Headphone Thread 5: Beats are good now?

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Inspect Your Gadgets > Headphone Thread 5: Beats are good now?

Homeless Friend: Jul 16, 2007

Bought an Audeze Maxwell off ebay because I was tired of the pain in the rear end that is bluetooth audio, could just unify my steam bigpic/pc/sim racing setup with some big rear end 90mm planars. Lets see how they hold up to my AH-D5200's and if they pulled off the wireless solution.

Soul Dentist posted:

Hello headphone thread! I've got a request for a very specific use case where I know what I need, but have no idea where to start looking. I work in a jewelry production facility and I'm looking for overear headphones that have noise cancellation qualities but preferably no disposable/removable batteries. Dock recharging is fine but Bluetooth is completely forbidden.

Budget - Like a hundred bucks. I know this is low for a lot of things but actual sound quality is not a huge deal because:

Source - SanDisk Clip Sport full of mp3s, with a lot of hand tool noise and ventilator hum in the background

Intended use case - At my bench, to listen to low quality mp3s and podcasts and to tune out other people talking.

Preferred Headphone features - .
1. I've never owned a pair of overear headphones before
2. I've used and hated earbuds or having anything inside my ears ever. I have a big noggin (and proportional ears) and have no issues with heavy cans
3. Wireless and Bluetooth aren't allowed at the facility because people apparently just use it to talk on the phone they have to keep in their locker. I'd rather not talk at all or hear it.
4. I can live without sound quality. I'm not trying to capture rich warm tones, just listen to [metal/jazz/pop/r&b/voice] that I've already heard a thousand times

Happy to answer any other questions and follow up. Thanks for any advice!

This was so oddly specific i had to find if they exist and they do, Bose QuietComfort 25. It's wired and the ANC is powered by an AAA battery lol. You're not getting a dockable headset without bluetooth/wireless, i think. they do say one battery last 35 hours so just buy some cheapo rechargeable you goddamn goon. They're a few years old now so I'd just look on ebay, probably way cheaper and in line with your budget.

# ¿ Jul 20, 2023 04:01

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ May 16, 2024 13:33

Homeless Friend: Jul 16, 2007

Canine Blues Arooo posted:

I ended up keeping my Audeze Maxwell set, but only just.

6 weeks into ownership, my opinion hasn't really change: They sound great! Their software features are dogshit. Their input priority makes no sense and in a constant source of frustration. The wireless is impressive for receiving, but is very spotty for sending. I can walk around the house and hear output all the time, but I can't go more then 20ft before I can no longer talk in Discord. Oh, and speaking of Discord: The mic sounds terrible in Discord. I've fiddled with that poo poo so much, and they even have documentation about making it sound better, but hours and hours of messing with it and it's still easily the worst sounding (and most expensive) mic in my collection.

I've resigned to just using my old HyperX Cloud IIs for games where latency matters (GGST, SF6, etc.) and also for games where I have to talk (WoW, Dota) then manually switching back to the Maxwells for everything else.

As a *gaming* headset, the OG HyperX CLoud IIs are just better for less then a 1/3rd the price.

I'm still on the hunt for someone to actually do a Wireless headset right.

I'd long abandoned all in ones as the dedicated solution. boom+mic ftw. I had an actual mic but it died like a year ago and replaced it with a hyperx solo and frankly its hard to beat a trash 20 boom/40 solocast imo. tho maybe not for the goons who love their clackety keyboards

# ¿ Jul 20, 2023 18:00

Homeless Friend: Jul 16, 2007

youd for i posted:

Are there any decent Bluetooth/wireless in ear options for under $100? I�ve been using a cheap pair of QCY for a long time but the cord that connects the headphones to one another is completely frayed at this point.

I don�t expect anything amazing for the price but hopefully something that will last for a while and not sound too terrible. The main use will be while commuting via public transit / the occasional flight and probably a split between music and watching movies on an iPhone.

I got gifted a pair of JBL Tune 230NC TWS a while back which I liked but had to return since they were constantly cutting in and out when connected to my phone.

You missed out on the amazon sale where they had these for sale but getting good earbuds for around 100 is easy, you get the ones that get pushed out the door with phones and there's a massive openbox/like new market. Ebay search 'Google Pixel Buds Pro' or 'Sony LinkBuds S' and filter for open box. Then cross reference it with sold items of the same type if you want to bid to save money. The Linkbud S is the cheaper of the two iirc.

# ¿ Aug 3, 2023 03:07

Homeless Friend: Jul 16, 2007

Wireless/bt on a comp can be a pain in the rear end, the solution ive taken to is using the usb expansion card i had in there for ages and having small usb cord extensions to physically seperate and raise up the dongles a bit to reduce the interference/provide clearer LOS. One per port. Having it go off pci power stops weird dongle boot problems i had with the maxwell. Probably partly motherboard/windows bullshit+ having like a billion usb connections taking up bandwith/power.

Also with the sony bluetooth headsets you have to go download the sony app, turn off dsee, turn on prioritize stable connection to reduce that stutter on pc bluetooth. If that doesnt work you can turn on dual connections which forces it to to lower quality but more consistent codecs iirc

Homeless Friend fucked around with this message at 06:44 on Aug 3, 2023

# ¿ Aug 3, 2023 06:37

Homeless Friend: Jul 16, 2007

Zorilla posted:

Prioritize stable connection is already on. I disabled DSEE pretty early on because it seemed like a current iteration of that SB Audigy meme (I can't find it now. You know which one I'm talking about--the one with the bar graph)

I thought dual connections was for connecting to two devices at once, unless you mean that using that feature has the side effect of dropping the codec quality to both devices and potentially improving reliability. I'm already doing that with my phone as my second device. I've thought about experimenting with that turned off to see what happens.

None of this is a huge deal. If I actually used my Linkbuds S with my PCs extensively or this bothered me more than it did, I'd probably try experimenting with a remote desk-mounted antenna instead of the rubber ducks the adapters came with. The way my desk is set up now, the MacBook Pro I have is a big 16" slab of aluminum that sits in the direct path between my headphones and the PC's wireless antennas, so it couldn't hurt to mess with that. Both affected computers use ITX motherboards with semi-integrated Intel WiFi/BT cards and not USB dongles, if that matters.

Ah well, was just making sure, I decided to set up a PC/TV for gaming and went through the rigamarole with the LinkbudS specifically before I said gently caress it all w/r/t bluetooth sound.

# ¿ Aug 3, 2023 22:15

Homeless Friend: Jul 16, 2007

wouldn't a wireless headsets dongle work exactly the same if you just add it to the usb switcher hub? not like the system cares, it'll just see the new device and switch to it if that's the usual default.

# ¿ Sep 19, 2023 09:54

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ May 16, 2024 13:33

Homeless Friend: Jul 16, 2007

drat they pushed out adaptive mode with the ios update and this thing is badass lol. They basically rounded all the corners of bluetooth usage.

Cicero posted:

Good point, I hadn't thought of that. As long as the dongle works okay in terms of automatically connecting when it's "plugged into" a system when switched, and in terms of power, I could do that.

I only say because my audeze maxwells work fine if i plug unplug em (which i do on the off times windows fucks up powering my insane amount of usbs)

# ¿ Sep 20, 2023 23:37

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Inspect Your Gadgets > Headphone Thread 5: Beats are good now?