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Buying Headphones in 2018 is Going To Be a Fragmented Mess (theverge.com)
Vlad Savov, writing for The Verge: At CES this year, I saw the future of headphones, and it was messy. Where we once had the solid reliability of a 3.5mm analog connector working with any jack shaped to receive it, there's now a divergence of digital alternatives -- Lightning or USB-C, depending on your choice of jack-less phone -- and a bunch of wireless codecs and standards to keep track of. Oh, and Sony's working hard on promoting a new 4.4mm Pentaconn connector as the next wired standard for dedicated audio lovers. It's all with the intent of making things better, but before we get to the better place, we're going to spend an uncomfortable few months (or longer) in a fragmented market where you'll have to do diligent research to make sure your next pair of headphones works with all the devices you already own.
Don't buy hardware that doesn't adhere to established, working standards, like USB, USB-C, or 3.5mm jack.
The Pentaconn thing seems interesting, as it's still an analog connection.
I don't know how to complain about companies ditching the 3.5mm jack without sounding like a Luddite.
Yup, we're already seeing the mess. My daughter's phone needs one connector. The laptop another. And the Nintendo switch a 3rd. (the switch is still using 3.1mm jack)
Its beyond irritating, she used to just go from one device to antoher without even thinking... her old phone, her old laptop, and her old 3DS... now its a chore, carrying different headphones, little adapters...
Sorry, what, I didn't quite heard what you just said. Maybe there is an issue with pairing of my headphones?
I imagine this is true, but why are we getting 4.4mm jack, when so many phones are going super thin and they dropped 3.5mm because it was too big? Only thing I can imagine is if that's 4.4mm wide, and pretty flat. But if that's the case everyone (including Apple) should switch to just using USB-C. Sticking with Bluetooth for now.
Would someone tell me how this happened? We were the fucking vanguard of headphones in this country. We made the headphones to own.
Then the other guy came out with a three-connector headphone. Were we scared? Hell, no. Because we hit back with a little thing called the Turbo Headphones.. That's three connectors and an aloe strip. For moisture. But you know what happened next? Shut up, I'm telling you what happenedâ"the bastards went to four connectors. Now we're standing around with our cocks in our hands, selling three connectors and a strip. Moisture or no, suddenly we're the chumps. Well, fuck it. We're going to five connectors.
Unless there is a single wireless standard and codec, nothing will be better than the old trusty 3.5mm connector, and even then it will still be questionable. Guess what, the analog, wired connection works, 100% of the time. If for some reason you find it's not working, you simply plug the cable back in and your working again. No wireless standard can state that fact, nor will they ever be able to.
I don't see any shortage of wired headphones with a 3.5mm connector.
The Daddy casts sleep on the Baby. The Baby resists!
What? A balanced connector for phone output? I know it's "better" and all, but it doesn't even makes sense.
If it has no 3.5mm jack, don't buy it. 'But there's an adapter' - NO. DON'T BUY IT, PERIOD.
Circumcision is child abuse.
Have some courage!
With all this wheel reinvention, what is fundamentally wrong with the 3.5mm jack, or the 1/4" one used in audio equipment? The Sony connector may be better with its balanced TRRRS architecture, but is it worth a new standard? Sony does have good formats, but they tend to be esoteric at best, or wind up on the wayside at worse (like memory sticks.)
For digital output, USB-C should be what people use.
It's all with the intent of making things better.
sure. just not for you.
3.5mm jack or no sale. Very easy.
It's called, "making a buck."
3.5mm is ubiquitous and there's no future in that.
When manufacturers stop innovating, they simply fuck stuff up and change shit so you'll be forced to buy accessories.
Bluetooth makes sense for cases where a wire is inconvenient.
There's no cleverness in designing a device that will not accept a 3.5mm wire, forcing consumers to buy something else, except, "making a buck."
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Simple:
If a device doesn't have a 3.5mm (aka "1/8 inch") connector, I'm not purchasing it.
Call me a luddite, call me an old man, etc. That won't change my mind: it's a standard that works and is not in need of change.
To those that argue digital audio is so much cleaner/clearer/crisper, I remind you that no humans have digital hearing.
Fuck you
I have studio headphones (Audio Technica) with 1/4 inch jack that I convert to 3.5mm for travel. I will always have a computer (Alienware 17, sucks for travel but my only computer) and phone that supports this. I don't mind the excessively long cord either (16 feet, 5+ meteres).
The market will provide, or I'll just go back to Nexus 5 phones (we've had 7 so far as they break rather easily). Swappa FTW!
The actual story here is around products people will or will not purchase. As long as it's not Sony, I'm not brand observant. No Sony product will enter my house.
For the record, I'm on a Blu low end phone, good headphone jack and BT music transfer. Otherwise it's just a phone that costs about $100. If the Chinese want to track my communications about groceries and child care arrangements I'm cool with that.
Anything important is done face to face or via physical mail. We still get all bills via mail (email addresses can change, our address doesn't).
BlameBillCosby.com
3.5mm stereo and 1/4-inch. everything else is a gimmick that will be crap in several years. stand your ground!
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
I have a 6s and a crappy Alcatel phone with a headphone jack and FM radio. Iâ(TM)m not buying a new phone until they are both broken just for this reason.
Youâ(TM)ll pry my headphone jack from my dead cold hands!
I have great headphones. the best. bigly perfect. and no time for gimmick lock-in connectors for junk products that will migrate to something else in two years.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
does everything I want, was 1/4 the prices of an iPhone (1/5 if you count the X) and has a a 3.5 jack. Oh, and a replaceable battery too. And it's no thicker than an iPhone.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
You are their whore or their sheep or their hamburger; how can they extract more from you while delivering less by increasingly short planned obsolescence; gratuitous "features" while not actually making anything that fundamentally matters any better (and often worse); changing the "agreement" into something you have no real control of due to a dizzying confusion of changes. The headphone jack is the latest attempt to squeeze more from you by removing choices. Your old headphones were fundamentally better but won't won't be allowed to work with a new phone. We will FORCE you to get a new phone by throttling, bloating the OS with lots of crapola while taking away features and ease of use. "What are you going to do about it you fucking milk cow of a consumer?" I predict this ends eventually in MASSIVE hatred and backlash against the corporations and plutocrats, but by then Tim Cook figures to be well retired and the politicians who enabled all this monopolistic abuse will be retired as well. There is rape and then there is rape. It is so cunning how they manage us to make us surrender everything to them, including our privacy and pride. But there will eventually be huge backlash. It's unfortunate eventually can take a long time arriving.
yet another bloody format war, and this time the established standard is being replaced with something inferior.
Even the Pentaconn supposedly high-end connector is a single-pin design with 5 contact patches in a row, guaranteeing massive pops and hum when it's inserted. Has the entire industry lost its head?
your notion of owning your hardware is obsolete. The intent is to ensure that you break it before the next quarterly earning report is published.
3.5mm and Bluetooth are all you need. Just don't buy stuff that doesn't have one or both of those. Works for me.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
So buy a phone that does have a standard headphone jack. Like a Moto.
Bonus: it won't be so thin that breathing on it snaps it.
Sigh.
Do what always turns out best.
Wait six months. Buy some cheap Chinese knockoff that has / supports them all.
A guy in my workplace came to me last year with some stupendously expensive headphones his wife had bought him. I didn't know what they were but, as I took them, I mentioned that I'd just bought a couple of pairs of something similar.
Over-the-ear headphones.
Large amounts of sound insulation on the ear-cushions, so you were deaf to the world when they were on.
Rechargeable wireless (with plain USB cable)
Bluetooth.
SD-Card.
FM radio.
And a 3.5mm socket. That you could use to either play music through the headphones when the bluetooth/battery wasn't on, or that you could pull the signal OUT of into another set of headphones for a friend if you were playing something on the FM/SD/Bluetooth.
Mine not only outclassed his, out-sounded his and out-featured his, they lasted much longer than his, and they were ridiculously CHEAP rather than ridiculously expensive.
To be honest, you don't need every connector. That headphone is fine. 3.5mm for "retro" stuff. Bluetooth for everything else. If your phone/laptop can't do Bluetooth but has anything else, adaptors are literally pence nowadays.
Same as when I bought a DVD player (cheap one was region free, played everything, had every output on it, just works, expensive models from famous brands wouldn't even play a US DVD once locked to EU region and only had a handful of outputs), a Blu-Ray player (same), MP3 player, etc.
To be honest, I've deliberately not upgraded my smartphone because they get rid of the ports, the battery slots, the SD-card slots etc. Fuck off. I don't want that, so I won't buy it.
And I wouldn't buy headphones with a recognisable brand on if you gave me 50% off. They won't be any better than anything else, will still be over-priced, and likely won't have anything I want on them.
Besides Sony apparently pushing for these changes are ANY of the decent headphone manufacturers (Sennheiser, Audio Technica, Beyerdynamic, Grado, etc) on board with this? Searching for usb-c or lightning headphones mostly leads me to adapters and the occasional cheap-o pair of earbuds or cans from some company I've never heard of. If I were cynical I might think these connector changes were solely for the purpose of vendor lock-in and selling dongles.
So while USB C connectors are rated to last longer than micro conncetors why would you want to wear it out even faster by plugging and unplugging head phones all the time? I get why manufacturers want you to do this. However it won't seem like a great idea when your phone doesn't charge or transfer things to your PC anymore.
My brother is an audiophile. I can't imagine he'll ever use Bluetooth headphones. But I, OTOH, can accept reasonable sound quality. Bluetooth works with all my devices effortlessly and the quality of sound is better than any of the speakers on those devices.
Most nights I'll watch a TV show or movie with my headphones, especially if they are from the UK in accents that I struggle to understand- they are much more clear on the 'phones. When I'm on a bus or train or waiting for someone at the county jail, the BT 'phones are a blessing, giving me quality content while filtering external noise. The obvious headphones discourage people from trying to talk to me too. Perhaps the biggest blessing is NO WIRES pulling and getting tangled everywhere. And I'm not an audio snob who has to hear the latest pop music with super high quality electrostatic headphones. So brother- take your ancient 3.5mm jack and shove it!
...omphaloskepsis often...
The inventor of modern headphones still is quite conservative about their lineup and they still build some of the best in the industy. If you only look for expensive fidgety mainstream junk, you're in for trouble. Don't.
For best cost/performance ratio I recommend the Custom 1 Pro +. ... Yeah, admitted, that name does suck. Then again they are genuises at headphones and a little low profile on marketing - who cares? And, yes, it's a regular headphone with a nice and neat 3.5mm jack, as it should be. Made in Germany, btw., not some chinese sweatshop. If that should mean something to you.
You're welcome.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Works everywhere, even on old reel-to-reel and such, also easier to repair / solder on: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
"but before we get to the better place..."
Even as a mild audiophile, I do not believe any of this is "better" than what we currently have. I'm not some Luddite who hates progress, and I'm not so much an audio snob that Bluetooth ear buds just aren't "good" enough, but the current technology has been around for so long because it really is quite good.
You know what it reminds me of? The good ol' DE-15 "VGA" plug. Are there "better" alternatives out there? Of course there are. VGA sticks around because it works, TONS of devices support it, and it doesn't require anything fancy or expensive to setup. Non-fruit companies continue to support it because it's cheap to implement and it has hundreds of millions of devices across decades that support it.
Buying Headphones in 2018 is Going To Be a Fragmented Mess
I'm deaf, you insensitive clod.
I personally think some of the adapters are just another layer of bad quality that can affect the sound. I do not think we have done the wired user any benefit by adding adapters. Of course the wireless industry would love for users to just spend double or triple on wireless because they will make more money. For me I tried bluetooth headphone, not cheap ones either. But the quality is just not there even as the manufactures claim it is. But it goes deeper with poor D/A chips, and lousy audio power output. Its no wonder music sales are in the tank.
Sennheiser Orpheus HE 90, electrostatic special connection. Very expensive setup relatively. Unique sound. I am open to new connections but wireless codecs and batteries still an issue for me.
My headphones use 6.3mm jacks. Like my audio equipment does. 3.5mm is not a socket, it's a toy, and plugs of that kind break off in those toy sockets. And you cannot fit cables suitable for the impedance of serious headphones into a 3.5mm plug anyway.
"the solid reliability of a 3.5mm analog connector"
You must have lived in a different universe to the rest of us. Have you *really* never had problems with the analog connector flaking out - and playing only one of the two stereo sides - unless you twisted the connector around 'just right'? A digital connector is a big improvement - though you're correct that the multitude of 'standards' is a bit of a problem.
>> you'll have to do diligent research to make sure your next pair of headphones works with all the devices you already own.
Its not even a slight problem if you do what I do and simply avoid buying anything that doesn't have a 3.5mm socket.
I'm waiting for DRM to make its way into here somewhere. Didn't pay your monthly RIAA tax? No audio output for you!
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
*Real* headphones use either 1/4" TRS plugs (unbalanced) or XLR (balanced). Who cares what these "toy" headphones use?
Headphones.
... won't buy.
Seriously, does anyone actually want this crap?
Just more fuel for the eventual complexity collapse of of civilization. Complexity cannot continue to rise to infinity without expected consequences.
E Proelio Veritas.
First thing that came to mind: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XSC_UG5_kU
What is with these wankers that want it dead so badly? I mean, if they're making a device where they can't afford to add an audio amplifier, that's one thing... but devices that are meant to output sound directly, or at least give the appearance of such... seems a bit silly and/or dickish.
... was, is, and never will be a valid argument. Just like "average Joe Moron".
You and what army?
Because, remember, your statement swings both ways! It is that most people are just livestock with no will and passive thinking. That meansI can just as much make such people want what I want them to want, as "them".
In actual reality, it's just you, yourself, wanting that, because you are a spineless conformist coward. ... a fascinating concept.)
Because other than said livestock, you are fully aware and hence do have a choice of picking the right side. Yet *you* did choose the wrong side. Actively! (Active passivity
So your character is essentially that of a "house n1gger" or other traitor to his own people and even to himself.
The headphone current and voltage a minimal. As long as the touch points don't wobble or rust / gather dirt, and analog connections are well-shielded, the thing could be nearly microscopic.
You sound like one of those, who buy huge-diameter audio cables, and connect them to speakers have exclusively tiny strands running inside of them because an actual engineer calculated what is needed for a tiny resistance, and made the hardware take even that into account.
you'll have to do diligent research to make sure your next pair of headphones works with all the devices you already own.
Um, I'll just make sure the devices I buy have a 3.5mm jack and I won't have to research shit.
"Pre-amp" ... seriously, mate? Has it got pre-pre amp too? Cause you know ... music is *unbearable* without it, and you can *really* tell the difference! I swear on my $400 extra-warmness wooden volume knob!
Audio snobs are the worst. By far.
Even worse (and more clueless and religious) than Whyhshkhyh-drinking Apple fans.
Go ahead, and open your $50k speakers. You will find top materials like cardboard and tiny copper strands in there, that will make your huge outside cables look as over the top as a wrestler in an 80s Seat Ibiza with a Bozozoko-style spoiler of 2m.
Still have and love my older headphones that use the original large connectors. Call me old fashioned but sound quality is my major concern
Your headphones are still analog. They are even sending analog audio out over USB-C.
If you had to twist the jack to get it to work, it was broken.
If it was digital, it would have just stopped working altogether.
Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see.
Also, it's nice to think if you break your new "headphone jack" connector with your headphones, you can't charge your phone anymore too!
Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see.