I finally capitulated to earbuds when they started giving them away with the Pixel phones. The "find my" feature basically justifies the pro-prices, to me, because my biggest complaint about bluetooth earbuds in my own use case was how easily they're lost. I've lost and recovered my Pixel Buds Pro 2 a couple of times now. When traveling a lot by train and plane, the convenience of pocket-sized noise-cancelling earbuds has become worth it for me.
But when I'm on meetings, I'm wired in. During the pandemic, I lost track of how many times my colleagues' Airpods would sputter out and die in the middle of a client meeting. Then they'd switch to wired headphones and their Macbook microphone. They sounded better, they could hear better, and there was no battery power sword of Damocles anymore.
Edit: to answer your question below, I like both, active and passive listening. But I wouldn't try to optimize for active criteria like details in a passive evironment like a car, so I'd spend more money on fun things like buttkickers instead of high end detail.
Also soundstage can be greatly improved by placing speakers on non factory locations because manufacturers usually prioritize packaging above all else. A tweeter placed at the bottom of the A-pillar near the windshield is the worst possible location and sounds like it was put in a tin can.
Background noise in a car also has a solution, turning up the volume. Plus getting quiet tires.
Ripping the car apart to install sound insulation might void your warranty.
I have a Bose sound system in my car with 11 or 13 speakers (they're everywhere), but the car is so poorly insulated that I have to turn up the volume quite a lot at highway speeds, or even after about ~ 35-40MPH.
On my Toyota it only involved basic removal of interior panels, I can't imagine that affecting warranty or resale
There is a reason premium audio car packages cost over 2000$
I'm not audiophile, but I was prepared to do the same, despite the discomfort and obviously-lower sound quality... but the mic isn't even sufficient for meetings in a public place (e.g. a diner at lunch time), whereas my laptop's builtin mic is. How can they expect us to use these things??
To further this concept, the reason why you tolerate variable quality isn’t just convenience or accessibility. It’s because you can’t carry your setup around, yes, but furthermore you don’t habitually listen to music because you have the best setup. You do it because you love music. In that regard, the user experiences do become interchangeable. Quality music is accessible on every device and you will listen to it with anything if you love music. The user experience enjoyment levels are ultimately similar with most devices for you, purely when it comes to music listening, just because you love music. It’s a consistently good UX for you.
I say all of this as someone who has also wasted money on expensive listening devices (and loves music) and also someone who isn’t like, crazy about the modern Apple UX. They just got earbuds right when it comes to the experience of an Apple ecosystem user.
Every 'pod' type headphones I've used do this. It's odd you admit to only knowing Apple, then use it to support Apple being superior.
I always assumed it was more about the position and size of the microphone.
It's technically not a bandwidth issue, AFAIK, it is a "profile" issue. When listening to audio only you are using a different bluetooth profile than when you are using it for two way mic+speakers.
Try playing some music on your computer and then start a video call. Even before I jump into the meeting, as soon as I hit the Google meet site and it opens up the meeting "camera preview" page, the music quality goes straight into the toilet.
This also happens to my "puck" speaker+mic array that is connected via USB.
Argh. Isn’t this direct evidence that it is not the “Bluetooth profile”? Since it’s directly connected via USB?
Honestly for me the Airpods 4 with ANC are one of the greatest feats of audio engineering ever. For such a tiny form factor they reproduce really great sound, big soundstage, AND they have good ANC without needing a closed earbud seal. They also have internal mics that listen to the response of your ear to adjust the sound profile, which you can hear happen in real time after bumping the earbuds. Obviously you can get better sound if you make different tradeoffs and wear over-ears, but they are absolutely cutting edge for what they are.
Sure, unless you want to do something rare and exotic like, say, have a microphone on your headset. Then you get the HFP/HSP profile, which makes two tin cans linked by a string seem high quality by comparison.
[0]: https://www.revk.uk/2017/12/its-official-adsl-works-over-wet...
But it sure is nice to be able to make phone calls where people don't sound worse than they did with digitally-switched analog landline telephones in 1995. Bluetooth doesn't get there at all.
The losses of Bluetooth even compound generationally: The inescapable tin-can audio of Bluetooth at one end first gets transmogrified by at least one intermediate lossy codec for transmission across/betwixt the network(s), and then gets tin-canned harder when the far end of the connection is also using Bluetooth.
For perspective: 1995's phone calls were ultimately limited by the G.711 codec, which itself dates to 1972. I'm not setting the bar very high here at all.
Of course that sounds like a tin can either way, it's coming in encoded with the quality of a tin can! People here are talking about modern VoIP calls (Teams/Slack/Discord/Zoom/etc) which have a snowball's chance in hell of sounding decent in the first place. HSP/HFP will often crank that right back down to traditional phone network quality again. You also lose stereo, which isn't so bad if the only thing you're doing is having a 1:1 call but kind of sucks for a background group call.
But now that you mention it: Yeah, the state of common VoIP (Teams/Slack/Zoom/whatever) is also usually not very good. It's like there's some huge bandwidth crunch here in 2026 that is driven by the strenuous demands of VoIP, except: There isn't.
When I was doing some live streaming with others in a studio a couple of years ago, we worked with some of that. It never sounded very good. (It doesn't sound very good when the big-time acts at CBS or NPR or Fox News do it, either.)
But! When we occasionally had remote co-hosts who had enough technical competence to make it work properly on their end, we were able to use SonoBus[1]. That audio was positively pristine, like they were sitting unseen in the same room as everyone else.
It's an inscrutable mess.
Wires don't have these problems. Plug them in. Use them. Clean the contacts every now and then if/when they get crudded up.
That only works with A2DP one-way audio. The two-way HFP mode still uses the horrible classic BT compression unless the new BLE-based LE Audio is used(but IIUC Apple still don't support it). Besides there are still many devices that only supports BT's own 2000s-optimal SBC codec.
All that to say.. what's best, cheap, no wires, no headaches and happy or expensive, wires, having to download music and make a library etc and always looking for the next high, the next minor improvement?
One of the happiest days of my life was when I listened to my music on a 10$ mp3 player with 2$ earphones after 3 months of not listening to it.
So yeah, you may be right, even though I've tried 3000$ open-ear audiophile headphones, with an amazing amplifier, listening on tidal and it didn't blow me away but even if it did, I'd be stupid to even try, then I'd know what I'm missing and craving a 5000$ setup when I'm already happy with the 1 inch box I can easily carry wherever I go.
The market has spoken. People drastically prefer the convenience of Bluetooth over the quality that comes along with having to constantly untangle wires or having audio cut in and out from failing wires.
On top of that, universal adoption of noise cancellation has resulted in dramatically better quality in practice than what people were using in 2005. Yes, wired headphones with noise cancellation are even better, but not to a point that people are willing to sacrifice the convenience of going wireless.
The early 00's transition from CRT to LCD monitors was similar. The early desktop LCD panels were expensive, had worse refresh rates, worse contrast, and worse colour rendering. To this day, even very good modern displays struggle to match CRT motion rendering.
But LCDs are so much thinner and lighter, and that was enough to overcome the disadvantages.
A 20" viewable area, 1920 x 1440 CRT in the late 1990s? $800 [1] and that was the king of monitors.
A 22", 1920 x 1080 flat screen today? $65 [2] and considered the most basic, mundane screen out there.
And inflation-adjusted? That $800 monitor was $1500 in today's money.
[1] https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/comparison,497.html [2] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CVM2GJCN
But, as soon as I could get an LCD with DVI-D input, I never wanted to go back to a CRT. I just got whatever high resolution Dell LCD monitors I could find. I was much happier with perfect pixel addressing and zero bleed for rendering my text terminals and source code. I didn't care about color rendition and hardly cared about ghosting from scrolling.
Comparing Apples to Apples, AirPods are definitely sound better and are more useful than the pack-in iPod earphones that everyone used back then.
To this day (he’s retired), he won’t use wireless (even ones with bespoke connections).
I use AirPods when I take my morning walks. The shitty quality is actually a plus, because I can hear the cars that try to run me over (I walk at 5:30 AM, and people are not at the top of their game, at that time).
I have a couple of pairs of Bose QC headphones, for in-home listening. There’s nothing [wireless] that comes close, for ANC.
The new regular AirPods are interesting to me.
These sound better because they're $500 full-size headphones, not because they lack Bluetooth.
> It is quite absurd (but categorically true) that the quality of audio that folks were generally listening to in 2005 was better than what we are doing today
The AirPods use 256kbps AAC. If you set up a true ABX test, you would not be able to tell the difference between 256kbps AAC and lossless using the same gear.
In 2005, you had serious and expensive high end audio from the established brands (Sennheiser, Beyerdynamic etc.) and you had consumer audio for consumer prices that sounded pretty terrible: no bass extension, flat mids.
In 2026 you have:
- Serious and expensive high end audio from the established brands (maybe even some of the same models as 2005...)
- A new category of convenience driven "mid-fi" like all the Sony, Bose etc. ANC headphones and AirPods Pro - often with the "laid back, a lot of bass, slightly recessed mids" sound signature but still producing very acceptable sound
- Consumer audio for consumer prices, but now even the cheap earbuds and headphones (JBL, chinese brands etc.) sound by all means passable, are wireless, have good battery life
I would say there has never been a better time to be a "good sound enjoyer" than now.
I have several sets of high end headphones and have spent more on audio equipment than I probably should.
I enjoy my AirPods very much. They're great. They don't replace full-size headphones, but that's not what I bought them for.
I find all of this brand-bashing and talk about "normies" to be funny. The AirPods lineup is actually really enjoyed in the kinds of audiophile circles where they actually measure stuff and don't care which logo is on the box.
I don't get the comparison to the $19 IEMs because they're completely different product than the AirPods.
You're free to be an egoistic brain dead consumer, most people are, so go for it! Ignorance is bliss as they say
This isn't really true in any applicable way though.
Firstly, most people in 2005 were ripping CDs onto their ipods at itunes' 128kbps default - you're still only getting 160kbps today if you're running the free ad-supported Spotify plan but more people are paying for full quality.
More importantly though, the biggest impact on sound quality is noise isolation. People listen to music on the street, in an office bullpen, or public transport: in 2005 your wired sennheissers would need to be overear to deal with that environment in any reasonable manner.The ANC in even the non-pro in-ear airpods is giving you a night-&-day improvement.
Quality is governed by your subjective experience. The HD1s are tuned in a way that, paired with the Vestri and the files, creates the experience that you enjoy better. That's it. It's not about "better quality" and definitely not about "fidelity."
You also paid probably $99 for something that Apple perfected and sells for $10 -- that USB DAC. Which is fine! You should spend money on things that make you happy.
>The quality of audio that folks were generally listening to in 2005 was better than what we are doing today.
This sentence doesn't have enough detail. What is quality supposed to mean here?
Unfortunately not giving wired headphones away (with the phone purchase) and not including the standard 3.5 mm headphone jack, means that 'normal' people just put their phone calls and play their video on speaker, to the annoyance of everyone (on public transport).
There are many, many people who are even technically minded who would be surprised that their expensive AirPods Max cannot reproduce lossless audio from Apple Music when used wirelessly.
The average audiophile can't either.
Don't believe me? Try it for yourself, bust out your most expensive DAC and headphones, but be careful, you can't unexperience this
Modern codec at a decent bitrate: inaudible.
Ironically, it could be the expensive DAC and headphones that helps the codec conceal itself.
That is to say, an audiophile who prefers gear that causes pleasant distortion might hear a difference through that gear, because the codec doesn't account for trying to mask its artifacts through equipment distortion (perhaps distortion in the ear itself only).
Say the codec removes something from the signal on the psycho-acoustic hypothesis that it is masked by something louder occurring close to before or after. That hypothesis is correct under hi-fi conditions, but suppose that the user's distorting tube power amp brings out that something, making it audible. Then removing it is potentially audible!
I seem to recall most people being perfectly content with 128kbps MP3s on iPod earbuds back in the day. Only audiophiles/nerds (of which there seem to be more now) were into actual headphones and amp setups and there's never been greater market choice in this regard.
Is it tho ? I remember back in the day, most of my music collection is in 128kbps mp3, well under the bandwidth of bluetooth
The AirPods were the most convenient piece of electronics I’ve ever owned, but the sound is earbud quality.
I have a pair of wired Seinheisers, and they sound great, but 99% of the time, my priority is convenience, and anything that makes sound will do.
All possible but not common
Sounds much better than some 80% of YT videos
Now I just embrace the convenience of Bluetooth and usefulness of noise cancelling.
(But then again, even my AirPods or Sony XM4s are high fidelity compared to what many of the kids these days are listening with, small mono bluetooth speakers or playing music out of their phone speakers)
I don't believe this statement is true, as someone who cares about audio quality and has been making my own audio equipment and buying high end audio gear since well before 2005. The bar for the average has raised considerably in the last 21 years, even though it was always possible to have better. I use AirPods when I'm traveling on a plane or walking/commuting by public transit and to take phone calls, when I want to listen to music critically I have a >$10k headphone setup that obviously puts a pair of AirPods to shame. They're not the same device for the same use case, and that doesn't make them somehow "bad". Use the right tool for the job.