one of the first things to go are the cables, can you imagine spending all that money on earphones only for the cable to go just after warranty, and believe me its happened to millions. downsides?? what downsides?
ok now if you have a poorly designed set of earphones that have replaceable cables then this may be a bigger fault than advantage, there will be nothing worse than needing to replace the cable every 6 months you are better off with a much better designed fixed cable that could last years anyway. but in all honesty most replacement cables are a feature of higher end earphones and are well thought out.
the only other downside i can imagine happening but is very rare is the connections widening and becoming loose no matter if you replace cable or not but i havnt seen a case of this myself.
the pro's outweigh the con's all day long, in fact i cant see why all high end earphones dont feature replaceable cables. the only reason i can think of is cost to the manufacturer to implement it into the design.
