Comment by luckycharms810
15 hours ago
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.
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.
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.
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.
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In cars it’s also important how good it isolates you from the engine and external noise like wind and wheels on the road. Some cars even have noise cancellation for that.
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> I finally capitulated to earbuds
I'm not audiophile, but I was prepared to do the same, despite the discomfort and obviously-lower sound quality... but the mic isn't even sufficient for meetings in a public place (e.g. a diner at lunch time), whereas my laptop's builtin mic is. How can they expect us to use these things??
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.
Convenience is close. IMO it’s all about accessibility, or more generally Good UX. Your coworkers AirPods died because they used it consistently and could just get up and walk around without having to take them out. They were always on because they were in ear and had no reason to be disconnected. They’ll turn off the moment you take them out on iPhones atleast. This is a small example of how the user experience in the Apple Ecosystem for AirPods has been kind of nuts. So if you’re on these devices, there is a palpable difference in ‘convenience’ that goes beyond what is carry-able or safe or consistent.
To further this concept, the reason why you tolerate variable quality isn’t just convenience or accessibility. It’s because you can’t carry your setup around, yes, but furthermore you don’t habitually listen to music because you have the best setup. You do it because you love music. In that regard, the user experiences do become interchangeable. Quality music is accessible on every device and you will listen to it with anything if you love music. The user experience enjoyment levels are ultimately similar with most devices for you, purely when it comes to music listening, just because you love music. It’s a consistently good UX for you.
I say all of this as someone who has also wasted money on expensive listening devices (and loves music) and also someone who isn’t like, crazy about the modern Apple UX. They just got earbuds right when it comes to the experience of an Apple ecosystem user.
> They’ll turn off the moment you take them out on iPhones atleast. This is a small example of how the user experience in the Apple Ecosystem for AirPods has been kind of nuts.
Every 'pod' type headphones I've used do this. It's odd you admit to only knowing Apple, then use it to support Apple being superior.
Sound quality is worse when transmitting and receiving over Bluetooth, when I use the AirPods for calls on the MacBook I switch to the microphone on the MacBook, they will hear me better and I will hear them better since the AirPods will use all the bandwidth for outputting audio only.
Are you sure this is a bandwidth issue?
I always assumed it was more about the position and size of the microphone.
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This is certainly the opposite of my experience. The sound quality from someone speaking via their MacBook microphone is noticeably worse than someone speaking via their AirPods microphone.
I use my Shokz headset for calls. The boom directional mic is excellent at suppressing background noise on its own and the connection is super reliable with the USB-C dongle (that works on phones as well as laptops)
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.
> 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.
Sure, unless you want to do something rare and exotic like, say, have a microphone on your headset. Then you get the HFP/HSP profile, which makes two tin cans linked by a string seem high quality by comparison.
I am now curious how much you can optimize the quality of a tin cans and a string. You could encode the sound digitally over the string perhaps. I wonder what bitrate (also bandwidth) you can achieve.
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Wait is that why my airpods (playing via my Mac) sound like crap as soon as somebody calls me? Cause the microphone turns on?
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Oh my god, TIL -- thank you, brother, I've apparently been doing this incorrectly for years.
If you’re outside with a smartphone, why do you actually need that though? If you call someone, their audio will be bad anyways, and when do you need playback and microphone at the same time? Outside multiplayer gaming, I don’t really know any application where high quality audio playback and microphone is needed at the same time.
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Surely it would be very rare to want to listen to music at its highest quality while simultaneously recording your voice. It’s perhaps conceivable for some sort of niche mode of music or audio production, I suppose.
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Modern pocket supercomputers don't divulge anything useful about the kind of connection that is being used for Bluetooth audio so we don't know if it's using 256kbps AAC or something else instead, and it cuts out in some areas of [insert city], and when it comes back it sounds demonstrably worse.
It's an inscrutable mess.
Wires don't have these problems. Plug them in. Use them. Clean the contacts every now and then if/when they get crudded up.
Isn't the main issue that the audio you're compressing over bluetooth, like spotify streams, is already compressed? As far as I know, compressing already compressed audio compounds artifacts in the same way re-saving a JPEG does.
> 256kbps AAC
That only works with A2DP one-way audio. The two-way HFP mode still uses the horrible classic BT compression unless the new BLE-based LE Audio is used(but IIUC Apple still don't support it). Besides there are still many devices that only supports BT's own 2000s-optimal SBC codec.
Connection type means the sound quality drops significantly when headphones are used for speaking, though. Maybe don't notice as much in normal calls / only speech, but using Bluetooth when gaming and some kinda of voice chat makes all game music / ambient sounds sound so crunchy.
For some reason my iphone sporadically won't go back to "music quality" mode after cutting a call on a wireless speaker or car play, and it's incredible how bad music sounds with telephone quality.
The trick is to switch input to the laptop/external mic. Audio quality stays great. It’s kind of ridiculous that Bluetooth still needs the shitty lo-fi mode when the mic is on - I was recently surprised that this is still the case with modern headphones like it was a decade ago.
Nah put on some quality headphones and the sound stage will blow your head off.
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.
Beyerdynamic has ruined me. And it's not even the best out there.
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.
> 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.
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 [2] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CVM2GJCN
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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.
> 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.
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).
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.
> 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.
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.
$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
> $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.
There's a surprisingly large number of people who have a negative opinion of AirPods (including their audio quality) while having never tried them. I've owned and tried some very high quality IEMs and still to this day impressed by the AirPods' audio quality and convenience. I've not found any wireless IEMs that come anywhere close.
To offer a counterpoint, Airpods Pro are a great product that significantly increased my quality of life. Depending on how sensitive you are to noise then having easily accessible/socially acceptable noise cancelling is incredible. Perhaps you are too much of a normie to get it ;)
Tim Apple stepped down. It's John Apple now
Young Johnny Appleseed
Turnips
My AirPods 3 just won't quit and they sound awesome for what they are. My only issue is that they’re a pain to find if they drop in the snow.
I don't think I can adequately express how few fucks I give about my AirPods becoming e-waste. My god, the depressing mental state that some of you must live in...
The only thing depressing is the current state of the world, especially in regard to pollution and resources usage.
You're free to be an egoistic brain dead consumer, most people are, so go for it! Ignorance is bliss as they say
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Now John Apple.
To be clear, Truthear Gates cost almost $23 with the microphone option when they are not on sale... but yes.
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.
this is not even remotely true. I have plenty of headphones, Airpod Pros are quite good sound 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.
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.
>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?
Upgrading to solid gold connectors with platinum wires will increase the audio "fidelity" noticeably (/s)
You plebs use Gold I only use Diamond Coated Connectors. For CRYSTAL Clear Sound and fidelity.
> 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).
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.
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.
>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
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!
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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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
Wait until you upgrade to a set of grados :}
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.
>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
But did you notice at the time that it sounded chronically awful? Cymbals and hihats sound like someone eating with their mouth open.
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.
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.
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.
I've intentionally killed the dynamic range of my system because sound engineers can't mix dialog for shit nowadays.
Looking at you Christopher Nolan
Are you streaming or are these blu ray? Streaming is trash ime.
Precisely, it's a feature nowadays.
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)
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.
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
FYI: There are now lossless Bluetooth codecs if you care to find them.
Can you get anc with wired ones?
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
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)
> 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.
The average person was not listening to music with multi-hundred-dollar headphones in 2005. They were using cheap earbuds.
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.
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