Hi c/technology, I’m agitated about a specific topic and the ‘normal’ queers on discord are not really tolerating my rambles so I hope it’s ok if I post em here. Prepare yourself for one embarrassing boomer-ass take

I have two sets of bluetooth headphones. One is the Sennheiser BT4.50 which I got on a firesale($40) when they were clearing stock, and one is the Anker Q35. They’re both terrible!

There are the practicality concerns of course, like that it’s yet another battery to charge, which also means most bluetooth headphones have limited lifespans and are guaranteed e-waste. It’s yet another 2.4GHz signal on top of the pile of them coming from [old 2.4G wifi devices/2.4G wireless peripherals/etc], and yet another wireless thing that refuses to sync randomly. The Android apps that these things try to use are teeeeerrible shovelware that barely works (the Soundcore app took like three re-connects to pick up my Q35). It’s a lot of trouble that could be fixed by just running a cable down my shirt.

I get that there’s a niche for this stuff, though. If I’m watching Youtube or a movie or whatever on a computer box hooked up to a TV, nobody wants to run a 3.5mm cable ten feet or more from that box to the couch for headphones. I use little Bluetooth 3.5mm receiver/transciever hooked up to headphones (Fostex T50RP mk3) for this purpose. And the sound quality isn’t even that bad; the difference between a flac over a cable and a flac through SBC codec is pretty small. AptX is hard to tell apart at all.

That’s on a $250 (CAD!) set of planar magnetic headphones though. The BT4.50s and the Q35s? They are dogshit. I thought that the ability to run a cable to these things might remove the problem of their limited lifespan, but in the case of the Q35s they sound atrocious wired without the EQ built into their goofy app. The Sennheiser just sounds like trash period. Curiously both of them have pretty much no high end, and probably worse sound stage than fully closed-back headphones like the Audio Technica M40x I have.

It feels weird that the bottleneck in sound quality for wireless headphones is not the BT codec, but the actual drivers. That’s the short and long of it though; I feed them stuff like the Killing Joke selftitled or Big Generator by Yes, basically any of my really high dynamic range CDs as well as some 24/48 vinyl rips (Face Dances by The Who, Dreamboat Annie by Heart) and then some more modern crushed stuff for fun, bits of Black Dresses or some math rock and whatnot. None of it sounds any good on the BT4.50 or the Q35 without EQ, and even with the Q35’s EQ it can’t really hold a candle to even a middling set of cans like the M40x. I guess this makes sense, because you’re paying for the battery and the bluetooth stuff and the amplification and the mics/noise cancelling? But damn, your wireless options are the same price as wired for way worse sound, or maybe theoretically more costly for the same quality? Pls hmu if you know of any bluetooth headphones that would measure up to classic cans like the Sennheiser HD600, Fostex T50 etc. tyvm

For what it’s worth, that noise cancelling is probably worth the money on its own - the ability to just block out the sound of the neighbour’s kids shrieking or the annoying bass-pulse of an air conditioner is really rad. Both of these bluetooth headsets do a pretty good job of blocking out background sounds, and that’s rad for autism gang & anyone else who has sensory processing troubles. But that is pretty much their only niche imo! If I wanna watch junk on Youtube and there’s a jackhammer going across the hall, I grab a wireless set and hope the bluetooth will pair automatically.

But if I actually wanna listen to anything in non-vomit audio quality wirelessly, I’m strapping one of those little bluetooth re/trans-ceiver things to my real headphones and pairing that(which has a better hit rate for pairing than the Q35, lol lmao) to my PC or an android box.

To be real though, in 99% of the cases I use headphones, a cable is easier & more convenient & results in the best audio quality. Using headphones on a PC at a desk? Wired. Hooking headphones up to the phone for a Youtube clip? Wired. Fiio M7 for music? Wired. If distance isn’t a factor, bluetooth is a huge hassle for a worse experience overall.

I just hate with a passion that this at-best niche product category that performs worse than the established counterpart (remember how badly stuff like the Bluebuds X Braggi Dash were for disconnects?) seems to be replacing wired options in the popular conscious?? Phones and laptops without 3.5mm jacks should be considered war crimes, trust me. No I do not care if it’s about IP67 water protection, do better pls. No excuse. I despise this trend.

Granted, I’m a weird freak and willing to lay down a lot of convenience in pursuit of “shit sounds good”. More than a lot of people, like I’m pretty sure the average person would look at you funny for suggesting that they carry a second device around for music. I didn’t like MP3(or lossy codecs lol) as a premise, because don’t decide what I can and can’t hear(even if I can’t hear a lot of difference lol), but I at least understand why MP3 was cool and rad. For one thing it predates flac, but also an album in MP3 is like less than a third the size of the flac equivalent, and big files would fill up your shitty 80GB IDE drive(or worse yet, your ipod) real fast. The tradeoff in sound quality which most people probably can’t even hear for very small file sizes makes a ton of sense, even now with codecs like opus. I only fill big SD cards with flacs 'cause I’m a stubborn fucker.

But bluetooth audio in general seems like a niche technology with one or two cool uses(TV with headphones, and those embarrassing bluetooth earpieces executives used to have in the 2000s) that mainstream users are adopting with all its numerous faults, exclusively for the privilege of not having to take off the headphones before you get up from a desk. For the privilege of not having a cable running through your sweater? All this garbage just for that?

It’s possible my myopic ass is missing some critical use case that normals have, and I know most nornals do not care at all for sound quality. I also know that people will have had both better and worse experiences as far as bluetooth goes, but maaan this shit sucks and it makes me buttmad that they wanna get rid of cables for pretty much no reason, grrrrr gonna go stare at the bits of vintage audio gear I have, rip