But of course we all know that the big manufacturers don’t do this not because they can’t but because they don’t want to. Planned obsolescence is still very much the name of the game, despite all the bullshit they spout about sustainability.
This article seems to omit the most important fact about headphones - how do they sound?
I love repairability and all, but it hardly matters if I don’t want to use them in the first place because they traded off too much quality for repairability.
I get what you’re saying, kind of…
But also, most modern earbuds usually sound quite good. Quality in general has become such a bizarre moving target, but here’s my take: We’ve become so used to constant improvement at the expense of satisfaction. I can barely notice the difference between 1080p and 4k. In my mind they’re both “good quality” and therefore I’m satisfied. Same goes for audio quality. I’ve used a few pairs of earbuds and they have sounded “good.”
As a culture, we need to stop with throwing away of perfectly good devices, because it’s extremely harmful to the planet’s occupants.
1080p and 4k isn’t really a fair comparison for great earbuds and shit earbuds in my opinion. The comparison there is like 4k and 480p. There is a massive difference between the 2. I have had $30 earbuds that you couldn’t listen to a podcast on, and I currently have $250+ Bose earbuds that are fucking amazing for just about everything.
Unless of course you’re saying that these earbuds are in fact “1080p” quality. In which case, fair point. I have yet to see someone who’s actually used these and commented on the sound quality though. What I’ve seen from fairphone products is they are consumer friendly at the expense of quality.
My wife had some Logitech headphones that for some godforsaken reason were operating in some voice only ultra low bitrate by default. I mean, they weren’t fantastic even after I fixed that, but the quality was unbelievably low, like somebody making a phone call from the moon, and how she’d put up with it for nearly a year I’d no idea. I only found out after I noticed her swapping between a wired set for general use and wireless for Discord.
I’ve got the Soundcore Liberty Pro 2 and the Soundpeats H1. Neither of them come close to my HD598. What are the modem earbuds that sound good?
Isn’t the codec for headphones just meant to handle the communication between the headphones and device while the device can handle transcoding from the input codec to the output codec?
Or do you mean the quality of the codecs supported puts an upper limit on sound quality?
Some more recent bluetooth codecs (such as LDAC or aptX) are better ahead in audio compression, which given bluetooth’s limited bandwidth (and given than higher bandwidth usage means also more battery consumption), is something to keep in mind at all stages. In general, bluetooth audio quality is quite a mess of codec negotiations that happen mostly transparently to the user when an earphone connects. When a call is placed and the headset needs to also send audio besides receiving it, further codec changes are negotiated on the spot, prioritizing latency vs quality. Here’s a quick (kinda) guide to the most common bluetooth codecs any given audio device might use: https://www.whathifi.com/advice/what-are-the-best-bluetooth-codecs-aptx-aac-ldac-and-more-explained
I’m also confused here. I’d have thought that any format decoding would happen on the phone.
Biggest complaints I’ve seen aren’t with sound quality, it’s with the noise cancelling being bad and the shape of the ear cups (the latter could have just been the shape of that user’s ears were the problem).
Mind you, these were reviews from Fairbud XLs released about a year ago. Things could have improved or gotten worse in that time, in any way. I can’t tell you for sure.
That said, I don’t think it makes sense to correlate focusing on repairability and quality of the product going down. I actually went out and found the reviews I’m referencing simply because the concept is absurd and I needed to know for sure.
Always keep in mind what you say online, Poe’s law is forever in effect.
Nah I wasn’t being sarcastic.
As I understand it, in engineering these types of mobile space constrained devices you essentially have a “budget” of space. Every hardware feature you include generally eats into this budget and if you want things to be user accessible or repairable it eats into this budget majorly.
That budget has to come from somewhere, so you can pay it with things like reducing the size of your battery or reducing the size of your drivers which in turn represents a reduction in sound quality.
I am not a huge sound nerd, but I own a pair of these buds and had to take them out at a busy railway station because it was weirdly quiet and couldn’t hear the trains. I think the noise-cancelling is great.
I also own an XL pair, and I have two complaints:
I have a big head, and it puts some pressure on the thing as clamps on my head, I’ve broken two of the little plastic parts between the pads and the top arch so far. It was from material exhaustion, they snapped. Silver lining was it was super easy to swap out, literally 20 seconds with only a screwdriver and a single screw, and I got their customer support to send me a replacement part in a week both times.
I hear odd noises when I try to use it when plugged in and charging. I suspect it might have to do with Windows, but still. It’s barely usable, but the charge lasts long enough to make me not care.
Lol sound is not the selling point for any of those pods. Portability is the name of the game
What a lame answer. Are you this lame in real life? There’s OBVIOUSLY a HUGE spectrum of quality for iems, WHAT are you talking about? It’s a valid question on the ops part. You wanted to be snobby but it’s just a bad take that reveals how judgdy and smug and completely out of touch you are. Nobody thinks of you as cool, you don’t have friends IRL, I hope your dog dies. I hate the internet fuck you you’re the straw that broke the camels back. Would be a pretty cool place if people like you weren’t in it. I quit
Personally I don’t really give a fuck about headphones quality unless it’s particularly shitty, because if I want quality I’m using one of my headsets (preferably one that doesn’t use Bluetooth), but ok.
Also what the fuck is judgy about my personal preferences ? I’m not going to think less of someone because of their choice of audio hardware lmao. And personal preferences are personal. Yes I am a bit anal about the sound quality of my headsets but that is strictly a me problem.
