even very good modern displays struggle to match CRT motion rendering. But LCDs are so much thinner and lighter, and that was enough to overcome the disadvantages.
- michaelt 25d ago
  CRTs were also small at any reasonable price. A 20" viewable area, 1920 x 1440 CRT in the late 1990s? $800 [1] and that was the king of monitors. A 22", 1920 x 1080 flat screen today? $65 [2] and considered the most basic, mundane screen out there. And inflation-adjusted? That $800 monitor was $1500 in today's money. [1] https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/comparison,497.html https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/comparison,497.html [2] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CVM2GJCN https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CVM2GJCN

randomfrogs 26d ago

Different people want different things. Whenever I wore wired headphones, I was always catching the wire on things, and I found them really inconvenient - to the point where when I bought a new phone the headphones just went into my pile of unused headphones. AirPods were a complete change for me - I use them constantly. The sound quality difference is irrelevant - I just won't wear wired headphones - the hassle isn't worth it for me.

consumer451 26d ago
Man, I am the biggest curmudgeon in this regard. I wear my old wired headphones, wire under my shirt, to a BT-BA001 "low-latency BT transceiver" in my pants pocket.

naet 26d ago

On my older android phone I always have problems watching anything with bluetooth headphones adding so much lag that the video gets very desynced with the audio. So I will continue to use wired headphones (now via usb-c adapter since the dedicated port is gone)

DiggyJohnson 26d ago
My 2016 Toyota Corolla has a 1.5 second audio lag and it’s my only issue with the vehicle. No clean way to update or upgrade just the Bluetooth component either.

leviathant 26d ago

I say this as someone with tens of thousands in audio equipment, as someone who can hear the compression warble in the hihats and the cymbals - audio quality with earbuds doesn't actually matter. It's like the argument for audio quality in cars - you're listening in a hostile environment, and convenience wins over fidelity. I remember walking to work one time with over-the-ear Sennheisers attached to my iPod and it felt ridiculous, and unsafe. I finally capitulated to earbuds when they started giving them away with the Pixel phones. The "find my" feature basically justifies the pro-prices, to me, because my biggest complaint about bluetooth earbuds in my own use case was how easily they're lost. I've lost and recovered my Pixel Buds Pro 2 a couple of times now. When traveling a lot by train and plane, the convenience of pocket-sized noise-cancelling earbuds has become worth it for me. But when I'm on meetings, I'm wired in. During the pandemic, I lost track of how many times my colleagues' Airpods would sputter out and die in the middle of a client meeting. Then they'd switch to wired headphones and their Macbook microphone. They sounded better, they could hear better, and there was no battery power sword of Damocles anymore.

erxam 26d ago
I agree. Hell, when I'm listening to music with my full-fat expensive setup, even the noise of the fans in my desktop computer is distracting and adversarial to the listening environment. Bringing those cans outside would be insane.
Cruncharoo 25d ago
Disagree slightly with audio quality for cars. I recently got a car with "good" speakers and the difference from regular car speakers is striking. Although I'm sure that the curve quickly flattens on spending more to get more quality, going above the base car speaker level has been awesome for me.
- ryandrake 25d ago
  I think the point is that when you're driving (at least in a combustion engine car), the 60-70dB noise floor is so high that it almost doesn't matter how good the speakers are in an ideal silent, soundproof chamber.

juiceland 26d ago

>I cannot overstate the drastic difference in quality. Quality is governed by your subjective experience. The HD1s are tuned in a way that, paired with the Vestri and the files, creates the experience that you enjoy better. That's it. It's not about "better quality" and definitely not about "fidelity." You also paid probably $99 for something that Apple perfected and sells for $10 -- that USB DAC. Which is fine! You should spend money on things that make you happy. >The quality of audio that folks were generally listening to in 2005 was better than what we are doing today. This sentence doesn't have enough detail. What is quality supposed to mean here?

blitzar 25d ago
Upgrading to solid gold connectors with platinum wires will increase the audio "fidelity" noticeably (/s)
- mastermage 25d ago
  You plebs use Gold I only use Diamond Coated Connectors. For CRYSTAL Clear Sound and fidelity.
  - 31carmichael 24d ago
    you're mistaken. Only proper blood diamond coated connectors increase the sound quality. lab grown with the same chemical and physical properties doesn't work.

bluescrn 26d ago

I used to obsess over audio quality. But then I reached my 40s, and it started to become clear that my ageing ears were becoming the limiting factor. Now I just embrace the convenience of Bluetooth and usefulness of noise cancelling. (But then again, even my AirPods or Sony XM4s are high fidelity compared to what many of the kids these days are listening with, small mono bluetooth speakers or playing music out of their phone speakers)

whycome 26d ago

Not just audio quality. Playback and consumption quality. My Winamp setup c 2005 was worlds better than what’s possible now on a typical listening device. Eq. Crossfading. Visualizer. All possible but not common

gwbas1c 26d ago

FYI: There are now lossless Bluetooth codecs if you care to find them.

napierzaza 25d ago

[dead]

Aurornis 25d ago

> But I recently acquired a schiit vestri and I pair these with some old wired seinheisers (HD1). I cannot overstate the drastic difference in quality. These sound better because they're $500 full-size headphones, not because they lack Bluetooth. > It is quite absurd (but categorically true) that the quality of audio that folks were generally listening to in 2005 was better than what we are doing today The AirPods use 256kbps AAC. If you set up a true ABX test, you would not be able to tell the difference between 256kbps AAC and lossless using the same gear.

vlod 25d ago

> where the default choice of headphones is Bluetooth. Unfortunately not giving wired headphones away (with the phone purchase) and not including the standard 3.5 mm headphone jack, means that 'normal' people just put their phone calls and play their video on speaker, to the annoyance of everyone (on public transport).

asdff 25d ago

It is even worse in home theater. People went from legit sound systems with an amp and speaker wire runs to actual speakers, proper audio channels, to what at best a sound bar from walmart and zero dynamic range.

Blackthorn 25d ago
I've intentionally killed the dynamic range of my system because sound engineers can't mix dialog for shit nowadays.
- imp0cat 25d ago
  Precisely, it's a feature nowadays.
- asdff 25d ago
  Are you streaming or are these blu ray? Streaming is trash ime.
- mastermage 25d ago
  Looking at you Christopher Nolan

wat10000 25d ago

The average person was not listening to music with multi-hundred-dollar headphones in 2005. They were using cheap earbuds.

tristor 25d ago

> It is quite absurd (but categorically true) that the quality of audio that folks were generally listening to in 2005 was better than what we are doing today. I don't believe this statement is true, as someone who cares about audio quality and has been making my own audio equipment and buying high end audio gear since well before 2005. The bar for the average has raised considerably in the last 21 years, even though it was always possible to have better. I use AirPods when I'm traveling on a plane or walking/commuting by public transit and to take phone calls, when I want to listen to music critically I have a >$10k headphone setup that obviously puts a pair of AirPods to shame. They're not the same device for the same use case, and that doesn't make them somehow "bad". Use the right tool for the job.

mrheosuper 25d ago

>the quality of audio that folks were generally listening to in 2005 was better than what we are doing today Is it tho ? I remember back in the day, most of my music collection is in 128kbps mp3, well under the bandwidth of bluetooth

72deluxe 25d ago
But did you notice at the time that it sounded chronically awful? Cymbals and hihats sound like someone eating with their mouth open.

brudgers 25d ago

I often use wired $10 Sony ZX headphones and for audio even those are vastly superior to any earbuds, including my AirPod Pros. The AirPods were the most convenient piece of electronics I’ve ever owned, but the sound is earbud quality.

dimitrisscript 25d ago

Can you get anc with wired ones?

mastermage 25d ago

As someone with probably already a bit of hearing damage and who is generally not an Audiophile. I remember when i switched from Wired Headphones to Wireless and man I cannot hear the difference. Which I assume many people don't either. For me it is no difference in hearing pleasure and much more comfort.

leokennis 25d ago

The average Joe, via AirPods and the like, in 2026 has access to vastly better audio than in 2005. In 2005, you had serious and expensive high end audio from the established brands (Sennheiser, Beyerdynamic etc.) and you had consumer audio for consumer prices that sounded pretty terrible: no bass extension, flat mids. In 2026 you have: - Serious and expensive high end audio from the established brands (maybe even some of the same models as 2005...) - A new category of convenience driven "mid-fi" like all the Sony, Bose etc. ANC headphones and AirPods Pro - often with the "laid back, a lot of bass, slightly recessed mids" sound signature but still producing very acceptable sound - Consumer audio for consumer prices, but now even the cheap earbuds and headphones (JBL, chinese brands etc.) sound by all means passable, are wireless, have good battery life I would say there has never been a better time to be a "good sound enjoyer" than now.

ubermonkey 25d ago
This is, in my experience, absolutely true.
microtonal 25d ago
The other day I needed something wired for reasons and plugged in some lightning EarPods (not AirPods!) and they sound crappy. These were the earbuds that came with iPhones and that most people used. You can now get AirPods Pro 3 or Galaxy Buds4 Pro for under 200 Euro that will not only blow away those old earbuds, but more importantly (since 200 Euro open back Sennheisers sound even better), the transparency mode on these buds are extremely good, so it's much safer to use them while listening to music or a podcast when cycling or running.

raverbashing 25d ago

Talking about sound quality: I'm surprised at how good the Apple event sounded, even on your average (wired) headphones Sounds much better than some 80% of YT videos

lucideer 25d ago

> It is quite absurd (but categorically true) that the quality of audio that folks were generally listening to in 2005 was better than what we are doing today. This isn't really true in any applicable way though. Firstly, most people in 2005 were ripping CDs onto their ipods at itunes' 128kbps default - you're still only getting 160kbps today if you're running the free ad-supported Spotify plan but more people are paying for full quality. More importantly though, the biggest impact on sound quality is noise isolation. People listen to music on the street, in an office bullpen, or public transport: in 2005 your wired sennheissers would need to be overear to deal with that environment in any reasonable manner.The ANC in even the non-pro in-ear airpods is giving you a night-&-day improvement.

skhr0680 25d ago

> It is quite absurd (but categorically true) that the quality of audio that folks were generally listening to in 2005 was better than what we are doing today. Comparing Apples to Apples, AirPods are definitely sound better and are more useful than the pack-in iPod earphones that everyone used back then.

ChrisMarshallNY 25d ago

I have a friend that was in the music industry for decades, and listening to music was a significant aspect of his job. To this day (he’s retired), he won’t use wireless (even ones with bespoke connections), or ANC headphones. I use AirPods when I take my morning walks. The shitty quality is actually a plus, because I can hear the cars that try to run me over (I walk at 5:30 AM, and people are not at the top of their game, at that time). I have a couple of pairs of Bose QC headphones, for in-home listening. There’s nothing [wireless] that comes close, for ANC. The new regular AirPods are interesting to me.

ubermonkey 25d ago

"It is quite absurd (but categorically true) that the quality of audio that folks were generally listening to in 2005 was better than what we are doing today." I'm trying very hard to understand what you mean specifically here. The AirPods Pro I use every day for casual listening are far and away better headphones than the wired earbuds I used in that context in 2005. The regular Airpods I bought my wife 3 months ago were a categorical improvement over the ones she'd lost in a move this summer, and they barely have ANC. Even the first iteration of Airpods exceeded the quality of equivalent wired in-ear buds available at the time. I recently came across my old Etymotic in-ear headphones, which were at one point a gold standard. The sound from my AirPods Pro is better, and the Apple option is FAR more comfortable in my ears. I'd argue that cost per unit of fidelity is lower now, in 2026, than it's ever been before. The level of playback a person can enjoy for, say, $500 today is wildly better than what was available for an inflation-adjusted equivalent amount of money in 2016 or 2006 or 1996. I also have Headphone Acquisition Disorder, for which there is no known cure. As a result I've had a number of fancy wired setups over the years, sometimes requiring a headphone amp. Owing to a lot of air travel, I bought the AirPods Max soon after they were introduced. I intended them to be airplane accessories for the most part, but the fact of the matter is that my $500 Sennheiser setup that required cables and an amp wasn't obviously superior to the Maxes. Once you factor in convenience, the Apple over-hear setup won the comparison in a walk. In the runup to our x-country move last summer, I sold off or gave away nearly all of the rest of my headphone horde; now, if I'm using headphones, it's one of the Apple options.

jelder 25d ago

I observed the same thing happening when we transitioned from analog land line telephones to everyone having mobile phones. The plain old telephone was crispy clean, and cellphone calls by comparison were just barely intelligible. It's so bad that I'm honestly surprised that texting didn't take over sooner. It wasn't until Apple FaceTime Audio that calls started to sound good again, and it still isn't the default.

corry 25d ago

For many people, it's not just Bluetooth - it's streaming itself and the lower bit-rate. i.e. Moving from wired headphones on a CD player in 2005 to AirPods (or knock-offs) and 96 kbps Spotify streams in 2026 is hurting you on 2 fronts. But then again - the convenience of having vast amounts of music at your fingertips and complete freedom to move around, carry your headphones in your pocket, etc - I think most of us would still make that tradeoff most of the time.

Rubberducky1324 25d ago

I had the same feeling (coming from NAD Viso HP50 wired headphones) that Bluetooth options just sucked. I recently got a pair of Focal Bathys wireless headphones, and they sound amazing.