Bluetooth is slow and unreliable unless you're using Airpods (due to the W1 chip), which I think is the more subtle move by Apple in this case. I was not a happy camper when I first read about Apple removing the headphone jack, but I won't lie, I'm an Airpod convert. They work flawlessly for me and I haven't traveled with or used normal headphones since I got them (other than a nicer pair of over-the-ears when I'm working on my desktop).

I'm not saying this excuses the removal of the headphone jack, but from a business perspective it does add up.

I've said it multiple times now but I was exactly the same way. I was a little bit annoyed at the removal of the headphone jack but then ended up getting the iPhone 7 because I wanted the newer features. I didn't have wireless headphones, so I went all in and got the AirPods along with it and, holy hell, this is the closest that any technology has come to really feeling like magic to me. The pairing process was awesome, the range is great, the sound quality is great (after breaking them in hard for a week or two), and I literally forget that I'm wearing them sometimes to the point where it feels like the music is coming from inside my head. They're just so convenient and nice that I'm ok with doubting Apple initially but relieved that they proved me wrong. Forget the headphone jack. If this works the way these AirPods do going forward, I'm a convert.

> the sound quality is great

Really? I use AirPods when I'm out and about but when I'm at my desk I plug in a pair of $20 wired Sony earbuds that sound way better...

Personally I really do find the sound quality to be quite good on the AirPods. When I'm at home I'm often using a much more expensive pair of open Beyerdynamic headphones so it's not like I haven't experienced high quality sound, though I wouldn't consider myself an audiophile.

This is another good point. Quality headphones are rarely bluetooth. I have a nice pair of Sennheisers. They do not come in bluetooth. And yes, I use them with my phone at work.

I thought the AirPods sounded like ass when I first started using them but after 2 weeks of using them every day for hours on end, they've really broken in and they have great range and separation. They don't have a great seal but I don't consider that a negative for what I use them for.

Buy some felt covers for the AirPods.

The biggest problem with them is poor isolation.

This is exactly what I feel: music coming from inside my head. The AirPod is a very under-hyped product. Its beauty is that you can wear it and completely forget about it and focus on whatever the hell you want to do. You actually feel that rare freedom. This freedom and focus it gives you is the most precious quality that 99.9% gadgets lack these days.

Well said. They're the only reason that I actually think a wireless future is possible without a headphone jack.

> I literally forget that I'm wearing them sometimes to the point where it feels like the music is coming from inside my head.

I see I'm not the only one :D I've also noticed other people and their wires hanging out more and more. I'm thinking wires are probably going to go out of fashion in the future and will look weird.

In addition to it being magical, it's really incredibly useful and handy for driving and for work. Great to be on a phone call in a crowded server room, without extra wires being in the way. Great for commuting. And super-extra-great at the gym.

Even on the treadmill? Even going hard?

I'm not trying to push buttons. I use Jaybird X3s and feel comfort from the corded nature of the headphones. Here on the streets of NYC, I see AirPods more as fashion statements over an actual audio solution.

The instantaneous pairing sounds lovely, but I'm concerned most concerned with audio quality, bluetooth connection in a busy city, and general practical logistics both in and out of the gym.

I play basketball in AirPods. That should tell you all you need to know. Running, jumping, trick shots, drills, 1:1, and they've never fallen out even once.

I used to have JayBird X2s. They were fine but they definitely fell out from time to time and I'd always have to subconsciously "manage" the cord.

AirPods are my primary gym headphones and I'm never going back. I will pay double or even triple to replace them if I had to. That's how much value they deliver in my day to day life.

Yes, even going hard. I can't dislodge AirPods even if I shake my head around as hard as I can and try to dislodge them. My wife is on the treadmill almost every day with hers, running fast; she has no issues with them falling out, either. I do get that the security of a cord is preferable for some, but I've had a really great user experience. I don't wear them because they are fashionable; I think they look rather dorky, to be honest. But I love how they work.

I tried wearing them at the gym, but I sweat too much.

I've also had one fall out when I was out shopping. I was on an escalator and managed to pick it up, but now I'm super paranoid whenever I walk near a sewer grating.

I guess physiological variations are inevitable but for me I have to be a newly showered Labrador to shake it off my head.

I fear anything involving putting on/taking off a helmet could dislodge these suckers. And any activity the helmet is used for: mountain biking/climbing/mountaineering, is not the right venue for them. Too bad, since the iPhone's water resistance would be a major upgrade over my current phone.

Wearing in-ear headphones while biking is a bad idea anyway. I've switched to bone conducting headphones for my daily commute by bicycle and they're great for listening to podcasts while still hearing the surrounding traffic.

> Wearing in-ear headphones while biking is a bad idea anyway.

On roads? Yes. Mountain biking? Depends on where I am.

> I've switched to bone conducting headphones for my daily commute by bicycle and they're great for listening to podcasts while still hearing the surrounding traffic.

Any brand/model you would suggest?

You should try it if you can. Yes, helmet removal can and likely will dislodge, but it's not obvious that just the act of using them with a helmet on will cause problems.

Maybe it won't work, but worth trying.

I've worn them with a helmet and they only fell out when I tried to take the helmet off. As long as I look for them when taking the helmet off, they're no different from checking my regular headphones.

Most things I bring mountaineering - especially - most especially electronics are tethered in some ways. It may be too risky to buy an iPhone just to try this out, and I'm doubting anyone's gonna let me borrow a phone and a pair of these. regular earbuds are inexpensive, and if you lose/break them, it's not the end of the world. Airbuds are... $150. For something that can be easily lost.. yikes.

I had Jaybird X3's before I had AirPods.

The X3s were not terrible, but, the AirPods are more comfortable and stay in my ears more firmly. I can wear them for hours and hours without them bothering me and I only dislodge them if I physically knock them out of my ear.

I own AirPods and Jaybird X3s, and the sound quality of AirPods crushes that of the Jaybirds. I completely switched over to AirPods a few months ago and have never looked back.

Then the X3s must sound really bad because AirPod sound quality is decidedly mediocre, especially for $160 in-ears.

I disagree completely. You either don't own a pair or you only tried a fresh pair. You gotta break those bad boys in. It took me 2 weeks before they broke in and I noticed a huge difference.

Bluetooth audio quality is subpar to a wired port in my experience. A good example is the Q35, when paired via bluetooth the audio quality is worse than when plugged directly into the headphone port.

IIRC there are multiple audio codecs in the standard (and of course different versions of standard), some of them really old. So with certain device combinations you may get better result than with others.

I once looked into these and got the impression that main goal is to make it possible to produce standard compliant devices as cheaply as possible.

Edit: I had written down some of the stuff I found: http://juhap.iki.fi/misc/qc35-windows-bluetooth-audio/

Just wanted to note that listening to music through earbuds while driving is illegal.

I generally believe that laws only need to be enforced when reasonable. But this law actually sounds reasonable...

In California, to my knowledge, it’s only against the law of both earbuds are in.

The legality depends on what state you are in.

https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2016/10/31/is-it-legal-to-w...

Apple has had a series of truly revolutionary products over the years.

The complete list, as far as I'm concerned: Original Macintosh OSX/macOS iPod iPhone AirPods

AirPods really are amazing, my singular complaint is that they're not waterproof.

Waterproof AirPods would be the one thing I would pay stupid amounts of money for. My biggest complaint with the AirPods (and it's a really tiny one) is that they don't have a great seal. Waterproof AirPods would have to have a good seal to the ear.

And that’s exactly why Apple is so often so great at innovation: they make bold trade-off decisions on behalf of the users knowing the public will beat them initially, but that it’ll pay off in the long run - for everyone. Which other company does that?

I don't see what AirPods do that any other, more affordable, Bluetooth headsets don't. I get the wireless appeal, I like using my cheap 20€ Bluetooth headphones with build in microphone/remote. I mostly got them for the remote, their 7 hour running time lasts me for like 3 days of commuting.

But I also still carry around my wired UE triple.fi because I like having the option for going wired, better sound quality, less latency and especially less drain on my iPhone SE's battery due to disabled Bluetooth.

Even when nothing is paired/active just having Bluetooth enabled seems to drain phones batteries so much faster.

The thing AirPods do is work better than other, more affordable, Bluetooth headsets. There’s no lag, you painlessly pair once and can use on all your Apple devices, they’re so light you can easily forget they’re in your ears, etc etc. I have a Plus which has a much bigger battery, but I don’t notice any difference with Bluetooth on or off.

There is no latency or battery drain with the AirPods. That's exactly why I can't compare them to any of the other Bluetooth headphones I've tried. They are significantly better.

How often do you have to charge airpods ?

I never pay attention to the absolute time, but when they need a charge they make a sound to indicate it and then you can easily put one in the case/charger and then put it back in your ear when it’s charged and then charge the other one, all without pausing your call. This duty cycling means you are effectively limited by the case battery size not the bud battery size.

I agree with the others upthread that I’m not going back to wires after getting my AirPods.

If you're on a call (and I do some marathon calls), I get a small ding in my ear and pop out one airpod, charge it, in 10-15m put it back in and charge the other one and with ~30m of completely uninterrupted conversation (swapping airpods does not cause drops) I'm good for another 2 hours.

For music, I get ~4 hours easily.

Mine last about 4 hours, and are up and running again for at about another 2 hours in as little as 15 minutes.

Apple's quoted battery life and charging times seem accurate to me.

Amazing how factual statements in response to questions about same are getting downvoted. C'mon people.

This makes me jealous for an Android version. The Bragi Dash has been a huge letdown due to persistent connectivity issues.

If it makes you feel better, AirPod users rarely talk about their bluetooth stuttering issues, but it does occur.

Bluetooth is lossy. Replacements must keep quality of predecessor as a minimum.

Do you mean in this case, or in general?

I think it's very often the reverse – a disruptive replacement has to really blow past the incumbent in some respect, but it's quite hard for something new to be up to par with the old, polished thing in all respects.

PCs were less powerful than mainframes, MP3 is lower quality than CD, etc. etc.

They all solved problems. For example you can't carry 10000 cds with you everywhere you go. I can't see what problem Bluetooth is solving apart from allowing companies sell more consumer grade junk. I'm not even a die hard audiophile but Bluetooth headphones take the biscuit. Shittier quality audio (and generally build too) for double the price and you have to charge them too.

If there was ever proof that we are brainwashed by consumerism in the same way the North Koreans are by the Kim's, Bluetooth headphones is it. Total worthless junk yet people still drop non-inconsequential amounts cash on it and rave about it.

The problem Bluetooth is solving is wires. It’s really something you don’t recognize how annoying it is until you don’t have to deal with it anymore. With aptX the audio quality isn’t bad either. Over time all of those issues (price, build quality, audio quality, battery life, etc.) will only get better, while wired headphones will by definition always have that wire...

Wires are better imo. Anyways they could and do easily offer both to keep everyone happy. No need to remove the wired option.

On a side note I found this analysis of aptX very illuminating. I found it after the salesperson in my local B&W store tried tell me it was completely lossless http://www.sereneaudio.com/blog/how-good-is-bluetooth-audio-...

I should add that the portable Bluetooth speaker he was demoing sounded great compared to other offerings in the market that I have heard. I wasn't sure if this was more due to the codec or the general quality of the components. The speaker in question is the Dali Kaitch https://www.dali-speakers.com/loudspeakers/active/dali-katch... for those who are curious.

Apple doesn't support aptX so it's irrelevant to cableless iPhone users.

> It’s really something you don’t recognize how annoying it is until you don’t have to deal with it anymore.

I definitely recognised it while still using them! When I'm not wearing the headphones, the wires are always getting tangled. When I am wearing the headphones, the wires are always getting caught on things.

> The problem Bluetooth is solving is wires. It’s really something you don’t recognize how annoying it is until you don’t have to deal with it anymore.

I bought an iP6S instead of a 7 just for the jack because I wasn't a fan at all. Then in the span of four months, three jacks died on me in a row. I had a spare cable for my over-ear Momentum but the two intras are dead, and having to look for a replacement suddenly brought back to my mind the whole OMTP vs CTIA mess, if they have remote volume control at all. I'm seriously considering wireless for the next ones without even having used any.

With aptX-HD you get lossless.

It's actually "near" lossless however one could successfully argue that it's good enough. Check out the wikipedia for details.

That is something you have to enable, if you need to respect some bandwidth restriction.

> The codec optionally permits a "hybrid" coding scheme for applications where average and/or peak compressed data rates must be capped at a constrained level. This involves the dynamic application of a form of "near lossless" coding – but only for those short sections of audio where completely lossless coding cannot respect the bandwidth constraints. Even for those short periods while the "near lossless" coding is active, high-definition audio quality is maintained, retaining audio frequencies up to 20 kHz and a dynamic range of at least 120 dB.

> Bluetooth is lossy.

And 99% of people don't care.

...which is how you slowly erode standards for both twisted fun and massive profit.

It's sad and pathetic watching this mission creep of audio degradation at the greed-fueled discretion of corporate profiteering.

Phone DACs aren't very good. I use a very expensive DAC when I listen to music at home because I actually care. I also own a pair of AirPods because in a noisy city environment walking around it doesn't actually matter that I'm losing fidelity.

Simply incorrect, at least on the Apple side of things. Android DACs and onboard amps are hit and miss.

http://www.kenrockwell.com/apple/iphone-6s-plus-audio-qualit...

He's done similar measurements on other Apple audio devices, including their $9 Lightning-to-headphone adapter and they all fare well.

As I commented elsewhere the problem with Bluetooth is fatigue related not listening pleasure related.

Edit: As a side note the only positive I can see out of removing the headphone jack is the potential proliferation of quality DAC/preamp dongles. Still annoying though.

Analog headphones are lossy, I trust compression algorithms to improve more than I believe manufacturers will use more expensive, higher quality materials and connections at the same price point.

My Sennheiser HD25s are still going strong after ~18 years service. You cannot find Bluetooth anything that sound remotely as good. Not even for 3 times the price and I can guarantee you that each and every Bluetooth headphone in circulation today will be in landfill in 18 years.

> You cannot find Bluetooth anything that sound remotely as good.

In absolute terms, you are certainly right. However, for most people, Bluetooth headphones sound good enough. I'll gladly give up some fidelity if it means I can lose wires.

Yes, usage longevity is another factor to consider besides sound quality. However, I was replying to OP, who specifically was talking about the signal loss due to BT encoding. I countered with the fact that analog lines also experience loss, and only the latter has little chance of improving moving forward.

Bluetooth was never designed for audio usage. Revisions over the years have shoehorned functionality into what is effectively an FTP protocol. There's also the compression and audio mangling that bluetooth does. You do not get this with a straight through audio cable (or some other wireless technologies that don't compress)

How easy is it to move your Airpods from your phone to your tablet to your desktop to your non-Apple work PC? Don't get me wrong, I think Airpods are pretty amazing for what they are. But they're still hampered by what they are. For someone whose primary concern is "I hate wires" they're great. They sound 'pretty good for earbuds' as multiple friends, some of whom bought them, can attest.

Personally, I can't stand the sound quality of earbuds. My closed-back Audio Technica over-ear headphones can be unplugged from one device and plugged into another in seconds (no pairing/unpairing, turning bluetooth on and off, etc) and are always 'charged'. Plus they sound lightyears better than any bluetooth anything.

my airpods are unreliable. I could not connect them to my MacBook Pro the other night. tried changing rooms thinking maybe there is interference. tried re-pairing from scratch. they'd pair but not connect. after 15 minutes of trying various things I switched to wired headphones.

I haven't tried again since then. Had to re-pair them to get them to connect to my iPhone.

this is the first time I haven't been able to get them to connect but I've had several times where they won't say connected for more than 30 seconds

As with troubleshooting most hardware issues - experiment, restart, reset. It can either be an issue with the driver in which case a simple restart (maybe a “hard” smc reset as well) fixes the problem, or a hardware problem with the bluetooth antenna which would require a swap of the chip itself, but is usually on the macbook/iphone side, not the airpods and would affect all of your bluetooth connectivity. I’ve had both types of issues and it sure sucks. Had to replace an antenna cable in an iphone 6 to be able to connect to my airpods again.

Moving the airpods between devices is still a huge pain. Even just switching from my iPhone to my iPad sometimes requires turning bluetooth off and on, and other superstitious pairing rituals.

If I only use them with my phone (which I do almost all of the time), they will connect automatically quickly. But pairing between devices will probably always be more painful than a simple wire.

I noticed this thing with my old acer transformer 2-in-1 laptop if you enable bluetooth for audio streaming and have wifi running it slows to a crawl (watching youtube for example) actually won't buffer. I'm wondering if the bluetooth/wifi is on the same chip and can't run simultaneously.

> I'm wondering if the bluetooth/wifi is on the same chip and can't run simultaneously.

Worse, they're close to the same frequency band, and can interfere with each other. Wifi channel 14 is 2.484 ghz. Bluetooth is 2.4835 ghz.

Not just 'close to'. The wifi channels are very fat, and every channel extends .01GHz in either direction from its center. But more importantly bluetooth uses the exact same 2.40-2.48 range. It tries to minimize interference by frequency-hopping, but it's guaranteed to overlap 2.4GHz wifi.

So it's probably okay to use for a wireless mouse/keyboard but continuous sound output is a no go? Just seems like a bad design I mean the computer doesn't even have an ethernet port so to have wifi + bluetooth as a suggested combo/function and it doesn't work... haha

Same here. I have a pair of AirPods and the whole setup is so much more elegant now. I really don't miss them wired headphones, or the headphone jack. Now, I just pull the AirPods case out of my pocket, pop up the lid, insert the headphones in my ears, and everything just works.

Don't Bluetooth devices start lossily compressing audio when either the sender or receiver can't keep up? I listen to flac files, so I'm not interested in that, no matter how much space you lose with a 3.5mm socket.

AirPod concert here, too. I love them things.

convert.

Which makes everyone else's decision to drop the audio jack that much more stupid. Virtually all other OEMs tend to do things so much more superficially than Apple. Like face authentication for instance. It's been and still is a joke for years in the Android world. Perhaps Apple's will be a joke, too, but at least it looks like they put a good amount of effort into making it secure even if they had to add some extra hardware components in there.

Another reason why it's stupid for everyone else to follow Apple on this like sheep is because Apple also did it to sell their expensive Beats Bluetooth headphones. The other OEMs don't have a billion-dollar headphone division...

Half second delay? what Bluetooth are you using? I suggest you to buy something better, my 3 years old bluetooth headset doesn't have any noticeable delay.

The other examples are not really good examples: - bigger drives and faster internet connections? I don't think most of the countries where Apple sells had those things at that time. But, hey, it is a premium product, so they expect you to pay premium for other stuff too (read their new bluetooth earplugs) - faster javascript and better browser? Chrome had those things, not safary, and it did had flash too.

I have Powerbeats wireless 2 headphones and have no perceptible delay. I wouldn't be able to tolerate a half second delay.

If there was such thing as a 1 second delay then the tech would be dead by now. He’s just making things up.

He's not making things up. I experience massive delay with bluetooth headphones, and speakers. The delay is not one second, but it's enough to make it useless for watching video.

What is the delay? For me it is imperceptible (it means it is below 50ms).

I see here a lot of people talking about delays and how $2 wired earphones solve the problem. So I get people buy cheap and wants quality with their new iPhones. Cheap earphones with or without wire are always crap, the sound is horrible and the quality follows. It might be the reason of the delays: cheap stuff

Apple has mastered hiding any delay with AirPods and perfectly syncs things up. No small feat because it has to sync up both left and right in addition to what’s on the screen.

I've never seen bluetooth audio devices that were capable of syncing video and audio in 10 years of using bluetooth audio devices. My most recent tao tronics BT headphones were great for podcasts and audio, but useless for watching video from my Moto X. Have also tested this with Anker portable speakers, Amazon Echo in BT mode, and Creative BT speakers. All are useless for video. I replaced them with a set of $9 Panasonic wired Earbuds that sound just fine and never run out of batteries.

It also depends on the device (and software) you're watching video with - some are smart enough to compensate for the lag. iOS is decent at it when something uses the system APIs to play video (so not VLC), but I never had any luck back when I used Android. On that Mac I get really bad sync issues sometimes (seconds!).

I use Bluetooth and never had issues with delays. I had couple of computers, couple of mobiles and 3 different Bluetooth headset during this time. My Bluetooth headsets weren't the cheapest ones either.

> I suggest you to buy something better

No thanks, I don't feel like spending more money. With my current phone I can buy compatible earphones with zero delay for as low as $1.50 a pop. Bluetooth headphones just can't beat that.

...and you can use all those same headphones with a current iPhone, using the adapter which is free and ships in the box.

Frankly, the ability to use $1.50 headphones is of vanishingly small significance.

Anything can beat $1.50 earphones. With that price I bet you the sound is going to be crap.

It's an extreme lower bound to make a point.

(And, actually, dollar store headphones are surprisingly decent these days. I use them to listen to podcasts in the pool, without worrying too much about whether they get wet.)

An average quality headphones are in the price range of bluetooth headphones. So I don't understand your point.

I couldn't find anything below 10€ with decent sound quality, and it was hard to find something at that price that was good. Moreover, they lasted around 3-6 months for me, while a 25€ Bluetooth headset I bought 3 years ago is still working and the sound is better.

Most of Apple's major markets had pretty good Internet connections by 2012, when they started producing computers without CD drives.

I have bluetooth headphones (AOSO G18) that cost around 11€ (while on sale at Amazon) and they don't have a perceivable delay. They even show the battery level in iOS. Great for working out.

Looks like "AOSO" is a fantasy brand, they are also sold as "EarTime", "Dacom", "GranVela", ...

No, I prefer to keep using my wired earphones.

In fact, I bought them AFTER I had Bluetooth earphones, because of the inconvenience of having to recharge them.

I also got gigabit Ethernet in the apartment after using Wi-fi for some time.

In fact, I see the hate of wires as an irrational behaviour. They work better in practically all cases with only minor inconvenience.

I myself don't need to be walking or moving all the time either. If there's a chair, there are cables available.

Wires are a major inconvenience though. Sure, at work I use a big pair of wired headphones and connect my laptop to a dock.

But when I am on the move every cable stinks. I have caught the headphones wire on doorknobs and bus ticket validators so many times that now I gladly suffer through the unreliable bluetooth to avoid that.

I can see how wires can sometimes be problematic and I don't disagree with you. You can easily avoid most issues by having the cable under some of your clothes though.

My point is I don't think people can have an extreme opinion on the issue and still be objective, like I have seen so much online lately. Sometimes wires are better, sometimes wireless is better.

I use heavily earphones. They usually last between 3 and 9 months because of the fucking wire. When I am working I cannot type comfortable because of the wire, it is in the middle. When I move I always pull the wire. If I am walking with my mobile in my pocket I also pull the wire from time to time. So they always broke in the connector because of the wire. Even with a lot of care they always break in the same place. So it is around 15€ every 6 months. You can buy them cheaper but the sound is crap. My Bluetooth headset was 30€ and have been working like charm for more than 3 years now. They have 8 hours of battery life and I need to charge them less than the smartphone. So I don't get the inconvenience of charging something than last more than an smartphone.

Modern Bluetooth is nowhere close to a half-second audio delay. I was concerned with this in the past, but with modern headphones and codecs it is not an issue anymore, there is virtually no delay.

When they removed the CD-ROM Drive, a lot of people complained how they could possible do that, because apparently so many people used CDs a lot because in the real world internet connections often are not that fast etc. You will always get these kind of complaints but the majority will accept eventually and in a few years nobody cares anymore. I think it's better that way because modern bluetooth is really good (despite charging) and enables innovation in other areas.

Not to mention for audiophiles there is the extra concern about sound quality loss.

I consider myself an "audiophile" and have spent way too much money on nice equipment. That being said, once I started hanging out with people that call themselves audiophiles and have way more money that I do, I realized that most of these people can't even tell the difference in the sound quality and, frankly, there is no loss. One of the meetups I went to even had a contest for anyone that could tell which DAC was being used and another for anyone that could tell a FLAC apart from a 320kbps MP3. No one won the prize money. "Audiophiles" are, for the most part, full of shit, in my opinion and just need to justify spending ridiculous amounts of money on great looking audio equipment.

Mind you, I'm also probably full of shit because everyone tells me that I can get exactly the same computer for half the cost of what I paid for my MacBook Pro and I'm yet to find anything that comes close. At least with the Apple stuff, there are objective things I can point to that justify the more expensive costs. With audio equipment, there's a slow curve up and then it just drops off once you get past a certain point.

I don't buy into a lot of audiophile nonsense (and personally I don't think I can tell the difference between a 192kbps MP3 and uncompressed), however there is a clear and obvious quality issue with some Bluetooth devices, in addition to how terrible the pairing experience is.

The Pareto principle is alive and thriving in the audiophile community. Anything beyond midrange is pure wank IMO (although I'll happily listen to 160kbps MP3 so you can probably disregard what I say. :P But this does seem to be borne out by a lot of double-blind testing, as you mention.)

As for Apple products, you might get the same spec computer for half the cost but Apple has really nice build quality and integration (or at least did when I got my MacBook). It's the same spec but it's just nicer.

> I'll happily listen to 160kbps MP3 so you can probably disregard what I say.

I'm with you several hundred percent.

Didn't a serious of fairly rigorous tests way back conclude that nobody could tell the difference between a ~160kbps VBR MP3 and an uncompressed source (as long as a good MP3 encoder was used)? I think it was the Hydrogen Audio people behind it.

I think they decided ~192kbs was the point where there wasn't any statistically significant evidence that anyone could tell the difference.

And that's in ideal listening conditions when people are being asked specifically to listen out for differences. I think the margin for realistic listening situations is probably much wider.

> Didn't a serious of fairly rigorous tests way back conclude that nobody could tell the difference between a ~160kbps VBR MP3 and an uncompressed source (as long as a good MP3 encoder was used)?

No, the conclusion was that most people couldn't tell the difference above 192kbps, but to a trained ear many people could still tell the difference in 192 to 256, or 256 to 320.

It was 320 and above where there was basically nobody who could tell the difference unless they were using recording studio grade gear, which most people don't have.

Agreed 100%. I've owned so many different computers over the years that I'm 100% willing to pay what most consider to be an "Apple tax" when, in my mind, I'm paying a little bit extra for an overall better product. You're totally right... it's just nicer.

I agree with all of this, but the knock on bluetooth sound quality doesn't fall into this category of audiophile foolishness.

It's real & severe downsampling, and incredibly noticeable.

Bluetooth 5 should have the bandwidth to solve this problem.

While I get what you're saying, I only find this drop in quality on really cheap Bluetooth headphones/headsets. I have tried 2 "high-end" wireless headphones (1 of which are my AirPods that I own) and I find no downsampling or quality loss that's noticeable.

On airpods there’s so much background noise and lack of sound isolation the quality drop won’t make a difference.

If you can't hear the difference between 320kbps and lossless you're either not using equipment capable of the response and the frequencies where the cutoff for 320kbps and resulting compression artifacts are noticeable or you just aren't able to hear the artifacts, either because of unfamiliarity or bad hearing especially as you get older. I've done blind a/b tests with my equipment and over 20 samples proven that I can tell a difference with a high degree of statistical certainty between 320kbps and FLAC (try http://abx.digitalfeed.net/list.html) Lossless vs 192kbps or lower is just too obvious, I think most "audiophiles" like yourself should be able to tell the difference with a high-end set of headphones or speakers. 320kbps really only makes a difference for me for classical recordings as a violinist who can hear every detail with audio equipment thats pricier then what 99% of people are willing to pay for that extra 0.1% of audio fidelity. Alot of enthusiasts are also audio engineers who are very familiar with compression artifacts and audio mastering

I'm also a musician and can hear the difference between plenty of blind tests but I'm going to call bullshit on your claims. There have been several tests done like this and some of the most prominent musicians and engineers couldn't tell the difference. Neil Young and his engineer couldn't even tell the difference when bloggers trolled them with their own Pono format files. You may very well be one of the 0.00001% of people that can tell the difference but I highly doubt it.

Do you have references? As I pointed out in another comment, I would be interested in tests conducted on trained musicians with classical (or at least acoustic) music.

Congratulations!

Often, claims that 320kpbs is indistinguishable from lossless are based on tests conducted on regular people (as opposed to trained musicians) and with pop music (as opposed to classical recordings). I would like to see a test conducted on classical musicians with well-recorded classical music. I honestly don't know what the outcome would be, but it would be instructive.

The DAC on most consumer devices is not audiophile quality. Having had a mac book and a standalone USB DAC, there's really no comparison.

I don't really have a problem with DACs on PCs, but the amount of noise present on most motherboards is terrible. (I can usually tell when my machine is compiling).

A few years ago I bought some USB DACs and separate headphone amplifiers and it made a world of difference, even to my relatively ancient ears.

At least the iPhone's DACs are absolutely audiophile quality, especially because the idea that "an audiophile quality DAC costs 20x what you see in smartphones" is patently ridiculous. There's no evidence at all that any good as in not flawed DAC will sound the same on nearly any, if not any system.

At the very least, the audio quality degradation of most bluetooth devices has a worse impact than even your average middle tier Android phone's dac.

I'm being completely serious.

Typically a DAC has two components, the digital to analog part and an analog amplifier. So while the D2A won't typically be different, the audio amplification can vastly be different depending upon what you're trying to drive.

Unfortunately you can't remove the audio amplification and replace it with another, unless you're willing to do surgery on your macbook, say.

The best option is to buy a DAC with an amp that drives what you want it to. I have one that drives headphones that works like a charm, and I can hear not just the instruments clearer, but the location of the instruments recorded in stereo space better.

I lucked out when I decided to upgrade my main system to a Ryzen 7. Not really considering audio, I had decided on an Asrock X370 Taichi board mainly because it was known to work with ECC RAM (and it indeed does according to dmesg), and was quite pleasantly surprised when I plugged my headphones into it for a listen. It sounded every bit as good as what I get from a Focusrite Saffire on another system, and even better, the headphone amp has much more power, making it much better for live, uncompressed classical choral recordings than the Focusrite. I can play them at concert volume and not get clipping in the loudest passages. No complaints from me about the DAC or amplifier stage on this motherboard. On the other hand, I haven't tried any recording with it, and for stereo recording my first thought would still be to reach for the Focusrite or my portable recorder and mic preamp, since I'd need 48V phantom power anyway.

That has also been my experience.

I bought an external audio interface to connect a condenser microphone and was shocked at how much better it sounded compared with the audio output at the back of my desktop (Realtek 24 bit...).

I noticed that audio interfaces tend to have a lot of big condensers on the inside. The kind which don't fit in a laptop, and especially in a phone. Now I'm not an electronics expert to comment on this, but I would guess that the big condensers are not in there just for the fun of it. Note that I'm talking about professional audio interfaces (the kind used by music producers, in the $100-$400 range), not audiophile ones (kilo$, buzz words)

The interior of most PCs (and phones) are very noisy from an RF standpoint. I get hiss on my USB headphones (!!!) from just out poorly shielded the case on my computer is.

That said, Apple had traditionally put very well isolated low noise DACs in their products. I'm not sure if that is still the case.

Isn't the story that they don't put any DACs in their products anymore? Or, more accurately, that the DACs have moved to the output devices (headphones, speakers).

Are you 100% sure it's not the USB DAC on your headphones?

If you've inspected it, sure. If not, I would glare at it for a bit.

An audiophile quality DAC costs 20x what you see in smartphones.

You also need an amp for audiophile quality headphones.

Do you know any audiophiles who use phones to listen to music?

I don’t know any audiophiles period. Hence the lack of knowledge on the subject.

I have a couple different sets of speakers and know that my larger ones sound better than the smaller ones (more “tinny” sound), but figured the core difference isn’t the quality of analog output on the source. Rather it’s the larger amplifier and larger size for bass generation.

For Bluetooth the problem is different. While most people will probably not consciously notice the poor audio quality after long hours of listening they will experience fatigue. This is less likely with lossless audio.

I have a 2015 rMBP and its audio sounds as good as through my CEntrance DACport Slim. Maybe my headphones aren't audiophile quality (Grado SR80i, Sony MDR-7506)?

It's possible. I haven't used the CEntrance DACport Slim, but it looks promising. After looking it up I would set the DAC to the high gain setting and drop the volume lower.

And the Grado's look like a good set of headphones.

I would try listening to The King's Singers, which is an A Capella voice group that sings classical music. I can pick out individual voices in space from recordings that were recorded in the late 1980's. A good DAC won't smear them in space, and you can "lock on" to a voice and hear the tonal quality of it individually as if they were standing in front of you.

Please don't be uncivil on HN regardless of how bad someone else's comment was.

It would be a good idea to read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and make sure you follow them when posting here. Your previous comment broke them as well.

My Aiepoda replaces a pair of $20 Sony over the ear headphones. They mostly sound better, the only difference being that the Sonys has bigger drivers and could do a better job on the low end.

I never spend more than $60 on headphones (ignoring my noise cancelling Bose).

Quality isn’t an issue. For something so small they sound quite good. For something so convenient they sound fantastic.

I use the airpods and these are the future. I'm always wearing them and they are the least intrusing earbuds I ever wore. Now I always carry a wired one with me for two reasons:

1. The battery doesn't always last. the benefits are huge so I'm OK with it though. I don't think I'll ever go full airpods just because I'm always going to be in situations where I have no battery in these.

2. My Nintendo switch and some other devices don't have bluetooth :(

I saw the other day that no other game consoles use bluetooth headsets. However a recent Switch update enabled USB audio, either through the dock or with an adapter on the port (although for handheld you might as well just use a wire).

I remember reading that the Bluetooth spec has about 300ms of latency. Far too much for games, which is why no current console uses Bluetooth for their headsets.

The PS3 and PS4 use Bluetooth for their actual game controllers and the PS4 has audio out on the controller.

No matter how well you don’t Bluetooth has some latency, so until something improves I wouldn’t expect it to show up on game consoles.

Apple computers come with SSDs only on the macbooks, so losing the DVD drive due to bigger hard drives isn't the case here because the hard drives are MUCH MUCH MUCH smaller now. I have tons of customers that face serious issues because they didn't know about this and they don't know much about computers.

Flash might be garbage, but its still super important.

Now lets talk about regular USB.... Apple dropped it without including a free adapter. They could have EASILY added one USB 3.0/3.1 port on the motherboard. There's plenty of space for it, but they would rather have you pay them tons of money for an adapter.

You can't be seriously suggesting that Apple did all the work to put only USB-C ports on the computer so that people would pay them "tons of money" for adapters. For starters, the adapters are cheap and can be purchased from any number of retailers that aren't Apple but, secondly, I have had to purchase 1 single adapter that has given me all the functionality of having these multiple ports and I've literally used it twice (once for the VGA out and once for USB). They didn't remove the old ports to get money out of people just like they didn't remove the headphone jack from the iPhone to get money from people. They did it because they feel that USB-C and wireless devices are the future and they're not wrong.

Lol I got the first 12” macbook and was sad about ports. Bought the dongle so I could hook it up to a monitor for a week while on business. Fast forward till today and I don’t where the dongle is cos I never use it.

Yup. Same here. Bought one of those "all-in-one VGA/DVI/USB/etc" dongles and have literally used it twice just because I was lazy and didn't want to unplug something else that was behind the desk.

> For starters, the adapters are cheap and can be purchased from any number of retailers that aren't Apple

Not all USB-C cables are created equal.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15473777

In what way is Flash still important?

I have had Flash disabled via a browser extension for what feels like years now.

Good luck taking online training from any government agency. FEMA, e.g.

What kind of issues is the lack of DVD drive causing your customers?

Not to mention a USB DVD drive is $25.

> If you use the USB/Lightning to AUX, you can't charge your phone at the same time.

There's now a dongle that enables you to do both...

https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/10/1/16393078/a...

You don't have to use bluetooth for audio. Every iPhone comes with an aux port adapter for a reason.

adapters are a hack, not a final solution.

And a hack's all that is needed if you accept the premise, which is that wired headphones for mobile devices are hideously inconvenient and about to be rightly obsoleted.

I'm not saying they are, but phone connectors.. aka "Aux ports" were designed in 1878, with the 3.5mm rendition dating back to the 1960's. It's obsolete tech. We can easily be making headphones with connectors that are a fraction the size. There's no reason USB-C and lightning ports shouldn't be multi-use. One port, many applications.

We have gone from one standard interface, to now three interfaces (headphone jack, USB-C and lightning), and one of them is proprietary.

We move from a world where you can buy any set of headphones, and use them with any device, to a world where... nothing is compatible with anything else. Either you use a permanently connected dongle, or you buy multiple sets of headphones.

The future is stupid and I don't want to live in it.

Standards are fucking amazing. You can plug an early electric guitar from the 50s into any modern amp or pedal.

How is an aux port obsolete for the task of transmitting audio? It does the job simply and perfectly, with a tiny connector.

Just because something was created a long time ago doesn't mean it is obsolete.

So I want to charge my phone and use headphones at the same time. That's a dongle.

I want to use any piece of stereo equipment made since the 1960s. That's a dongle.

Why don't we just ditch USB C too. Wireless charging and pairing via wifi/bluetooth.

The iPhone8 onward now has wireless charging. I see portless phones in the next 5 years tops.

BT headphones also have the massive downside of insufficient control over volume. Minimum volume is too loud == hearing loss. Strikes me as a market oppty for someone to develop BT headphones/earbuds that solve this.

All of those transitions where painful, it's just that we tend to look at the past with rose color glasses.

Not that not having a headphone jack doesn't suck. It very much does

It does hark back quite strongly to when Apple removed the floppy drive from the original iMacs. And not having a floppy drive sucked at that point. Just because something's the way of the future doesn't mean the old option is instantly obsolete.

For the few months before I got AirPods it was fine. I bought 2 or 3 of the little pigtails and it was largely a non-issue.

Bluetooth isn't always the only alternative option.

I plug my iPhone into my car's USB port (via the standard USB-A to lightning cable) and it works really well.

I also could have connected to my car via Bluetooth, or via the AUX input.

The USB connection works best and also charges my phone.

Bluetooth 5.0 has none of the issues you've mentioned. Alternatively, you can run audio over usb-c if you want to continue using wired headphones. The selection is small at this point but will grow over time.

with regards to charging while using the "charging port", with my 8+ I simply leave it on a wireless charger and it gains charge while making a call. I have a Plesson charger.

I did move to air pods so I have that option as well, but the wireless charge ability and the fact they are cheap removed my concerns. plus with apple providing both adapter for old headphone to charge adapter as well as new head phones with that same connector I am in the camp of, don't matter anymore.

Or just you kno. Plug headphones in using the adapter....

What is the point then, why not just include another port or a jack? If I have to carry a done that messes up the audio.

Or use USB-C headphones

Dropping the floppy also sucked. They were ubiquitous, and practically free. You could re-write them. Copying a file onto them was fast.

Writing to a CD was slow. And cost about a buck. And didn't always work.

So, yeah, there's pain with going to wireless headphones. But in 10 years, we're going to forget that.

Not even 10 years, with AirPods I've already forgotten beside when I want noise cancellation/sound isolation (airplanes)

The headphone jack was emphatically NOT replaced by Bluetooth. It was replaced by a combination of Apple's W1-enhanced Bluetooth, which is not slow, not unreliable, etc., and also Lightning-based headphones.

You're also wrong about charging the phone while using Lightning headphones; there are already adapters that can do that. Plus, it's not necessary to charge your phone all the time; that's what having better battery life is about. And better battery life is made more possible by freeing up precious internal space that the outmoded, single-use headphone jack used to occupy.

If you can't watch a video without an audio delay, that means you're using really crappy headphones. Fix that. Don't blame Apple.

You're right. I've deleted the offending line from my comment. And I apologize.

Appreciated!

> The headphone jack was emphatically NOT replaced by Bluetooth. It was replaced by a combination of Apple's W1-enhanced Bluetooth, which is not slow, not unreliable, etc., and also Lightning-based headphones.

That cost $160. Let's not dance around that. Airpods are extraordinarily expensive compared to the headphones everyone used to be able to use.

They are not extraordinarily more expensive than any BT ones I have used that work acceptably.

If you mean wired, those still work just as they did prior. The iPhone comes with the adapter.

Yes, the first iteration of W1-headphones are pricey. Point granted. But that will change. (Also, they are worth the price, which helps.)

BeatsX (with W1) are at $150, by the way. So the price is already down several percent! ;)

>The headphone jack was emphatically NOT replaced by Bluetooth. It was replaced by a combination of Apple's W1-enhanced Bluetooth, which is not slow, not unreliable, etc., and also Lightning-based headphones.

Let's make a comparison.

Is the alternative faster or more reliable than the original that it's replacing?

No, not by any typical (audio) criterion.

A $150 pair of in ear monitors will have a huge impact on sound quality and the average person will continue to notice improvement into the $300 (dual driver) range before significant diminishing returns. Air pods don't come close to that quality for the same price.

Power usage matters much more in wireless headphones. Bluetooth takes power. DACs take power (better ones and better algorithms use even more power). Better drivers use more power (without considering the big response boost you get with multiple drivers at the cost of additional power usage). With super limited battery size, all of these are cut with a corresponding decrease in quality.

The USB and lightning ports tend to get a lot of interference from the dozens of digital signals mere hundredths of an inch away. The size of the 3.5mm seems to ensure that it's more isolated.

What about those of us with nice headphones that don't want to be locked into the Apple eco system.

The phone comes with an adapter. If you want another one, they cost $9. I believe the Pixel will be the same.

The iPhone came with a dongle.