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Comment by NikolaNovak | Hacker News Reader

- they last forever. I still have sennheiser hd380 pro cans from 25 years ago that sound great.

- cannot overstate lack of lag and simplicity. You plug in and it works, perfectly, every time, forever.

- easily switch devices. I use my headphone on my phone, tablet, laptop, Synthesizer, Groovebox etc without a blink. And my phone never stops playing music and connects to our car my wife just started the way bluetooth ones do :-)

- to me, it's like email. Icq, aim, msn messenger come and go, yet email is old and boring but survives.

There's absolutely a time and place for wireless headphones and I probably use them more at this point. But killing 3.5mm from phones has been a Massive annoyance.

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It is worth pointing out that not all parts age equally well. The cushions especially are not that durable and should be considered consumables.

Sennheiser provides replacements should you need them. The effect they have on the sound is much bigger than you might think.

Yeah the sound stage definitely gets impacted. I tend to use leather cups in the winter and fabric ones in the summer. Nothing worse than sweating from your temples while you work.

I've had to replace the pads on my Sony 7506 cans as well. I was very impressed with the parts that can be replaced on these cans. The packing includes an exploded diagram of the parts.

I love my 7506s. And I have a recurring event on my calendar to remind me to buy new pads every 2 years. That's almost exactly how long they last. I've tried 3 brands and they've all lasted almost exactly 2 years. The original Sony pads also lasted 2 years.

> Sennheiser provides replacements should you need them.

Not anymore for my old 380 pro. Had to settle for aftermarket versions that feel a little softer but also sound a bit different.

Yeah, i got couple of third party replacements recently for my 2 hd380pros.

The leatherette one was useless within 2 years. Outside became slimey / sticky, the inside just shrunk.

The velour one works fine but feels different to original. I just ordered a mesh one to try too.

I have some Sony cans that have lasted for over a decade and multiple third party suppliers have made the foam pieces easy to procure.

I bought the official ear pad replacements for my PXC450 back when those were available, for 1/4 of what the headset cost. They are so terrible that I stopped using the headphones entirely. I lost faith in Sennheiser after that, now I just use cheaper ear buds.

I bought the $21.99 Chinese replacement “Sennheiser” pads from Amazon. Straightforward to replace (though not trivial). Very comfortable. My headset feels as good as new.

> The cushions especially are not that durable and should be considered consumables.

This is because they're mostly synthetic "leather", which doesn't last long. Everyone is probably familiar with how synthetic leather starts to flake off. Icky. If you get some pads made from real leather (usually lamb is the go-to choice) they'll last virtually forever. However since real leather is heaver and less porous, this changes the way they sound very noticably (makes them sound less open). If you use open/half-open headphones anyways, the difference won't be too extreme: just moves the sound closer to closed headphones. On closed headphones leather cups make it feel something is covering/plugging my ears. Uncomfortable. Would not recommend.

Worse than how quickly fabric and synthetic leather degrades is arguably that those cups can hardly be cleaned and even when not that old get icky quickly, with dirt stuck in fabric and fine cracks.

Is there any way to preserve those synthetic materials and gain a longer shelf life (eg. 15+ years)? Eg. Heat sealed foil bags with excess air removed, or even filled with nitrogen? The idea is to buy several spare consumables when you first purchase the equipment, and break them out at regular intervals.

I have the same problem with vulcanized coatings that go sticky after several years (looking at you, 3D Connexion SpaceMouse, Saitek X52, etc).

You can remove the sticky vulcanised coating by rubbing will isopropanol or acetone. It's a bit of work, but beats throwing a working device out.

Yeah but then you're left with a hard plastic surface. Have you ever successfully re-coated?

No, I've just left it smooth. You can buy spray-on rubber paint that would probably work though.

If you manufacture something it's nice to ask what part breaks first and consider making it easy to replace.

A friend worked at sennheiser about 15 years ago and I took advantage of his cost-price deal on a pair of HD700. They are, without a doubt, the best sounding and most comforted cans I've ever used. Now, I treated them badly, throwing them into ruck sacks etc, and eventually one of the transducers failed. I contacted Sennheiser who charged me €140 to "repair" them... They sent me a brand new set with the thick silver core cable (I never sent mine back so now I have two, and those cost over 100 bucks by themselves)

How do they compare to Bose QuietComfort?

- sorry just kidding. I couldn‘t resist.

> they last forever

Until my cat finds them.

Any serious set of wired headphones better have replaceable wires because apparently they are delicious

Any cable, I tell you ... any cable. Ruined multiple USB cables, and almost went through two Laptop charger cable.

Replaceable cables have always been a high priority for me. I've been using SHURE SE215 for almost 2 decades at this point.

Ehh I'm not considering it a dealbreaker. Easy to splice and fix 3.5mm. Donors found at thrift stores or in your drawer (or remaining length of undamaged wire).

The issue is on the headset side. Some can be tedious to take apart and replace the cable.

Why take it apart? You can just cut it mid line and splice directly to that. Chances are the failure point isn't right on the last bit of the headset end of the cable length.

IME it's either at the plug side, or at the headphone. I've never had a cable go bad in the middle. I think it's the same kind of issue as apple's power connectors: they always go bad next to the connectors.

I've had headphone cables break in the middle as the cable got hard and brittle from body heat / sweat over time.

I’ve used many pairs of wired headphones over the years, cheap and expensive, and never had ones with a cable that didn’t eventually fail, unless they mostly stay plugged into a single device.

The article prominently highlights mobile usage, in which case wireless headphones easily win on longevity.

Most high end headphones have a replaceable cable. What have you tried on the expensive end of the spectrum?

Not even high-end nowadays, you really have to scrape the bottom of the barrel for something with a nonreplaceable cable. Even for iems.

One of the key features (for me) of my Sennheiser HD 600 was the replaceable cables. Plugs at both ends of the cable.

I LOVED my Grado headphones but destroyed three pairs of them and was soldering my own ends on the cables over and over.

I think it’s maybe close to a wash between non-replaceable batteries in wireless headphones dying and cords failing, in my experience at least. The ideal case IMO is over-ear headphones that have a replaceable cord—I have some 14 year old Bose QCs and some newer Beyerdynamics, both of which I’ve replaced the cord on.

The difference is I can easily fix a broken cable.

I bought a pair of Philips headphones with a replaceable cord. Instead the jack became loose.

I’ve been using Bluetooth wireless headphones exclusively when I’m portable since 2006 (Sony Ericsson HBH-DS970 represent), with only wired use at a desk and I’ve never looked back.

Have batteries actually ever FAILED in wireless headphones? Sure, they degrade and charge becomes lower, but I've never had them outright fail. A headphone that lasts my 2-3 hours of commute/daily use is completely useable, even if it's original charge lasted 5 hours.

Cables do fail though, completely. They become unusable.

In my entire life time of using headphones/earbuds since school with the PSP, ALL wired options have failed after 1-2 years for purely mechanical cable reasons. Not a single wireless failed for electronic reasons. The did fail for me dropping them and stepping on them reasons, though.

My sennheiser earbuds are now down to 15 minutes of battery life. Less if it's a cold day. Sure, they're not completely dead yet, but they're effectively useless. And it's not like I can easily replace the batteries. Most wired earbuds or headphones at a similar price point have replaceable cables.

Shure sells wireless earbuds where the BT / battery sits outside the earbud itself and can be user-replaced. You can even attach them to good ol' 3.5 mm cables! And, since the connector on the earbud is standard, you can actually attach either other-brand earbuds or other-brand BT adapters. Other brands probably have something similar.

I have a pair or Shure IEMs I bought as wired over a decade ago. I've converted them to a lighting cable when I bought my iphone 7, then switched to BT when that cable failed.

Sure, the IEMs are bigger than airpods or similar models, but I find it's a good compromise. I wouldn't go back to wired headphones while at work, and certainly not while on the go.

My daughter had to replace the LiPo battery in her headphones twice after they would not charge at all.

A couple months ago, the battery in my Sony wh1000xm3’s failed to hold any charge at all. Was an easy replacement tho and they’re as good as new.

I also have that model, and even though the battery still seems to last for ages, I was wondering if it was replaceable.

Does Sony sell a replacement, or do you have to go through a 3rd party? Is everything held in place with screws, or do you need to mess around with glue and whatnot?

Batteries fail completely too, on occasion especially with cheaper brands or 5+ year-old headphones.

Of course you can get the Fairbuds which have replaceable batteries.

Hopefully more Bluetooth headphone companies follow suit. Maybe we can even get a standardized battery.

All my corded headphones lasted at most 2 years of mobile use. My QC35s are still going strong. Wired sucks for mobile use. And if the cord doesn’t go, the 3.5mm socket does. I replaced multiple sockets on my iPod and iPhone 3g. That replacement process sucks.

What are you doing that destroys cables and jacks like that? I use wired earbuds while riding my bike and I've never broken a jack, and the one time I broke the cable was because I made a mistake and dropped them while riding, which got them tangled up in the spokes.

Putting phone in pocket and sitting down, passing through doors with handles on them, putting cable in bag, removing cable from bag, normal use?

My corded QC25 is still as new. No battery to die (it's simply AAA), the cord and ear pads are replaceable.

Let’s critically think about this for just a second. Your concern doesn’t appear to be with the audio, isn’t it with the connector? That’s a whole different argument than what we’re talking about

Isn’t it the wire that failed, not the audio part of it? So why not do what I did? You put some JB weld across that bend in the wire, which is cheap and could probably be engineered to last a lot longer… now I have headphones that last a really long time. You could also get a better connector and simply put that on there, right?

Absolutely, As I said, it comes down to personal usage, needs, preferences. I personally never lost a cable (I did need to replace the earpads, but that happened on both Bluetooth and wired:). I do tend to use connected wireless earbuds when I go jogging etc.

I've used tons of wired as well. Maybe have bad one pair fail at the wire? I'm super active with them too. Snowboarding with them and my Sony g shock in 1998. Lots of cycling and running usage. You've had every single pair of wired headphones fail for you? Every single pair?

> my Sony g shock

What is a "Sony g shock" if you don't mind? I know Casio's G-Shock and Sony's Sports series... did you mix them by chance as I suppose or is there a Sony range I'm not aware of?

Haha whoops, I totally conflated the two! The Sony Atrac3Plus had a feature called "G Protection". It was the only "anti skip" cd player that I tried that actually worked really well back then.

I also exaggerated the year a bit. After looking it up, I think this cd player came out in 2004!

Same here. Wired headphones never lasted anywhere near as long for me as wireless ones. Any with inline controls were especially prone to failure.

or in my experience active use can damage the headphone jack, which is much, much worse

LOL! Literally 5 minutes of soldering work. There is no even need to buy a new jack, just clean the old one from old resin.

It depends on how you treat them. Some people burn through them like nothing. I have some 20 year old earpods still.

For me it was worse, the headphone port on my phones always eventually failed. Maybe these rich people replace phones too quickly to experience that.

I use wired at home, where I'm not cycling the connection very much.

There are lots of wired headphones out there with replaceable cables

Honestly though you can get the best of both worlds.

I impulse bought some over-the-ear headphones at the airport when I realized I had forgotten mine that do bluetooth, but can also use an audio cable when the battery dies.

When using wired the audio quality is much better.

Cord failure is definitely a problem, but if you’re moderately capable with a soldering iron, it’s easy to repair the cord if the failure is away from the headphone side. It’s even fairly easy to replace an 8mm or 0.25” jack.

Your soldering skill (and sense of adventure) would have to be far better than mine to even consider doing that for wireless earbuds.

The few times I've tried to solder headphone wire I've been defeated because the wire isn't wire, it's some kind of copper and synthetic fiber weave, that the solder just won't adhere to.

I've repaired a few headphone wires; theyre usually thin copper wires covered with enamel insulation. Burn off the insulation with a blob of solder, or sand it off, and the solder will stick.

You’re right, the kind of cable often used is not easy to solder. This makes it hard to solder a broken cable together again, or to replace a broken / bent plug. So best replace the entire cable and its plug — it’s still an inexpensive part.

You’ll need to solder it to the contacts inside the can, but that’s quite straightforward.

In case the internal cable that goes from one can to the other breaks, you can replace it with any bit of audio cable so you can use one that’s easy to solder.

It's an unbelievably thin stranded wire, but the wires are coated so they can be in contact with each other without shorting. It's all twisted around a thin thread of cotton or nylon to add strength, then then encased in it's sheath.

The trick is to gently scrape the stranded wire with a blade for the solder to stick and to make a good connection.

I’ve repaired many pairs of wired headphones over the years, as electronic repairs go they’re very simple. The same can’t be said for the wireless ones.

Plus, the more high end ones come with repleceable cables.

I have not had an issue with any wires wearing out anywhere since my walkman headphones in the 90s.

Yes exactly. I went wireless exactly because wires fail very fast.

Yeah for me the main sell of wireless is mobility/freedom of movement.

I can use them while charging my phone or working out. Can play a video while cooking and moving around the kitchen. Or while watching TV/playing a game in the TV where a cable can’t reach.

However when static I used wired. That’s mostly when on the computer, but like many people here I am assuming that’s a good part of the day.

I prefer wired ones, mostly playing devil’s advocate here.

Every pair of cheaper earphones or earbuds I’ve had fail have failed due to the cable.

We switched my oldest to a pair of BT headphones because he seems incapable of keeping track of the cord. It gets caught, he pulls, and something has to give. Longest lasting set he had in 2025 was BT.

Going cheap is the problem here, good earbuds and headphones have replaceable cables.

I'm the same way as your oldest, if I'm up and moving around while wearing earbuds/IEMs I run the cable through my shirt.

Expensive headphones have much higher quality cables...

Same. Either the jack fails or the one of the buds stops working or the cable on one side of the buds gets cut somehow.

> There's absolutely a time and place for wireless headphones and I probably use them more at this point.

I've had a pair of Sony MD-7506s ever since I assisted in an analog recording studio, years ago. 7506s were the standard then, not sure about now. I am on my 5th set of cushion replacements.

A few years ago I bought a high-ish quality bluetooth adapter I can put in my pocket and walk around. The one I bought is the Boltune BT-BA001. Looks like they are only $30 on eBay now, but there may be better ones out there. That little box is probably my most used piece of inexpensive electronics.

I got wired headphones after repeatedly losing airpods falling out of my ears onto the floor of planes. I like to sleep with my headphones in falling asleep to audiobooks, and I'm a side-sleeper so airpods would rub on the pillow and get lost in the seat machinery.

Wired headphones at least if they fall out are still connected to a rope to get them back!

For airplanes, Bose or Sony both have noise-canceling wireless headphones in over-ear format with battery life over 18 hours. I wouldn't try to side-sleep in either one, but the relative quiet on aircraft is wonderful, especially if you find yourself on a turboprop.

For sleep a wired pillow speaker works great, the advantage being there is nothing to fall out of your ears, and you can isolate the sound so only you hear it through the pillow: https://www.amazon.com/Crane-Company-PS2-SoftSpeaker-Speaker...

> they last forever

Sadly have to disagree. I use Beyerdynamic though where you can order parts to repair em yourself, which i already did.

[edit] cannot recommend their wireless stuff produced in China, the worst i ever had. The big corded cans are still manufactured in Germany.

They also lack any and all useful features. Even just the ability to tap for pause is critical to my daily life.

I just wonder if wired fans just never skip forward a song, or adjust the volume. Or even use active noise canceling.

Many have a small box on the cord with those controls, and you could argue that's handier since it's closer to where your hands naturally are at any given moment.

Tons of wired headphones have little controllers on them to change songs and pause.

Or ever do anything in parallel with listening. I’ve been working in my garden and went to a shed that’s like 15 meters away from my home only to notice that I’ve forgotten to take my phone with me - music never stopped.

I use a pocket for this scenario.

That was solved long ago with invention of pockets.

My favorite way to work in the garden: with a slab in my pocket and a cord around my neck.

but it WILL cut out if you go far enough. wired headsets wont

Many wired headphones have a little control thingy with buttons on the wire. Four pin aux connectors support control signals. If your headphones have a detachable aux cable I suppose you can just replace it with cable with controls.

Do computers come with such jacks? I can't seem to recall having seen one. However, all my pcs understand vol up/dn play pause/prev/next from my BT headphones.

by definition you're literally within 2 feet of the device playing the music; how hard is it to use your device to do any of that and more?

I bought a tiny lapel clip Bluetooth receiver that has buttons and a headphone socket. Charge over USB, pair with phone, turn any headphones into Bluetooth. If the battery runs out, plug the headphones straight into the phone.

However, the noise cancelling gap is real. I'd kill for wired IEMs with an inline battery + buttons, and noise cancelling mic & circuit in the earpieces.

Closest is the Sony cans, which have wired mode (ie: they have a tiny jack, so you can use them passively) but I don't think they cancel noise when using them that way

Re: noise canceling... recently got a pair of IEMs (Etymotic ER2XR) with good foam tips and their isolation blows away any ANC I've ever tried. The only thing is noise from touching the cable but that was solved with some ear hooks to put the cables behind my ears.

Yeah, Etymotic headphones were my go-to for probably a decade. Passive noise suppression was wonderful for public transport.

The utility has dropped tremendously though, now that headphone jacks have disappeared.

Would love to have a pair of "direct-USB-C" Etymotics.

Maybe a bit clunky but there exist some very good and tiny DACs/dongles now (and have seen a couple creative cases/riggings that present the jack in a good/manageable way)

I have some Sony headphones from a decade ago with a detachable cable. Noise cancellation works just fine when wired, and you get better battery life since the Bluetooth part isn’t active. The only time you can’t use noise cancellation is when it’s charging (Micro-USB, doesn’t do audio over USB in case you were wondering).

Qudelix 5k (portable dac/amp) has weak anc / passthrough mode, only in Bluetooth mode.

Probably an exaggeration? But I hope that tapping for pause isn't critical for anyone's daily life.

I use wireless headphones and in fact never use this feature (I have it disabled). Too unreliable when there's a large screen with a big pause and skip button within reach.

> I just wonder if wired fans just never skip forward a song, or adjust the volume.

This has been a thing in wired headphones since at least 2007 lol

The touch functionality is useful until it isn't. My Pixel Buds will activate touch controls randomly and unnecessarily all the time when I'm trying to use them in bed, from the contact with the pillow or sheets. Drives me nuts.

But also, I don't think it's either/or for most people. I use both wired and wireless headphones all the time depending on the use case. Wired sounds far better and is more reliable, wireless is more mobile. Different use cases.

Many wired headphones have buttons and wheels too. We've been adjusting things via them for so long lol.

I just tap a button on the thing the headphones are plugged into. The cable isn't so long that it's ever out of reach.

Hah, just shows how out of touch I am. Has ANC disappeared as a wired earphone feature? I keep meaning to shop for a new all-purpose pair with ANC, duplex audio, and either USB-C input or an adapter for that. But, I keep procrastinating. I don't have any headphones that work with my phone since the analog port disappeared.

I can point to the shelf with my Sony wired ANC ear buds, which I bought years ago specifically for ANC during air travel, in the era when I would use my iPod and later an iPod Nano. The ones I have are the second pair, bought after the first was accidentally left on a plane. I think they were different product generations, a few years apart. These are so old, they are purely stereo headphones. Microphones for duplex audio hadn't become pervasive yet.

These stick in my ear with little silicon flanges and have a part that sits outside with the microphone. Then there is a small control module sitting at the junction of left and right ear wires, which holds a AAA battery and has a power switch and a pass-through audio button (which always seemed more gimmick than utility to me). In their active mode, they also don't demand much of the source device.

if the phone is in your pants pocket then its fairly trivial to change the volume just by using the buttons on the phone

even some of the cheapest in-line remotes that only have a single button will let you change the track by double tapping it

if you dont have an in-line remote then theres also the option of using a key remapper app (probably not on iphone) to let you change track by long pressing the volume buttons

Other advantages: for music production, wired studio headphones don't have lag - also wired with mic is crucial for video games for same reason

You are right, in the past we never skipped a song or adjusted volume, just went with what came out of the factory and what was playing at the time. Those buttons on the device itself were for show.

Those hd380’s will last your lifetime. Almost like Sony’s MDR-7506 if you can keep it from getting sat on.

100% this. I have had the MDR-7506 since my DJ days about 30 years ago. These are by no means expensive headphones, but compared even to much more higher-end Bluetooth headphones they can easily hold their own. They have good depth and are well balanced. They are just about indestructible, only requiring the occasional pads replacement. Probably one of the best purchases I ever made

Relationships come and go but MDR-7605’s are for life!

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