Wireless buds also don’t pull out of my ears when the wire gets caught, or need replacing when the moving parts wear down (I’ve had my current earbuds for several years, I can’t remember ever having wired headphones that lasted more than one)
I agree we should still have the option of either more easily but I’d still be picking the wireless ones to be honest.
The blinding flash of annoyance I feel each time the wires catch on a doorhandle is probably more likely to kill me with chip damage to my heart rate than a battery explosion to be honest.
I have never experienced wireless headphones breaking down. Im on my third pair in years - the first pair failed because the cable that joined the two buds died. The second ones, I traded in for AirPods because I got rid of my android.
Meanwhile in the 10 or so years before that I lost multiple pairs of wired headphones to flaky connections - the most common failure method being “have to wiggle it around to get sound through both ears and they intermittently fail if you move too much”
I owned multiple AirPods Pro units over years. Recent models have strong enough ANC, but in addition to losing buds or the case every unit I owned also eventually had a bud malfunction within first few months of its life. Usually it’s a pronounced low bass rumble, I think from ANC either weakening or malfunctioning (which first happened due to possibly careless use in bed, once following a drop, and other times to my knowledge for no reason at all). In my current pair, I had to swap a bud twice. Not a problem, since I do not buy them without AppleCare+ now, but their reliability record compared to my wired Shure IEMs is poor.
Furthermore, battery anxiety. Wired Shure vs. wireless buds is a bit like a regular watch vs. Apple Watch—one is always there, whereas the other if you forget to charge it in 1–2 days is a brick on your wrist—except in case of the watch it is legitimately much, much more functional, whereas between wired IEMs and AirPods they do almost exactly the same thing.
They are (or were) fragile if ANC microphones are pressed against, I think. That was the only possible cause. Good luck avoiding that if you are asleep, unless you sleep like a log and do not move.
Can't speak for them, but I have the same experience. The cable connection (either by the buds or by the plug) inevitably fatigues over time through normal use, and soon starts do develop connection issues. Maybe expensive buds are more durable.
My favourite [semi-]wired in-ear headphones are from Shure.
The way the cable molds and wraps around your ears means they don’t get out easily if you accidentally pull it. The cable itself (the weakest link in any wired headphones) is replaceable, no special tools needed, with third-party options available.
One cable I used to have, and I think some units come with it by default as an option now, has a Bluetooth receiver-transmitter rather than the 3.5 jack. This avoids the need to draw the cable directly to your device and the risk of accidentally pulling on it. Resting the receiver on your clothing rather than skin of the back of your neck directly would drastically reduce the impact from any potential explosion, I imagine. Since the Bluetooth-enabled cable connects both in-ears, they never get lost like a pod would. Naturally, this version of the cable also has a mic (arguably better positioned relative to your mouth than one in a tiny bud, in terms of outgoing audio quality).
If you like noise isolation, their black EABKF sleeve passively isolate measurably (and in my personal experience) on par with active isolation from top-of-the-line Bluetooth buds and cans (you should make sure you clean and swap the sleeves regularly to avoid ear infection, but in-ear buds like AirPods Pro generally require the same).
(Connoisseurs will note that the thing to watch out for in case of cheaper IEMs is cable rattle. Rattle is a deal-breaker for me as I wear them outside. Shures don’t suffer from it, though it would be unfair to omit that compared to buds with active noise isolation there is indeed a floor of consistent background hum in the lows if you are moving around actively.)
Finally, they are capable of much higher quality audio (obviously) and cost less than $100. (If you pay the equivalent of AirPods Pro, you can get a version with two drivers in each, promising in theory even better sound, and a chunk of leftover change.)
I use se215’s for my band (probably 3 hours a week), and they’re fine. The problem isn’t the 215’s it’s that I’m tethered to something. Thankfully I bought a wireless receiver pack which negates that problem.
I use the AirPods pretty much every day as my main device. The sound quality is poorer, but not enough to make a meaningful difference when I’m listening to music that was mixed for consumers, or podcasts recorded in a closet somewhere - which let’s face it, we mostly are.
No matter how things are mastered, I hate the booming sound of AirPods Pro and how it skews my perception of highs and lows. (Regular AirPods are not fit for my purposes due to lacking NC.)
Their saving grace is that ANC means they don’t irritate my ears after prolonged wearing as much as Shure’s sleeves do (passive isolation requires a stricter fit).
I still use the iPhone earbuds I got with my iPhone 5S (the ones that come with the Lighting-to-3.5mm adapter). That said, it only takes one mishap for them to be irreversibly wrecked.
What nonsense. Are you worried about physical spam mail? That ship has already sailed. I genuinely can’t think of any other abuse vector for a dataset like this.
Live video or audio chat is basically the only time you do want this. Granted, that’s a big chunk of microphone usage in practice, but any time you are doing higher fidelity audio recording and you have set up the inputs accordingly you absolutely do not want the artefacts introduced by this cancellation. DAWs, audio calibration, and even live audio when you’ve ensured the output cannot impact the recording all would want it switched off.
Default on vs default off is really just an implementation detail of the API though, as you say.
> Live video or audio chat is basically the only time you do want this.
If I'm recording a voice memo, or talking to an AI assistant, I would want this. Basically everything I can imagine doing with a PC microphone outside of (!) professional audio recording work.
That last case is important and we agree there needs to be a way to turn it off. I think defaults are really important though.
My colleague works in a very quiet house, and has no need for noise cancelling. Sometimes, he has it turned on by accident, and the quality is much worse - his voice gets cut out, and volume of his voice goes up and down.
As you say, as long as either option is available, the only question is what the default should be.
Is it not already illegal to deliberately mislead a courtroom? Many of the same concerns apply, and yet thankfully the solution is not generally to throw our hands in the air and say it’s impossible to deal with the nuance.
This is definitely the case - if you have a time-of-use tariff and an EV you charge at home, there's a strong incentive to schedule your charging to the cheapest time of day.
With heat pumps (like AC) and condensing boilers, it is often more efficient to run for longer and slower as long as that makes your appliance run more efficiently (lower flow temperatures for heating, higher for cooling). Requires the system to support modulation though.
I agree we should still have the option of either more easily but I’d still be picking the wireless ones to be honest.
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