Wow. So much hate for wireless/bluetooth devices.
When are people going to get over the fact that our technology has evolved to the point that wireless/bluetooth listening over wired listening should not have any difference in audible quality for listening purposes?
That stated, yes, the audio industry does not churn up its flagships in wireless yet but I feel it's mostly because most audiophile lovers (who are the consumers of higher end audio) strongly have bias of wired over wireless. Plus, at least until now, the 'graph' of audio quality of a wired headphone seems to be better on 'paper' over those of the 'graph' of audio quality of a wireless headphone at a similar investment.
That stated, I personally too (am unfortunately a victim of this) am part of this 'wired' cult but quite frankly, it's a bit silly. It's as silly as claiming pro-gamers need to use wired mouse since wireless mouse does not register as fast enough. And we all know in practice this is very off since professional gamers use wireless mouses all the time and have no problems with it.
Any form of bluetooth is not meant for accurate production of ANY high quality music source . So we went from totally acceptable CD (my choice is always vinyl but I'm happy with CD frequency response
for normal everyday listening) to this streaming abomination of audio which cuts out important frequency range as well, they need POWER to operate.
Wow.
Strong hate here.
Let me put my experience. Yes, I too hear the difference between wired and wireless headphones in sound quality. But despite that, this specific claim intrigued me:
The vinyl is the SOURCE material which then I make my digital files and playlists.
When you have audio technology (bluetooth) that mangles vocals, drum cymbal sounds for example, it is immediately obsolete
when comparing to basic standards of audio which existed 30 years ago.
Congratulations on vinyl as source material.
But does this really matter?
Honestly, I can barely hear the difference between MP3 and FLAC. Heck from 320 kbps MP3, telling the difference is like.. throwing a coin and praying for heads and tails.
Heck, even from 192kbps, I can't tell the difference and surely not in casual listening. In fact for casual listening, if the music is very well recorded, even a 128 kbps sounds 'normal' (not for comparison purposes but for general listening without caring much in which the music does not accentuate the lows and highs as much).
We all love the 'placebo' effect but seriously, I even tested with HD800 (not mine) in which even the friend admitted the file bitrate barely makes any sound difference. The upgrade in headphone/iem is more noticeable in sound quality than an upgrade in bitrates.
And audio technology has vastly improved from back 30 years ago.
I know cause I have MANY CDs of classical music (was pretty damn expensive back then).
It's full of air noises and all (especially in piano solos). If that type of recording is considered high quality, then yes, modern audio technology has greatly fallen by then. But then again, why use laptops? Go back to ENIACs!
Seriously, the elitism of 'past stuffs were better' is becoming more or less a joke.
The truth is, technology (including in audio) has evolved greatly in the past 30 years. Don't believe me? Just look around you.
There are still lots of faithful 'encyclopedia books were far better and modern technology degraded the knowledge available' cultists around. However, I personally believe the modern technology (wiki, etc.) are far better overall and I feel these cultists just couldn't accept the changes undergoing.
Anyways, audio technology (especially recording) has vastly improved from back then. I can testify a significant portion of past VINYL and CD records had lots of distortions in the recording itself cause while the quality might be 'flawless', the recorders back then were not up to par.
Maybe there were indeed recorders that could be up to par, but it was surely not available to the wide audience of musicians. It's like claiming supercomputers from 10 years ago were faster than regular laptops right now. 1. Comparison is pointless. 2. I doubt majority of computer users could even afford supercomputers. 3. Meh.
That stated, I do agree with you on one thing. As of right now, wired audio devices provide a noticeable difference in sound quality. But I feel it's mostly because there's not much money to be made in the wireless world over the 'bluetooth can never sound decent'. If my wireless computer can play real-time heavy games while also streaming multiple flac/videos, I see no problem how a simple device that only syncs in music would have much problems. And this is coming from a computer science/math major. We already achieved the technology like 20 years ago to get 'flac' quality on bluetooth devices. It's just that companies don't see much money to be made in that area anyways.
Just my thoughts. The wireless industry has just as much potential (if not more, who knows). Just give it time. If the consumers strongly prefer wireless, it would just be a matter of time before high ends come out in wireless instead of wired.
