FYI, that's interference. Wi-fi "randomly" disconnects for a few seconds due to interference just as often, but you don't notice, because 1. the OS hides short disconnects, and 2. most protocols you use are TCP-based, and so use retries. (If you were doing something involving UDP streaming, you'd notice.)

Bluetooth audio, on the other hand, is a realtime protocol, which just drops stale packets rather than trying to retransmit them. Drop enough packets in a row, and the carrier thinks the device has gone out of range and disconnects it (as the alternative would be boiling your battery by turning the antenna gain up to infinity, as sometimes happens when cellular baseband misbehaves while ranging.)

> Gestures and voice are simply not as convenient as buttons on the wire. If I tap the thing in my ear, it tends to get shoved further into my ear and may still not register

Have you tried the AirPods Pro where you squeeze the stems? They're essentially buttons.

> Crucially, there isn’t a single problem above that occurs when using wires.

Put on your wired headphones. Sit down (e.g. on the bus.) Now try taking off your shoulder-strapped bag to hold it in your lap, without first taking out your headphones.

Or: try to change your shirt while keeping your headphones on + playing. (I know, unusual thing to do, but I've changed my shirt with wireless earbuds in without a thought.)

Or: get up and go to the bathroom, while continuing to listen to the livestream you're watching on the desktop PC sitting on your desk, without missing anything. (Provided I'm at home, I can usually get about 40 feet away from the Bluetooth source before my wireless headphones disconnect.)

This used to bug me a lot but I've found an easy solution. Just route the wire under your t-shirt or shirt or jacket. When I'm not using my headphones, the headphones hang around my neck. If I feel like taking off my headphones and placing them on the table, it takes 5 extra seconds to pull the wires from under my shirt after disconnecting them from the phone.

When I picture "preferring wired headphones", I picture taking around my studio monitors with their 10ft 1/4" solid-copper-cored cabling. (I did used to do pretty much this, when I was a stupid teenager! But that was before Bluetooth was invented.) That kind of cabling doesn't have a minimum curve radius that would let it fit in most pockets, unless you're either wearing an overcoat, or you've got the middle of the cable cleanly wrapped and tied in a linear bundle [which would still protrude upward out of most pockets, like a very tall phone.]

There's also the as-yet-unmentioned inconvenience of such cables—that they tend to have 1/4" RCA jacks on the ends, making plugging them into your phone a worrying experience involving adapters and shear stress—but oddly enough, modern phones with their lack of headphone jacks are better for this, since the flexible DAC adapters that plug into their USB ports protect the phone itself from being damaged by the shear force of a rigid 1/4"-to-1/8" adapter.

What makes you think you’re gaining anything in audio quality by using 1/4” instead of 1/8” cable?

When listening to music, I don't usually bother to "queue up" songs/entire albums in advance, or to make playlists, but rather I just have a library of individual tracks, and then, as I listen to a song, I'll have a whim for what song to listen to next. (I use music to inspire me while writing fiction, so a lot of this is about creating the right mental mood for a scene.)

If I'm not listening to music, I'm listening to podcasts, which are also often a "listen to one episode, then pull your phone back out to select the next one" sort of experience, as many of them like to do things like slip in repeats of old episodes, such that a linear listening order gives you things you wouldn't want.

my biggest gripe with wireless so far, and this might be specific to galaxy buds+ is that their batteries suck after a years use. otherwise, all the things you describe are why they're great.

I can't count the number of times I have done this very thing.

luckily, apple has you covered. you just need $19.99. /s

that would be a weird idea though. 1/4 TRS female -> magsafe-male magsafe-female -> 1/4 TRS male. i'm guessing it would look like a sort of inline coupler or similar in final design. essentially, it should be totally doable. i look forward to your pitch on Shark Tank, er, to YC, yeah, that's what I meant.

I wonder if, in the future, we could have household wall sockets and extension cords with "sense pins" ala USB PD; where the mains-voltage live "rail" isn't energized unless a device hops on the logic-level control rail and negotiates for it. Then we could truly live in a MagSafe-everything world. (Then again, to block that kind of current, they'd probably need to use relays and other non-solid-state parts, so they might not be the most durable things...)

Did the end of the cable not have recessed "pins" specifically to avoid accidental shorting? Seems like it would never be U/L certified without some safety.

Yes and no. MagSafe is safe because of the sense current and the handshake; but it's able to do that because it's just not driving very much wattage through the cable; it's low enough that it can direct the power with a simple transistor.

To make mains-voltage AC cords do that, you need a lot more than a transistor. A 1500W current (from e.g. a microwave, or a kettle) can arc a gap much wider than most transistors are printed at. Which is why, in even the most modern smart-home remote light-switch doodads, mains-voltage gets toggled using relays, rather than anything solid-state.

It's lovely to say "just do what MagSafe does", but with electricity, "quantity has a quality all its own" — i.e. very different engineering challenges to overcome.

> Did the end of the cable not have recessed "pins" specifically to avoid accidental shorting?

It has recessed pins (pads, actually), but only barely (by about 5mm); basically to the point that a round metal table leg could make contact with the live pad within the recess.

And, as far as I can tell, there's no sense logic in the cable, either. No click of a relay coming from the cable when it gets connected; and no place for a transformer to live (not that it needs one—it's a hotplate, i.e. a big thick piece of iron you run mains-voltage AC current through.)

There is a relay inside the hotplate itself, which roughly acts as a thermostat (rather than a rheostat) to toggle the coil on and off to keep the cheese at temperature. You can hear it ticking on and off, and an indicator light goes on and off along with it.

But for that logic to work, the cable has to be drawing power to power it. So, AFIACT, the cable itself is always live.

There's an auxiliary benefit as well in that a backpack seems to be way better for my back than a shoulder bag.

For one, if you're carrying enough crap isn't a backpack more ergonomic (assuming you wear both straps and aren't one-strapping it like the cool guy you are)

"Vestis virum facit", or clothes make the man is extraordinarily powerful in business and social dealings. Clothes signal a lot of information quickly. So this isn't about you caring what other people think, it's about how what other people care about affect your options. I could prescribe a few experiments to witness the differences directly but I'll tell you from personal experience that the A-B differences are stark.

There was a time when I was younger that I raged against this rule, but it's a youthful variation of "old man yells at cloud". You can try and create a new reality in your head and believe it fervently, and cut your nose to spite your face, but image matters greatly to other people, at a deep level.

If I need a job done, I couldn't care less if the person who is able to do it wears a backpack or not.

FWIW I think messenger bags are shitty design and think people who use them just don't know any better.

This is really easy with a backpack, I assume it's only a problem with a messenger bag (which is probably a bigger problem for one's back, unless the load is kept very light.)

2. I have big hands buttons on the ear pod just knock it out of my ear.

3. I can take my bag off my sholder without taking out my wired headphones.

When I try to take my shirt off with wireless headphones they just get knocked out of my ear and im on the locker room floor looking for them.

Bluetooth doesn't have the range to do this without dropping in and out, at least in my house.

The big takeaway is that even the best wireless headphones on the market are less reliable than the cheapest wired.

Well what I used to do when I had wired headphones was run the headphone cable under the bag so to speak. As in put on my headphones and then put on my bag. You just need to make sure you have enough slack in the headphones above the bag strap, which... I dunno I never found difficult. I just habitually put on my bag second, or would place my ear buds in my shirt/cups around my neck at least before putting on the bag.

Don't get me wrong it's nice for that to not matter with wireless, it's just the way you've phrased this implies to me putting the headphones on first and bag on second so the bag strap sits on top of the headphone cable never occurred to you and honestly that is confusing me

Wireless headphones with a short wire hanging down to use as an antenna. Now send audio using 900MHz analog FM radio.

The signal quality can be made quite high by using enough power and/or bandwidth spreading.

Delay is near zero and it reconnects faster than you can blink at it.

But I'm pretty sure what you're really trying to mentally re-engineer here is one of these: https://en-ca.sennheiser.com/stage-monitoring-headphones-hea...

Ever wondered what's in the rack on rear center stage of a concert? One of these, so the performers can all hear the mix over their own instrument/the crowd without tripping all over cables.

(More recently, they're two-way, meaning that the e.g. electric guitar you hear is passing through a chain of: headphone pre-amp, wireless transmitter, wireless receiver, mixing board, amp. Effects pedals? These days, they're wireless MIDI controllers that signal to a DAW plugged into the mixing board!)

That’s false. If it happens to you, get better wireless equipment.

This might not ever happen to you if you live in a bunker, or on a farmstead at least 500 feet from any neighbours. (Though I wouldn't completely discount the possibility; there's always solar storms.)

But if you live in a city, and like to sit near large picture windows (where the light from the window cuts across the straight-line path between your wireless devices and their base station), then every once in a while you're going to get what's basically a mini-EMP blast blowing through your window glass, on one random unlicensed-spectrum-interfering frequency on another: every time someone in the building across from yours vacuums with a 1950s vacuum cleaner with an ungrounded plug, or uses their shitty $50 freestanding microwave with underspecced side shielding; or operates their unlicensed AliExpress garage-door opener, or... etc.

If we could hear 2.4/5GHz, every day in a city would sound like Diwali: sudden short explosions, from every direction, at any odd hour of the day.

Remember, "unlicensed" spectrum means the FCC isn't policing those bands like they do with licensed allocations; so all the 2.4/5GHz "polluters" — the device buyers, and the manufacturers — never get told to stop.

There's a reason IP softphones are always wired, rather than being wi-fi devices — speaking RTP, they can't tolerate the somewhat-normal condition of RF-interference-induced 802.11-PHY packet-loss bursts nearly as well as devices speaking TCP can. They end up dropping calls in about the same way that Bluetooth Audio drops pairing.

(This is also most of why 802.11e QoS Traffic Categories exist — RTP is essentially hard-realtime, so even temporarily queuing RTP packets due to competing high-throughput TCP flows, could be enough to "choke out" the RTP flow.)

This sort of substitution can work, but it requires very stable, low-noise links (that is, with little to no burst noise) and the cooperation of devices and network equipment.

TCP’s reliability comes at the cost of increased, inconsistent, and unpredictable latency; which is fine for downloading a file, browsing the web, or streaming video with a 30-second buffer; but unacceptable for a real-time call.

I know how they sound and what they do to sounds. Every in-ear solution I had in my ears up to now doesn't even get close in terms of "resolution" (this is not a technical term but it is true, that some monitoring solutions will let you hear more of the recording than others).

Additionally my on-the-road headphones (Sennheiser HD25) last for a decade now. If the cable ever should fail I can get a replacement. If the earpad is through I can get a replacement. The only problem recently is, that phone manufacturers decided they need to be stingy about adding a 3.5mm TRRS-jack.

It's like the opposite of planned obsolescence. They first came out five years before I was born, and here I am using them in my late 20s. I have no doubt they'll outlive my PXC 550s, which after about three years of usage have a degraded battery and a slow charging speed (micro USB is inexcusable).

I "upgraded" mine with a fiio BTR5. Now I just wrap the cable around the BT receiver and put it in my shirt pocket. Wireless freedom with wired 'phones!

I got a poco because I won't replace my HD-25 II anytime soon.

Before that I even took a MP3 player with me most of the time. Fiio Xsomwthing. However it broke, and for some reason you don't find good MP3 players with actual buttons anymore either.

I’m not going back to having to untangle a pocket full of wires and car keys. Also I’m not having the cable tugging when I’m walking or running and having to shove the things back in every two minutes. This product was a life changer for me.

Please understand that not everyone has the same experiences as you do.

I've never had a harddrive fail, but I still take backups and assume others saying they've had problems are telling the truth.

Wifi depends more on location than the hardware or how you are using it. The anecdote that it works for you is fair enough but pretty useless in this situation as its just a coincidence.

Third-party over-ear headphones working on my Android phone, Windows gaming computer and work Linux machine is a whole other deal.

But I don't think it's just Apple's airpods either: Most of the newer bluetooth headphones work and connect almost instantly with my iPhone; I have some Bose QC35 that I can report the same speed of connection of the airpods -- maybe even a little faster. I suspect it's related to some extremely modern bluetooth version or feature-set that might be difficult to discern from the box, but I have not dug into it deeper.

This being said, my airpods sit on my desk next to my Jabra DECT headset: Bluetooth is only almost instant, but DECT is actually instant. I first saw them visiting a cell centre (inside-sales team) team in Seattle, and so I asked about them and learned "we wear this thing making cold calls sometimes every few minutes, all day long, and it doesn't suck" and that pitch sold it for me. I wish it traveled better, because if anything rings (phone, skype, teams, zoom, slack), I pick up the headset and it answers on the computer at the same time, and I'd love (somehow) to have that experience when everything is packed in my rucksack.

As stated the only time I had a problem was standing next to an extremely large diesel backup generator which was probably RFI related.

Couple of years later, Sony has updated them half a dozen or so times, and I rarely ever get skips or jumps now. I have them always set to emphasise quality over connection, and they have worked perfect. You can buy them new on the likes of Amazon for ~£120 now, which is a bargain.

Sony just(?) released the XM4 which have a slightly better form factor and better codecs, so I'm considering them next.

I’m sorry to say it, but welcome to the future of wireless audio.

It's incredible how much better cellular works compared to other wireless "techno", but nothing replaces a cable.

Just plug the wire and enjoy the very best music quality.

It must be only me who doesn't care about a wire for all the added bonus like quality, stability and no battery.

Seriously. More of us would jump on board if it were not Bluetooth.

Apple has done well, make no mistake. I applaud them for that.

But the fundemental issues remain, despite what appears to be a solid effort.

I may be audiophile. But when I put a music on I want to get fully absorbed and hear every little detail while I don't worry about battery life. Sounds weird I know

Theoretically I don't think there's a reason why it wouldn't be possible to make the sound produced in the audible range the same (preferrably roughly matching Harman target out of the box) for wired and wireless.

But yes, I'd never trade the slight inconvenience a cable is with the amount of inconveniences of wireless. Especially the battery: I grew up having to deal with battery life in portable players (cassette, minidics, you name it) and this finally got a lot better so I almost don't have to care anymore (talking actual music players, not smartphones), I'm really not going to go back to something inferior again.

It's fascinating how well this has been marketed though, but that's really almost all there is to it for me: just marketing, not a whole lot of actual value.

However I keep my ears open :)

PX100s for when I am out of the house (but not when driving!) because they sound good but do not isolate me from my surroundings.

HD220s for radio and TV (on tablet or phone) late at night.

HD485s for paying attention to music.

It would be nice if they all had Tile or similar tech, but if their batteries go dead just sitting there (super annoying thing about the bose) then it’s useless too.

(FWIW also tried the Sony wf1000-xm4s and hated them.)

Every single phone on the face of the earth can be charged while being used, even if you're talking on the phone. Nobody is worried there, and the risk is much higher since batteries are bigger, charged faster, etc.

I have a pair of XM3s and I love them (for what they are) but the form factor of the XM4 looks nicer so was considering an "upgrade".

- Maybe I have weird ears but the bulk of their weight is up high and kind of out from the body and there's no real support other than the tip wedged into your ear canal. If you run downstairs or jog or jump it tends to make an audible 'pop' or clacking sound as the weight sort of pries against your ear canal. If you look at the Bose they have a little rubber support that grabs your ear and supports the weight. The XM3s are more evenly distributed.

- The ANC has tons of audio artifacts. I did all of the Sony ear tuning stuff and couldn't get it to go away. Any time you bump them you'll get weird twirps and chirps, certain frequencies kind have this wooden resonance and every now and then it just went apeshit with weird howls and whistles. This could be due to poor fitting (again possibly i have weird ears) and could likely be fixed with software over time.

If you like the XM3's I'd say give them a try but just make sure you know the return policy.

The ANC is the really interesting part, it's practically flawless in the XM3 I've never heard any of the issues you describe; which worries me that the XM4 has an issue or two, hopefully software ones that can he remedied but it doesn't sound good.

The XM3 doesn't support any sort of ear tuning, the feature in the app only applies to specific audio sources, none of which I have access to, so I can't comment on that part.

I've heard good things about the little rubber wedge in the Bose, I'd like that feature, but honestly I don't have fit issues with mine so it's not a deal breaker.

I definitely found 3rd party Bluetooth headphones to be not worth the trouble early on, but since Apple introduced the AirPods I got tempted back to them. Either Bluetooth got a lot better or Apple's doing something clever (or both), because with the occasional "one pod didn't wake up; put it back in the case and take it out again" issue, they work perfectly for me.

I do still use corded headphones -- I'm an audio guy; I have a bunch -- but it's increasingly rare.

However.

What I'm saying is that this is not a problem for me with the Apple headphones I use (Airpods Pro and Max), which is what I'm using for most of my listening (owing to convenience, I've almost completely stopped using wired headphones).

I do occasionally experience dropouts with the AfterShox I use for some outdoor exercise, and I did sometimes experience the issue with the Sennheisers I had before I got the Airpods Max, which leads me to believe that there ARE aspects of this problem that CAN be ameliorated with implementation, contrary to your assertion.

I mean, how else do we explain the fact that it's only been a problem for me when I use nonApple hardware?

Anyway air drop won't work, move a foot away from your imac and your ear pods will drop their connection. Wifi has way more to do with the space than it does the hardware, think about it the only way apple could improve their signal above the competition is just to boost the signal strength and they can't do that because its agains't government regulation.

If you bought three brands of lotto ticket each with the same payout spec but on paid out while the others did not would you think that the winning brand of lotto ticket had better odds? or would you think that you just got lucky that time?

That's a poor comparison, because there's no difference between lotto tickets and there IS a demonstrable difference in Bluetooth implementations and hardware.

It does sound like you've created a high-interference environment, though.

I was a fan of the originals, but bought the Pros shortly after they came out. I'm on my second pair now - the first pair came down with the dreaded "crackling" and Apple replaced them.

I find that they stay in my ears well enough that I regularly use them when driving my Jeep without doors, even when I'm not listening to music. They provide some level of reduction of the wind noise that I'm certain has been damaging my hearing in my left ear in particular.

After solving for fall protection, hearing is the next thing on a motorcycle.

Every time I'm going "flat out" (not inner city) I wear ear plugs and seriously regret it if I forget them.

Wireless buds "solve" a non-issue while introducing real issues.

Ear fit sucks, is it worse with cordless headphones? Ear fit always comes up with earbuds, wireless or wired. I've heard individuals say wireless is better for them because there's no wire tugging on their ear. I'm surprised to see a lot of people walking around with over-the-ear headphones (I tend to use them at home or on a plane).

My headphones are wired from one to the other. They're wireless to the music device, but wired to each other if that helps paint you a picture. Plus, they have these little rubber fins that help hold the headphones in your ears So for me: I can't lose one without the other, and them being tethered together makes it harder to lose them in general. The controls are on the wire, so none of that "pressing your head" issue you describe. The only time I seem to have issues is when I have my phone in my front pocket opposite to the bluetooth receiver... I think my body just blocks the signal too well. Otherwise I can be 30ft away and still get a strong bluetooth connection.

Enough of the ad talk (Please email me for my info Jaybirds so I can collect my shill cheque) I think its just a design issue. Everyone wants those tiny things that hide away in your ear, but I've always felt the inconvenience of having 2 easily misplaced little buds outweighs any design advantages they have. Its like the trend of making phones smaller and smaller, then suddenly bigger and bigger, but not addressing the convenience of having a smart phone. I don't need a massive screen, I need a stronger battery... so make it 3mm or 5mm thicker if that's what it takes to get 48hr life on a charge.

But now i'm ranting.

I now have AirPod Pros and I have none of the above problems. I waited a long time before buying them and was really surprised how well they fit (because of my experience with normal iPhone headphones and the Jaybird headphones).

I guess experiences differ depending on your on your ears and it's probably best if you try them first if you can.

But they are not sold in Taiwan yet. So I bit the bullet and got the pros about 5 days ago. I hate my wife’s Sony headphones cos they hurt my ears, and figured the pros would last until the non silicon tip comes came out. But now I love the pros.

Edge case: white noise generator.

I’ve been looking for a small, wired and preferably powered external speaker for travel to provide louder and better quality sound masking than the tiny speaker in the phone. There are a million little Bluetooth speakers out there but the random inverted hiccups (sudden silence then resume) wake me up every time. I’m sure it’s the Bluetooth because it doesn’t happen when I use the phone speaker.

I carry a 1st gen iPhone SE for wired audio, so I guess now it’s basically an iPod.

Edit: Well, looks like there’s some stuff on eBay I didn’t see in previous searches. Retro 2000s stuff. I can roll the dice for £5 plus shipping. Use case is still relevant.

https://youtu.be/t1thDa4zeog

I was originally very upset about Apple removing the headphone port, but after getting my first AirPods I basically stopped caring. They just worked so well, I never wanted wires again.

By the by, I had more headphones yanked out by door handles than I’ve had wireless buds fall out, but I’ll grant that the latter is strongly affected by individual ear geometry.

Cons: mic volume is low, and when a device disconnects they will play disconnect sound until they reboot.

And contrariwise, while for day-to-day wear I love my bluetooth over-ear headphones, my 'plane earphones' are wired Bose QC25s. Partly because in-ear provides superior noise canceling, partly because when I'm on that 5:30am flight I can lean my head against the side of the plane without upsetting my headphones, but mostly because if I drop my phone I can fish it back up with the headphone cable. :D

1. Wireless buds

2. Wireless non-buds (some sort of wrap-around design to keep them on)

3. Wired buds

4. Wired non-buds

I go with (2) personally, but mainly because Apple stopped me using wires. My main problem with bluetooth is that the headphones aren't loud enough (yeah you have to watch the line between loud and damaging but headphones are my opportunity to play music loud). Recommendations for loud wireless headphones appreciated!

#1 Bluebooth connectivity to computers. If I was just using my phone they were mostly fine, but at a computer it was a constant fight to get them to connect, to work with whatever app I'm using, and especially when I'm switching back and forth between using them for listening to music or using them to video conference. This might also be partly because Linux is my main driver, but having to switch back and forth between high quality audio output for music and two way cell phone quality audio sucks.

#2 Having owned multiple pairs over the years, none of them would connect over Bluetooth while charging. Let me make my wireless headphones temporarily wired.

At this point I use an over the ear headphone with a mic and a USB DAC. I specifically only get phones with a minijack so I could use them with that too.

I actually don’t have connection issues on Windows either, but it does have the switching problem.

#2: True, but usually the battery of a pair of headphones last much longer than earbuds, in my case at least 4 days, so I just put them in charge at night

Audio matters to me. Can't own a device with no analog jack.

Some BT buds will let you futz with an equalizer (jabra). It really influences the experience of what you’re listening to, for instance different genres of music and pure voice.

My point is, that they just didn't have any of the problems you mention above (with the exception of random sampling frequency changes that changed pitch minimally, but noticable).

Sound quality was ok, I think it was one of the first A2DP headsets. Ok, for what it was mind you, my good over-ears are definitely better.

Is this some idiom I am not familiar with?

That said, when I'm sitting at my desk to do work, I use wired headphones (and wired mouse and keyboard). When I'm really in the flow, the last thing I want is to be interrupted by a "low battery" prompt.

In this case wired is just another mode of failure as they will get loose if the cable is tensioned. If you are afraid of losing them you can use one with a wire between the buds (non-TWS).

> They fall out of my ears

Sounds like you don't have a good fit. Sealed buds should not have much room to 'go deeper' when properly seated.

> there isn’t a single problem above that occurs when using wires

These last two have nothing to do with wires, just the fit for a particular model?