I say this as someone with tens of thousands in audio equipment, as someone who can hear the compression warble in the hihats and the cymbals - audio quality with earbuds doesn't actually matter. It's like the argument for audio quality in cars - you're listening in a hostile environment, and convenience wins over fidelity. I remember walking to work one time with over-the-ear Sennheisers attached to my iPod and it felt ridiculous, and unsafe.

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.

The connection type has nothing to do with it though. Modern bluetooth is basically transparent with 256kbps AAC, like you'd have to be an omega-expert listening in a silent room to identify it vs lossless. Certainly the difference you're noticing is just the headphone quality.

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.

I have a friend that was in the music industry for decades, and listening to music was a significant aspect of his job.

To this day (he’s retired), he won’t use wireless (even ones with bespoke connections), or ANC headphones.

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.

I'm reminded of a quote: "the best camera is the one you have on you." People ditched their digital cameras en masse when smartphones became popular. Not because the smartphone cameras were better, but because they were convenient.

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.

> 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.

Comparing Apples to Apples, AirPods are definitely sound better and are more useful than the pack-in iPod earphones that everyone used back then.

> But I recently acquired a schiit vestri and I pair these with some old wired seinheisers (HD1). I cannot overstate the drastic difference in quality.

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.

The average Joe, via AirPods and the like, in 2026 has access to vastly better audio than in 2005.

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.

$19 iems sound better than airpods, the bar is that low, but normies don't care, most probably listen to spotify on auto and get 96kbps anyways. When the batteries invariably die after 2-3 years they'll send another $150 to Tim Apple while their old airpod finally become the e-waste they were destined to be

> 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.

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.

>I cannot overstate the drastic difference in quality.

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?

> where the default choice of headphones is Bluetooth.

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).

You say that as if this wasn't completely to plan. The release of the first airpods and the first iPhone sans headphone jack were at the same time. It was brute-forced.

We've been over this for a couple decades now. The average consumer simply cannot tell the difference between lossless and compressed codecs. Even back 20-25 years ago when people carried around CD players, vanishingly few people batted an eye when those went the way of the dodo and devices started getting loaded up with shitty 128 kbps MP3s. The difference in quality mattered far less than the convenience.

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.

Different people want different things. Whenever I wore wired headphones, I was always catching the wire on things, and I found them really inconvenient - to the point where when I bought a new phone the headphones just went into my pile of unused headphones. AirPods were a complete change for me - I use them constantly. The sound quality difference is irrelevant - I just won't wear wired headphones - the hassle isn't worth it for me.

As someone with probably already a bit of hearing damage and who is generally not an Audiophile. I remember when i switched from Wired Headphones to Wireless and man I cannot hear the difference. Which I assume many people don't either. For me it is no difference in hearing pleasure and much more comfort.

> 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.

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.

I got a pair of Bose qc-25 and a fiio q1 for about the price of a set of earbuds. (Bose were refurbs from bose's ebay store and fiio was closing out the q1 at the time.) That combo kicks the everloving shit out of any Bluetooth headphones I've tried.

Im used to listening to a staticy job site radio half way across the shop. I dont really care about the quality as long as its better than that. I feel most people are the same.

>the quality of audio that folks were generally listening to in 2005 was better than what we are doing today

Is it tho ? I remember back in the day, most of my music collection is in 128kbps mp3, well under the bandwidth of bluetooth

I often use wired $10 Sony ZX headphones and for audio even those are vastly superior to any earbuds, including my AirPod Pros.

The AirPods were the most convenient piece of electronics I’ve ever owned, but the sound is earbud quality.

I would venture to guess that the average user can’t tell. Most of the time, I’m just looking for some background noise, not a listening experience. The speaker on the iPhone is good enough for that.

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.

It is even worse in home theater. People went from legit sound systems with an amp and speaker wire runs to actual speakers, proper audio channels, to what at best a sound bar from walmart and zero dynamic range.

On my older android phone I always have problems watching anything with bluetooth headphones adding so much lag that the video gets very desynced with the audio. So I will continue to use wired headphones (now via usb-c adapter since the dedicated port is gone)

Not just audio quality. Playback and consumption quality. My Winamp setup c 2005 was worlds better than what’s possible now on a typical listening device. Eq. Crossfading. Visualizer.

All possible but not common

FYI: There are now lossless Bluetooth codecs if you care to find them.

Can you get anc with wired ones?

Talking about sound quality: I'm surprised at how good the Apple event sounded, even on your average (wired) headphones

Sounds much better than some 80% of YT videos

I used to obsess over audio quality. But then I reached my 40s, and it started to become clear that my ageing ears were becoming the limiting factor.

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)

> 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.

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.

The average person was not listening to music with multi-hundred-dollar headphones in 2005. They were using cheap earbuds.

If you are using apple then its AAC from your phone directly to your headphones… so not seeing where the quality drop would come from.

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