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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 wi

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.

rubicon33 6d ago
Any good over ear headphones you’d recommend to someone who is generally skeptical but curious of the audiophile world? Cost being no issue, what would you recommend?
- blep-arsh 6d ago
  I'm not OP but: - wired: Philips SHP9500; open-back, so not an "office" model. The single-sided 3.5mm jack is convenient and lets you plug in a 3rd party boom mic. I know these are priced way below any audiophile-grade stuff but the non-EQd frequency response rivals or is sometimes outright better than many "audiophile" specimens (looking at you, Sennheiser HD800 and your 6kHz ringing). Also exceptionally comfortable - but that's subjective, of course - and lightweight. - wireless: I have a pair of Airpods Max and these are somewhat interesting (but nothing exceptional wrt audio quality). These are lagging behind AirPods feature-wise but the transparency mode is very clear and convenient, so I find them safe enough for walking outside. The ANC is also good.
- w0m 6d ago
  HEDDphone D1 is my current happy place without going into the thousands. Compare it to an iBud on a spotify lossless track and it's kind of shocking.
erxam 7d ago
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.
Cruncharoo 7d ago
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.
- ryandrake 7d ago
  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.
  - deleted 7d ago
    [deleted]
  - snissn 7d ago
    I recommend ripping your car apart and putting sound insulation panels everywhere you can! Also replacing your sound system...
    - taneq 7d ago
      Or you can just embrace the 128kbps lifestyle. :D
    - rootusrootus 7d ago
      There's only so much you can do. A car is filled with funny angles, plastics, and a lot of glass. It's never going to be a particularly good acoustic environment even if you manage to shield 100% of the road noise.
      - 2III7 7d ago
        You can make it so much better than stock with proper insulation and speaker elements. Car manufacturers often use 5€$ elements which sound like shit.
ErneX 7d ago
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.
- pedalpete 7d ago
  Are you sure this is a bandwidth issue? I always assumed it was more about the position and size of the microphone.
  - echoangle 7d ago
    They mean that the audio quality you hear on the AirPods is better if you only listen to audio compared to listening and using the microphone. I don’t know if that happens on Macs too, but it’s certainly true when using AirPods on Linux because you have to switch the profile when you want to use the microphone and then the audio is really compressed for playback.
    - TomGarden 7d ago
      Yeah, it's the same on Mac/iphone but better codecs. Still lossy but better than the Android experience
      - microtonal 7d ago
        Better than the iPods on Android experience. If you do Android-on-Android, the experience is on par. See e.g. Samsung Super Wide Band for voice.
        TomGarden 5d ago
        I bought the top rated Sony's on Android and it was awful. Glad to hear there's better options!
  - 7d ago
nunez 7d ago
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)
danvayn 7d ago
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.
- Normal_gaussian 7d ago
  > 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.
gbromios 7d ago
> 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??
- throw0101d 7d ago
  > […] 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. Exact opposite for me: other people can't hear anything if the meeting app uses my laptop's mic.
shusaku 7d ago
> They sounded better, they could hear better Only tangential, but man I really hate sitting in zoom meetings with bad audio. It could be one person with a bad mic. But the worst is when you’re talking to people in a room somewhere and they simply don’t have the equipment. Combine that with a weekly dose of feedback…

rubicon33 6d ago

Any good over ear headphones you’d recommend to someone who is generally skeptical but curious of the audiophile world? Cost being no issue, what would you recommend?

blep-arsh 6d ago
I'm not OP but: - wired: Philips SHP9500; open-back, so not an "office" model. The single-sided 3.5mm jack is convenient and lets you plug in a 3rd party boom mic. I know these are priced way below any audiophile-grade stuff but the non-EQd frequency response rivals or is sometimes outright better than many "audiophile" specimens (looking at you, Sennheiser HD800 and your 6kHz ringing). Also exceptionally comfortable - but that's subjective, of course - and lightweight. - wireless: I have a pair of Airpods Max and these are somewhat interesting (but nothing exceptional wrt audio quality). These are lagging behind AirPods feature-wise but the transparency mode is very clear and convenient, so I find them safe enough for walking outside. The ANC is also good.
w0m 6d ago
HEDDphone D1 is my current happy place without going into the thousands. Compare it to an iBud on a spotify lossless track and it's kind of shocking.

erxam 7d ago

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.

Cruncharoo 7d ago

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.

ryandrake 7d ago
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.
- deleted 7d ago
  [deleted]
- snissn 7d ago
  I recommend ripping your car apart and putting sound insulation panels everywhere you can! Also replacing your sound system...
  - taneq 7d ago
    Or you can just embrace the 128kbps lifestyle. :D
  - rootusrootus 7d ago
    There's only so much you can do. A car is filled with funny angles, plastics, and a lot of glass. It's never going to be a particularly good acoustic environment even if you manage to shield 100% of the road noise.
    - 2III7 7d ago
      You can make it so much better than stock with proper insulation and speaker elements. Car manufacturers often use 5€$ elements which sound like shit.

ErneX 7d ago

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.

pedalpete 7d ago
Are you sure this is a bandwidth issue? I always assumed it was more about the position and size of the microphone.
- echoangle 7d ago
  They mean that the audio quality you hear on the AirPods is better if you only listen to audio compared to listening and using the microphone. I don’t know if that happens on Macs too, but it’s certainly true when using AirPods on Linux because you have to switch the profile when you want to use the microphone and then the audio is really compressed for playback.
  - TomGarden 7d ago
    Yeah, it's the same on Mac/iphone but better codecs. Still lossy but better than the Android experience
    - microtonal 7d ago
      Better than the iPods on Android experience. If you do Android-on-Android, the experience is on par. See e.g. Samsung Super Wide Band for voice.
      - TomGarden 5d ago
        I bought the top rated Sony's on Android and it was awful. Glad to hear there's better options!
- 7d ago

nunez 7d ago

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)

danvayn 7d ago

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.

Normal_gaussian 7d ago
> 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.

gbromios 7d ago

> 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??

throw0101d 7d ago
> […] 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. Exact opposite for me: other people can't hear anything if the meeting app uses my laptop's mic.

shusaku 7d ago

> They sounded better, they could hear better Only tangential, but man I really hate sitting in zoom meetings with bad audio. It could be one person with a bad mic. But the worst is when you’re talking to people in a room somewhere and they simply don’t have the equipment. Combine that with a weekly dose of feedback…