Are wired headphones dead?

Submitted by giant3 t3_10hxsv7 in headphones

I have around 50 headphones(IEMs+full size combined). Around 6 full-size headphones, 3 on-ear headphones and the rest IEMs. Ever since I got a TWS, I haven't touched any of them and they are gathering dust.

I know that the sound quality doesn't compare especially sound stage, but the convenience of lack of wires and ability to move freely while listening wins over any other argument. None of my friends use wired headphones these days.

TWS market size is in billions of dollars. Are we seeing the end of the road for wired headphones apart from being a niche in the Western world and some exceptions like Japan & SE Asia?

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Exit_Bubbly t1_j5b7xsf wrote

It really matters what you mean by “dead.”

Are wired headphones disappearing from the “mainstream consumer” market. Yes. Most people, when given the choice between buying AirPods or a wired headphone/iem for a similar price, would pick the AirPods 9 times out of 10.

But are we going to see wired headphones being completely phased out. Not yet. Most hifi headphones are still wired, and the hifi market isn’t going anywhere (it’s growing if anything else).

I my opinion, wired headphones are being replaced in the mainstream consumer space, but the market for wired headphones is still there.

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slavicslothe t1_j5fxfiu wrote

Growing faster in the last 5 years than at any other point.

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SupOrSalad t1_j5b5p6g wrote

I will admit that even with my wired collection, 99% of the time I'm using tws buds or Bluetooth headphones for the convenience, and also so I don't have to use adapters if my phone is charging.

Removing the 3.5 jack from phones, and now tablets and laptops is really harming the convenience factor, but I hope it will come around and the 3.5 jack will be brought back

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PolarBearSequence t1_j5b4dq4 wrote

I’ve got TWS for commuting as well (because of the ANC), but I almost never use them at home.

In general, there are advantages to wired headphones, even ignoring their professional use: low latency, compatibility with all kinds of devices, and especially sustainability. TWS last maybe 5 years in the best cases before the battery dies (and often cannot be swapped) or software support runs out. A good pair of over ears can last decades.

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olqerergorp_etereum t1_j5ekdjs wrote

>TWS last maybe 5 years in the best cases before the battery dies

dude, no battery is going to last 5 years, specially not the ones that TWS use. if anything after the first years they will start to lose their capacity to hold energy, and by year 2, they might as well only charge a 3/4 to 2/4 of the original charge capacity, and it's all downhill from there. problem is that also these batteries are too light a too underpowered to last enough time between recharges before It becomes annoying, and as soon as you start to lose half of you battery life, the TWS themselves will be more of an annoyance than a useful pair of wireless earbuds lol

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PhoenixRisingtw t1_j5b9szd wrote

Convenience of TWS for traveling, commuting or just taking them in your pocket anywhere is unmatched.

But if you're sitting down at you computer, it doesn't make sense to use wireless buds for hours and be wearing out your battery. For this a nice pair of comfortable studio headphones is really nice.

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Wingless_Pterosaur t1_j5b7cj2 wrote

I’d say for commuting, out and about listening, and frankly what most people use headphones, iems, earphones, etc. for, probably.

For the upper end of the hobby that involves sitting down and solely listening to music and giving it most, or all, of your attention, most definitely not.

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ExiledSanity t1_j5h51ji wrote

The market for out and about listening never really crossed over to full size open backs anyway.

The crossover between IEMs and wireless is real though.....IEMs still seem to be doing pretty well.

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MachineTeaching t1_j5bzcjh wrote

No they aren't and I really hope it stays that way.

Headphones get traded all the time, headphones stick around for years and years all the time. People have well over a decade old HD600s, Beyers, etc.

The vast majority of wireless headphones are inherently disposable garbage. Once the battery is dead, people throw them away, and even if you could replace the battery, with different levels of effort, a lot of people won't bother.

I really don't like things that are made to be disposable and I'm not going to buy wireless headphones because of that.

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drbobb t1_j5be94y wrote

I'm actually somewhat puzzled by the fact that I still see loads of people using wired earbuds in the street or on the subway, given that pretty good quality tws have become quite affordable. I'd estimate that it's about even between wired and wireless, though I haven't tried counting.

Myself, I use tws exclusively on the go, and either a wireless headphone or a wired iem when at home, depending on what better suits the music I want to listen to.

EDIT: what I mainly meant to say is that I'm surprised there's still a market for cheap low quality wired earbuds, which are most of those I see people using on the go. It's very rare to see someone using what looks like a premium iem outdoors. I'm not addressing the issue of the hifi market segment.

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Coel_Hen t1_j5d09i7 wrote

Same! In an age of good TWS options from $100 and up and wired IEMs at $20 that sound great, I am surprised at how many people I see with decade-old MP3 player nuggets in their ears.

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drbobb t1_j5e70fz wrote

Actually all the TWS I have used were significantly below $100 and were/are still good enough for me - though take into account that my hearing is somewhat fucked due to old age, and now tinnitus apparently triggered by covid.

EDIT: currently using Creative Outlier Air V3 as my everyday outdoor gear. Decent sound, unfortunately the ANC is a joke. Paid equiv. of $40.

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Coel_Hen t1_j5e8cdj wrote

Well, my trajectory has pretty much been: LG necklace buds (three generations, I believe, all of which sucked for both music and phone calls, yet I kept buying them for some reason, anyway)--->Sennnheiser CX (the first listenable gear with good call quality)--->Airprods Pro 2, so for me, I had to break the $100 barrier to get good wireless sound, but I have several inexpensive IEMs that sound good.

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ststairz t1_j5by3os wrote

I don't believe you own 50 headphones.

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giant3 OP t1_j5c1aut wrote

Read properly. I said 6+3+41 IEMs bought over a period of 25 years. It is not unusual.

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covertash t1_j5b928e wrote

Maybe innovation has slowed down, but I don't think it's necessarily dead.

Besides, my wired headphones will continue playing long after the TWS's end up in a landfill.

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wavecult t1_j5bmtzo wrote

How many high-end audiophile headphones are actually wireless? ... And how many wireless headphones also provide a wired port?

I'd say wired is going to be around for a while yet.

Ultimately its up to consumers to tell companies what they want through their purchases. Regardless, even if it turns into a market niche, as long as there is a profit to be made, companies will continue to provide the goods.

Remember the the introduction of the CD? Many said vinyl records would disappear within a few years but look at them now...

Now on the topic of convenience, even if you only own bluetooth sources you can continue to use a portable dac/amp with bluetooth capabilities along with your wired audiophile headsets...

Edit: clarity

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Coel_Hen t1_j5d248h wrote

Yeah, I take my Airpods out and spend a little quality time listening to music at work on IEMs with the Qudelix 5K. It is essentially as convenient other than phone calls, but those are rare while I'm working, so when it's slow, I listen to some music.

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flyedchicken t1_j5bv2qd wrote

They're a seperate market segment at this point

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Mission-Equivalent74 t1_j5dtdvd wrote

Before I got into the audiophile world I started with wired headphones, got tired of them and went wireless. After a while I got tired of the wireless ones because of battery issues I had I went back to wired and I won't go back for anything I'll use for serious listening. But I do have a set of true wireless earbuds for work

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TooMuchMech t1_j5fbchb wrote

Nah. Not until bluetooth can carry a truly uncompressed hifi signal. For that reason alone there will always be a market. If only 1 percent of the global pop cares and has the means for audiophile grade, that's still 80 million customers.

Latency will reduce to the point that it doesn't matter, just as it has for the enthusiast and gaming mouse space, at which point it will begin to disappear.

The day when you can connect 10 Bluetooth devices and play lossless with very tiny latency, yeah, it will be. That day will come. There was a time when we couldn't imagine photos becoming comparatively trivial in terms of storage space, 4k60fps gaming, etc. There's only so much data in a stereo recording, and it will be solved one day.

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giant3 OP t1_j5frklz wrote

> The day when you can connect 10 Bluetooth devices and play lossless with very tiny latency,

It is already here. Bluetooth 5.2+ supports broadcasting and delays less than 50ms(even 25ms I think is possible). Support is coming to Android 13 onwards. Lossless is not relevant as psychoacoustics has proven that transparency is achieved at 192kbps+ for AAC,Opus,etc.

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TooMuchMech t1_j5fu97f wrote

Lossless is relevant regardless of what some objective measures say or what even a blind test says. The entire audiophile community is the evidence. They can also point to measurable distortions and debatable issues in the audible spectrum when compression is at play.

Also I can't connect more than 2 devices to my Bluetooth device right now, and even that is very new. That's a lot less than 10. The point is we need to be able to connect a full power speaker setup, audiophile grade headphones, a keyboard, a mouse, a dac/amp stack, and a webcam all at once with low latency and no interference and full bore uncompressed audio quality maintained on each device for audiophile products to move fully wireless. You won't ever convince audiophile diehards that their music sounds the same on Qobuz vs YouTube Music or Spotify on Bluetooth as is. We're not talking about a room full of 100 average people, we're talking about the one person in the room who cares. When the room has 8 billion people, that's still a market large enough to sustain wires for some time until a wireless tech can stream full bore FLAC without compression from an average phone.

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DasGutYa t1_j5h5jzw wrote

"The psychoacoustic model provides for high quality lossy signal compression by describing which parts of a given digital audio signal can be removed (or aggressively compressed) safely—that is, without significant losses in the (consciously) perceived quality of the sound."

Significant and safely are the two words you should be reading there. It's not proven 100% of the original lossless file as its literally lossy and getting it right 'most of the time' as their model does, isn't the same as getting it 'always right'. So lossless is still obviously preferred.

I mean you're really taking the whole work out of context as it's designed to lose less of the recording than the data shrink would suggest, not provide a perfect match for lossless.

Not to mention the factors of the dac and amp portion of a tws, few actually measure 'perfectly' despite sonically transparent dacs and amps (such as topping) being affordable both as portables and desktop set ups. So wireless has a ways to go, that said by someone with both wireless and wired set ups.

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SLJ7 t1_j5b62em wrote

My headphone collection is a confusing array of both wired and wireless, but I probably won't ever stop using wired altogether. I'd love to find a wireless gaming headset that really matches the quality of studio headphones, but so far I haven't. At my desk, I have ATH-M50X hooked up to my mixer to monitor everything. I prefer this because it has no latency and I can monitor a lot of devices. There's aptX-Ll for low-latency audio, but its more trouble than it's worth most of the time. On the phone, Apple has done a really good job of making the new AirPods Pro feel as seamless as possible, but Bluetooth still limits them. Call quality is worse, and there's still a tiny bit of latency. So I still regularly use the EarPods instead. I think we're close to the point where wireless tech will catch up, but we're not quite there yet.

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c9898 t1_j5bmcj5 wrote

Definitely don't use my wired IEMs anymore when I'm out but no way are these disposable techs replacing my headphones at my desk.

>the convenience of lack of wires and ability to move freely while listening wins over any other argument

This is why I have a 10' cable, ha!

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JProllz t1_j5bpglq wrote

Why would I sit around actively draining battery and getting worse sound when I'm not on - the - go? TWS excel at being portable but if you don't actively need that portability their flaws are apparent.

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Xane1985 t1_j5buk0d wrote

Not in the slightest I think. This happens when a new wave of convenience rolls through. People have always been forced into a format or form factor that they wouldn't prefer simply because it's the best they have access to. People moved from books to TV when it became possible, but the book lovers didn't go anywhere.

I feel it's the same way here. People who would've chosen a more convenient route this whole time now are able to. People who want quality over all else are still around.

Also I suspect that many people fall into both camps at the same time. I never take my niece cans outside, only TWS ever leaves the house. As long as I'm chilling at home however, the nice stuff comes out.

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LauriCular t1_j5bxb06 wrote

I have a TWS or two - heading out to walk to the shop, I hear 'battery low' and I know that my music will be punctuated by this warning every 20 seconds until the things turn off. Not very convenient.

The popularity of TWS is due to perceived convenience sure, but how much of its popularity is because people have no choice? I went out of my way to get a V20 phone back in 2018 because it has a headphone socket (gasp), but most people will blindly just buy what's put in front of them.

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RubenRag t1_j5c271a wrote

Not at all, I buy and sell probably 30 pairs a year and just keep the highlights, even those get sold later on, for the last 5 years I’ve only bought 4 pairs of wireless

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Coel_Hen t1_j5d1c15 wrote

I use my Airpod Pro 2s as daily drivers for most things, and I use Airpod Max at my desktop (Mac mini, lol) for general use, but I spend time each day mindfully listening to music on wired sets.

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locus25 t1_j5doh1i wrote

Well... Just because you and 2 of your friends not using it doesn't mean it's dead

There are billions of people around the world you know?

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moneylefty t1_j5ece6n wrote

I agree with you actually. I quit my headphones since i bought speakers and a subwoofer. I will never willingly put on headphones again.

I do however use my tws every once in a while when i run.

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InternationalBug910 t1_j5eovov wrote

Eventually the Bluetooth technology can catch-up with the bandwidth and yes, wired headphone will die that time

However there is still sometime away from that

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Digiarts t1_j5eyrq7 wrote

This is the wrong sub to ask this question I’m afraid. I too have made the jump from wired to wireless when it comes to earbuds(og AirPods)and was blown away how good the sounded and how light they were and the lack of wire would make me forget I had them in.

Recently I got myself Sundaras and while they sound really great the wire just kills it for me. Not to mention open back design where gf can hear them from another room. Anyway got me some focal bathys which are wireless or wired if you wish. Closed back and comfy. The sound is simply great. I can move around the house without worrying about cables or carrying a device with me.

Wired headphones are “more dead” than gas burning vehicles. I’m sure everyone is noticing the trend but some aren’t willing to admit it. There’s applications for wired and there’s no way around it but the convenience factor is the winner for wireless no doubt. I’m looking forward to more offering from major players when it comes to wireless headphones. It’s very exciting times we live in

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Semi_Recumbent t1_j5fpz30 wrote

Not if I can help it. I’ve passed the torch to the next generation. My daughter’s coworker called her a pleb for using wired iems. She just laughed and didn’t draw attention to the price of her Oracles.

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slavicslothe t1_j5fxchs wrote

In a desktop setup no. Its actually faster to use my wired gear on my main system then to attach my airpods pro2. Plus it sounds so much better so definitely not dead. The market cap for high end headphones is 20x what it was in the early 2000s. It’s always been niche.

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DreamDropDistancia t1_j5g8bia wrote

I see what you're getting at. Here's what you need to remember:

Headphones/IEMs, etc. are a means to an end.

If you can hear the music with some semblance of being able to be resolved/in a way that makes you happy, then you're 95+% "of the way there". You'll hear some people around hear say, "I'd never listen to anything lesser", but if something "lesser" was all they had on them, they wouldn't just not listen to music/play games/watch movies anymore - it would be good enough, because that's what is available to them, and it gets the job done.

Nobody needs to hear that last 0.004% of decay from a violin, or that already-highly-synthetic electric guitar. Nobody needs to hear that one guy in the background coughing in the editing booth during the recording, or the buzz of a monitor in the background.

Most products out there get the job done and then some. It's all subject to diminishing returns. Of course it's nicer to have higher fidelity reproduction. It feels different. But not so different that any sane person woud simply stop listening altogether if hi-fi hardware wasn't available to them anymore.

There are many facets to sound reproduction hardware, software, sources, and what makes each individual happy. Find what makes you happy and live your life.

tl;dr - Nothing ever truly dies, and nothing else matters except your enjoyment - don't spend even another second of your life thinking about the state of things, or worrying about what other people are doing.

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ack254 t1_j5mgoe6 wrote

Its like saying Desktops are dead because laptops are so convenient............

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No-Context5479 t1_j5b4rtc wrote

Not great but yes the convenience and how far done wireless data have come in terms of tuning makes them more suitable for mobile usage. Wired stuff still has its place

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pinkcunt123 t1_j5bbwn6 wrote

I've tried a few wireless headphones in stores. I could never get over the HISS they produce, when you turn em on and listen quietly. If they don't hiss, which is rare, they are still a disposable product. As soon as the battery starts failing, like with smartphones, they are done for. Depending on usage this can happen very soon, like after maybe two years or so. What then? Am I expected to spend another 200-300 Euros to buy a new pair, just because the battery on my old one failed and the manufacturer is not offering replacement kits?

Nah thx. I also do not see the convenience to be honest. Another device I have to keep charged aint convenient to me. Especially since a wire hase never gotten in my way. I just route it beneath my t-shirt and that is good enough for me.

And if one is using headphones at home, the situation gets even worse for wireless, in my opinion, since at home portability and isolation are a non issue (most of the time). Sony XM 5 for 340€ that will last 2-4 years, or an HD 600 for 320€ that can last 20 years, if not longer? Heck, I'd even prefer a 150€ HD 560S over the XM4 and I think they will easily last a decade as well.

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giant3 OP t1_j5bdo3n wrote

No need to spend so much for TWS. Some good quality ones are only $50 USD and they last 2 years or so.

I have spent close to $3000 on my wired headphones, but not using them despite their superior SQ.😬

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