[FiiO]

Chapter 1 Foreword: Will wired earphones be eliminated?

In fact, this year there are a lot of things that seem particularly crazy and are against common sense.
On the one hand, chip shortage. Some manufacturers say that the decline in sale volume is due to the lack of chip (indeed, this is our case). On the other hand, prices were cut drastically during sales promotion of Double Eleven in China (we didn’t).
There are many 3C digital products (computer, communication and consumer electronics) in higher and higher prices. While there are also many 3C products whose prices continue to decline, falling beyond our imagination. For example, during Double Eleven promotion in China, a certain brand of TWS earplugs can even be bought as low as 10USD. Frankly speaking, even for ordinary wired earplugs, it is difficult for us to set this price.
So here comes the problem. Everyone knows that the main reason for the rapid growth of TWS in the past two years are the ease of use and the continuous decline in its price. Now people can get access to the TWS of certain famous brand at the price of 10 USD, then in addition to the niche HIFI earplugs, will there be a market for wired earphones in a broad sense? In addition to the unsatisfactory sound quality of TWS, are there any reasons why people choose wired earphones?

 

[FiiO]

Chapter 2 Wired earphones with microphone will be better, if there are requirements for the sound quality of the call

Last Saturday, I updated a post to see how you guys view the idea of TWS is replacing wired earphones. Of course, HIFI wired earphones are still hiding in their own small world with the last barrier of "sound quality". However, though the price of HIFI wired earphones is indeed very high, and the sound quality is not the only answer for consumer to choose wired earphones, wired earphones are still very hot in certain scenarios.
The epidemic that started two years ago made online lectures/online conferences a common scene in daily life. Due to the inherent acoustic limitations of TWS, even with the addition of an array composed of multiple microphones (in fact, there are very few models of multi-microphone arrays in TWS), the sound pickup effect of the Mic is still not satisfactory. However, since the mic is close to the mouth and some people will even put the microphone next to the mouth, so the sound pickup effect of the traditional wired earphones with microphone is much better than TWS.
In fact, it is quite ashamed to find this. My child is in her sophomore year and some foreign teachers can only have online courses since they can’t come to China. One day, she asked me if FiiO has wired earphones with microphone. And I said, you already have AirPods PRO and TWS from Xiaomi, why do you need wired earphones? Then she said that she had been using FiiO’s F1 for the online classes. The F1 came with a microphone and the sound pickup effect is much better.
Therefore, no matter how convenient of TWS is, it still fail to replace the traditional wired earphones with a microphone in some cases where require clear calls/recordings.

 

[leeperry]

I will never use wireless headphones/earbuds due to obvious health hazards, I don't trust any of these and call it natural selection.

I also never stick any smartphone to my skull, I solely use them with wired earbuds. I do use a wireless mouse for that matter but ear canals are too damn close to the brain huh.

Exactly my point https://www.healthline.com/health-news/are-wireless-headphones-dangerous

 

[Jacobal]

Wireless can and is improving, but will never sound the same as wired. What one gains in convenience is lost by trading it in for sound quality, which might be worth it for some people.

 

[mochill]

Wireless can and is improving, but will never sound the same as wired. What one gains in convenience is lost by trading it in for sound quality, which might be worth it for some people.

I think the final ze3000 might be as good as wired

 

[Edric Li]

TWS in its case is too bulky for me to carry around. The day TWS hit 10hrs of battery life w/o the case is when I will begin to consider them. The fear of not being able to listen to my music when I want to is too much.

 

[FiiO]

Chapter 3 Wired connection, no latency

Latency, an insurmountable difficulty for Bluetooth. FiiO has been making Bluetooth products for several years. It is no exaggeration to say that it can be regarded as a Chinese head manufacturer in terms of product types and the depth of research and development of Bluetooth audio coding and decoding. Because the technology investment direction of large companies are still in the noise cancellation and how the bottom layers cooperate with mobile phones.
Therefore, we still have some research and say on Bluetooth technology. At present, there is also an "impossible triangle" in the application of Bluetooth technology, that is, between sound quality, latency and anti-interference (distance), you can only manage to acheive two of them at most and give up one. This is mainly because the bandwidth of Bluetooth has been limited on the Bluetooth protocol. This is also the biggest reason why Apple refuses to support LDAC/aptX on the Bluetooth support of mobile phones. Because what Apple pursues is stable and reliable connection.
However, no matter how optimized Bluetooth is, latency is inevitable. Because Bluetooth is a low-power transmission technology, the power transmitted by Bluetooth is strictly limited (in a sense, WIFI is the unsealed Bluetooth, because WIFI and Bluetooth are operating in the 2.4G band). Therefore, in order to ensure that sound interruptions do not occur frequently, data is buffered during Bluetooth audio transmission. To make a simple analogy, the receiving end will store the data transmitted by Bluetooth for 1 second in memory and then convert it into audio signal output. In this way, in case the transmitted data receives interference, the receiving end can continue to maintain a continuous output of 1 second. Therefore, we can think that Bluetooth transmission can only be called non-real-time transmission, and there must be latency. At present, the best latency for Bluetooth in theory is about 50 milliseconds, but it will be higher than this in practical applications.
Wired headphones are different. Because the wired earphone transmission signal is a real-time system, it cannot be buffered and does not need to be buffered, and there is no sound interruption or distortion caused by external electromagnetic signal interference. Therefore, the latency of wired headphones = 0
Therefore, in some latency-sensitive scenes, wired earphones have their irreplaceable advantages, for example, gaming . For mobile game lovers, especially some users who are keen on playing audio games, wired headphones are your most reliable teammates.

 

[Ynot1]

I was told that for fire hazards certain building code requires that furnace ducting maintain a minimum space distance away from support structures. Apparently even though the ducting will never reach temperatures to ignite a fire, experts indicated that even at lower temperatures prolong exposure to elevated heat can pose a fire hazard.

Just wonder like the auto makers that say transmission fluid never needs to be replaced for the life of the vehicle. But who's life of the vehicle, right?
You can't always believe what they say it is. Like so called healthy eating nutritionists that say you need so many calories a day to maintain a good health.
But not all calories are the same. And I got a kick out of the TV guest speaker pointing out how you can eat a spretzel and some gummy bears and you're half way there
to a healthy diet for the day.

Back in the day experts said low exposure to EMF (electro-magnetic field) was not a serious risk to a person's healthy. But I wonder how this was assessed. Possibly had executives staring down at them in the same room. Anyway, over time they have lowered and lowered the EMF emissions, which is a good thing. But knowing all of the false reporting going on these days I would not hold my breath that people are now all of a sudden telling the honest facts.

Bluetooth related: I think latency is ok as long as it is at the beginning of the audio transmission. The analogy is like eating a meal. You can delay me long enough that the food does not get cold, but after I have started eating, please man I'm eating right now. Netflix does bufferring at the beginning to give it the best chance of avoiding latency issues impacting the quality of experience eating or binge-ing.

 

[FiiO]

Chapter 4 Is it a false proposition that HiFi products are becoming more and more expensive?

It is not new to the Internet that HiFi headphones and players are becoming more expensive. I have to admit that. Let's take earplugs as an example. The first AKG K3K3 really broke the imagination of the market/users, but the sales volume of the K3K3 is actually quite good. Therefore, there are more and more ten thousand yuan(1500USD+) earphones coming out, and it is common to see a 1500USD earphones now. And it's even getting higher.
However, as the saying goes, "dog's bite is not news, people bite dogs is news". In fact, the price ceiling of HIFI market is getting higher, but not all products are more and more expensive. The proportion of over 1500USD products in the whole market is actually very small.
Take FiiO as an example. FiiO has launched hundreds of models of products in the past ten years, and only M17 is the one that's more than 1500USD. In fact, the HiFi market, especially among Chinese brands, the competition is getting more and more fierce. So everyone is trying hard to innovate and improve cost performance.
This time FiiO also plans to introduce an earphones with outstanding quality, excellent sound quality and excellent workmanship rather than making money. We do not compare with the competitors.Compared to the F1 with similar price we launched before, the cost of the product increased by 100%. Considering the cost on channels, promotion, after-sales, taxes and charges, this earplug is the first model in FiiO's history that did not intend to make money when it was designed.
So, aren't businesses all for profit? In fact, just like any industry, competition is becoming more and more fierce and prices are getting lower and lower. This time we launched this super cost-effective product for the purpose of promoting our brand and getting more users to experience our products, as long as this is completed, it is far more cost-effective than other brands to spend a lot of money on advertising.
Today, let's introduce the biggest highlight of this earphones. At a very low price, we use stainless steel as the shell of the earphones. Our greatest hope is to design a "steel quality" HiFi dynamic earphones for everyone, not only with in-line control to help everyone in class, meetings and the stainless steel CNC process is also used on the shell of the earplug regardless of cost. This can not only ensure the high quality of the product, but also the metal texture of stainless steel itself will improve the grade of the product.
Of course, the most important thing for HiFi products is sound quality. Recently, there has been a lot of talk that several parties are using a 10,000-yuan plug driver to re-engrave very cheap earplugs for sale. We will not discuss whether it is true or not here, but many people also realize that even the same driver, with shells of different materials and shapes will indeed affect the performance of sound. And stainless steel metal shell, high strength, is also a common material for high-end earplugs, so call back, do you find that, in fact, the pioneer of high-priced earphones, K3K3 is actually a stainless steel shell?

 

[FiiO]

Chapter 5 More than simple

People who really make products all know that in many cases, simplicity is the most difficult. Take a product to study casually, and you will find that under the simple appearance is an extremely complicated interior. Even sometimes, it costs a lot to achieve the simplicity. The most typical case is Apple's first large-scale mass production unibody metal design, in short, is to use a piece of metal through CNC-based machining process to make the shell of the product.
Similarly, the earphones to be launched by FiiO also have an extremely simple appearance and workmanship, but under the simple and delicate shell, they also have rich design details and thoughts, including:
9.2 mm powerful composite neodymium magnet driver
Dual-cavity acoustic design to enhance the elasticity and texture of low frequencies.
Pleasant listening semi-open acoustic design
Strikingly solid unibody stainless steel construction
Carefully tuned acoustics sound reflection-absorbing design
It can be said that the price of this earplug shows the sincerity FiiO has never had before, that is, almost every penny you spend is used on the product. The design will never be perfunctory because it does not intend to make money. The stainless steel shell and the semi-open back cover with left blue and right red have sufficient identification. In terms of sound quality, it's not just a dynamic driver. It adpots the semi-open design, double cavities and enhanced sound absorption design. The details are also considerate, retaining the microphone and in-line control functions, which not only meet the needs of everyone to enjoy music, but also have a wider range of uses.
The intention of all this is to make friends with everyone with the greatest sincerity.