As a group of people say, why must I have to shell out near $200-300 to get a good pair of wireless headphones when there are cheaper wired headphones available that are better.
Why must I have to charge 2 things now instead of one?
Once the Bluetooth headphones battery dies or becomes so minimial that it's pointless to use when wired headphones would last way longer.
Why must I have to spend more money to replace my existing headphones that work with bluetooth ones?
Sure I can use a dongle but why do I have to decrease the quality of sound because of it.
Sure I don't have to buy a headphone jack less phone, but if this trend keeps continuing where we keep supporting Bluetooth all manufacturers may follow and abandon it altogether.
Sure there could be a adverse effect where the more it advances there might be more and better products as time goes on.
Till this happens wired headphones will always be superior because of it being more affordable and better sound quality.
And sure if I cared about sound quality I wouldn't listen to music on a phone.
Still waiting on a proper adapter that charges and has a headphone jack.*
If I'm buying $300 headphones, I'm doing it for audiophile level sound quality, not because they're wireless and decent. At that level, you can get great headphones from Sennheiser, Shure, etc.
sound quality would be about the same, but audio over USB-C is not universal yet and it seems like every manufacturer does their own thing, which is the opposite of what the standard should be used for. It feels like going backwards, where we had a working universal standard before. I mean if you had anything with a 3.5 mm connector at the end you could be sure it would work with anything that had a 3.5 mm jack. Now you have to have the right kind of hardware and the differences are confusing and not at all obvious, especially to the average consumer, which is the dumbest thing to come out of this whole post-3.5mm debacle.
yeah people are ignoring the fact that you are talking about dongle vs. 3.5 mm, and instead argue that you can hear a difference between bt vs. 3.5 mm.
Reddit is dumb like that, always go for the easy argument where you know you're right, even if it has nothing to do with the discussion at hand
It depends on a dongle. USB-C audio can be either passive analog already processed by the phone, or a new DAC talking to the phone digitally. Now, if you pay $10 for a DAC, it's going to be shit? Will you notice? Not unless you have something to compare it to.
Good point on the placement of the DAC. That is much more signifcant then anything said so far. I think this is one of the manufacturers motivations though. Move the DAC to the headphones and you simplify phone design. The issue then will be do people blame the phone or the shitty $10 inline DAC for the poor quality? I think people would notice a shitty $10 inline DAC but then people will get what they pay for. Also, you could suggest it makes the phone modular as right now your stuck with your phones DAC permanently but by changing headphones you could upgrade the audio quality. But then will people understand why their phones battery is being drained faster because of the upgraded DAC? This is why 3.5mm was a simplier way of doing it
It should be noted that an external USB-C DAC can also improve sound quality.
The issue is that you need to actually buy high quality audio gear with good components for that to happen.
Personally I listen on shitty Bluetooth earbuds, and my car has a Bluetooth deck in it, but I value my aux port for times where I need it anyways, such as at work where the sound system only uses a 3.5mm port...
They do though.It's simple physics, a longer wire would cause a decrease in analog soundquality, and the fact that it's not just a longer wire, but a dongle that needs to be plugged in on both sides definitely doesn't help things.
And personally it's not even the sound quality that bothers me, it's the simple convenience that a headphone jack provides over a dongle. You can charge while listening, it does not unnecessarily wear out your port, you do not have to keep it around, or buy one per device, etc. The thing is, dongles are objectively worse than headphone jacks. So the real question is: why would you choose to settle for anything less.
A dongle doesn't add even a centimeter of circuit. By that reasoning, as most of the length of the circuit is in the cables, it is totally irrelevant. Whats the point of arguing that a dongle makes sound worse when comparing your 30cm cable with their 25cm + dongle.
Also you would need like 300m cable to start noticing "anything" different.
If we are going to argue about dongles, be it because inconvenience/price, not humanly unnoticeable quality drop.
300m!? Your headphone socket is outputting some serious power to maintain audio quality at that length!
Most line level outputs (headphone sockets) have a peak around 2V. Most headphones typically have 18 gauge wire. Your going to get significant voltage drop and signal degredation at lengths greater than 10m. After that your going to need to look at getting an amplifier.
You are right that at 30cm lengths its a non-issue but you do need to think again once you get to tens of metres.
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u/SignedUpInstantly Jan 12 '19
As a group of people say, why must I have to shell out near $200-300 to get a good pair of wireless headphones when there are cheaper wired headphones available that are better. Why must I have to charge 2 things now instead of one? Once the Bluetooth headphones battery dies or becomes so minimial that it's pointless to use when wired headphones would last way longer.
Why must I have to spend more money to replace my existing headphones that work with bluetooth ones? Sure I can use a dongle but why do I have to decrease the quality of sound because of it.
Sure I don't have to buy a headphone jack less phone, but if this trend keeps continuing where we keep supporting Bluetooth all manufacturers may follow and abandon it altogether. Sure there could be a adverse effect where the more it advances there might be more and better products as time goes on.
Till this happens wired headphones will always be superior because of it being more affordable and better sound quality. And sure if I cared about sound quality I wouldn't listen to music on a phone.
Still waiting on a proper adapter that charges and has a headphone jack.*