Unpopular Opinion
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Rules:
1. NO POLITICS
Politics is everywhere. Let's make this about [general] and [lemmy] - specific topics, and keep politics out of it.
2. Be civil.
Disagreements happen, but that doesn’t provide the right to personally attack others. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Please also refrain from gatekeeping others' opinions.
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4. Shitposts and memes are allowed but...
Only until they prove to be a problem. They can and will be removed at moderator discretion.
5. No trolling.
This shouldn't need an explanation. If your post or comment is made just to get a rise with no real value, it will be removed. You do this too often, you will get a vacation to touch grass, away from this community for 1 or more days. Repeat offenses will result in a perma-ban.
6. Defend your opinion
This is a bit of a mix of rules 4 and 5 to help foster higher quality posts. You are expected to defend your unpopular opinion in the post body. We don't expect a whole manifesto (please, no manifestos), but you should at least provide some details as to why you hold the position you do.
Instance-wide rules always apply. https://legal.lemmy.world/tos/
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If the solution to a problem that didn't exist before is "buy an extra thing" it's not a solution. It's bullshit to sell you even more garbage you shouldn't need.
Right?
I just want to hitch my working Clydesdales to my Toyota because I want to avoid the emissions, but it comes with a fucking engine instead and no place to mount the yokes! They don't need ANY gas and can even drive me home at the end of the night. Who has the money to go full electric when the wagon was working PERFECTLY fine.
It's bullshit to sell me all this garbage I don't need.
Why do these threads keep assuming everyone has high quality aux headphones lying around and nobody has wireless headphones, almost a decade after this trend started? Even assuming you don't have a prior investment in earphones, unless you're fine with the shitty bundled earbuds you need to buy new stuff regardless of the connection.
The best pair of BT headphones is still incapable of the sound quality that wired ones have. Plus the latency that even the best that Bluetooth has to offer, plus the fact that an aux port is virtually indestructible, and even if you managed to break it, you can still plug your phone in to charge or transfer data. USB C ports aren't as hearty and if you mess it up with it being plugged in while walking around with it in your pocket, your phone is then kinda fucked.
Either you never used a good wireless headphone or a bad wired one. Sure the best wired headphones might have higher quality than the best wireless ones but that's once again not something everyone will have lying around. In my personal experience every set of wired earbuds / headphones I've used (stuff my parents had lying around and ones bought for / gifted to me) sounded worse than all but one pair of wireless ones I've used.
Latency does not matter with audio and can be compensated for with video. Only place it would matter is gaming and even some of those might offer compensation options. Not to dismiss that it might be the decisive factor for some people but it hardly applies to everyone.
You quite obviously don't have much of an understanding about how Bluetooth, DAC's, bitrates, or latency work. You are right about latency not mattering for audio, at least. You can also compensate for the lag in video's if if available. It isn't on most streaming services, so the audio just stays a bit off. You can't do anything about it in games, with a few quasi exceptions. Some headphones will have a "game mode" to lower the latency down so it isn't as noticeable, but this is accomplished by lowering the bit rate even further. In other words it cuts the audio quality down so it has to send and read less data in order to convert it faster. Even with the crappier audio there's still noticeable lag.
Can't you accept that someone who knows what they're taking about might have a different opinion than you? Bluetooth bitrate is once again a non issue for most situations. Unless you're listening to lossless audio (e: or the headphones are stuck in headset mode) Bluetooth has a higher bitrate than what you're listening to. And I'd argue with most headphones you hit the limits of the hardware way before you hit ~~any bitrate limitations~~ still. (Edit: what I meant is, if the hardware is capable of delivering better sound quality than what standard codecs can support the manufacturer will then include higher quality codecs)
I didn't know streaming services didn't have audio latency settings, that doesn't sound ideal. Latency is very situational in how much it matters to different people with different content (game streaming is a thing) so I'd still not write bluetooth off, but if it does bother you do use wired headphones
At some point technology moves on.
At some point we had to give up VHS for DVD It's time to let go of Aux just like we let go of VHS
Ok, so what should replace the aux port? Becuase right now it seems to be just an adapter .. for an aux port. That's not moving forward, that's just adding extra steps.
USB-C can replace Aux
IMO, everything that can be USB-C should be, that way we can have one cable for everything.
So how do I charge my phone while also having it connected to my wired headphones?
Should I get a docking station for my phone now? Add multiple USB-C ports to phones?
Realistically you don't NEED to do that, unless your battery is cooked. You can just charge your phone when not listening to music
If you really must then a simple splitter does the trick.
If this isn't acceptable, then I'd argue that phones should have two USB-C ports, instead of one Aux and one USB-C
So what you're me offering is limited use cases and additional equipment to achieve something that I can currently do with an AUX port.
This is not an upgrade or improvment ... that's just enshitification.
That is slighlty better, but a lot of headphones don't actually support sound via USB-C and I'm also not aware of cheap, wired earbuts that use USB-C.
Sometime in the not so distant past I could have said: "but a lot of radio's don't actually support CD's and I'm also not aware of cheap, radio's that use CD's, or a place to buy Cheap CD's"
At some point we had to ditch tapes for CD's or Digital media.
We can't just stay stuck in the past because it's convenient in the short term.
CD were an actual improvment. They could store more data with less space, didn't need to be rewound or move physical tape to "scroll" to a song you want to hear, etc. They were actually better in pretty much every way.
Bluetooth isn't. It's offering one improvment in one area by trading off others.
Moving to USB-C could be very minor improvment, as you're really just preserving the functionality while standardising the connector. Now, I am not against that. But that would require all headphone manufacturers to move to audio-via-USB and all the phone manufacturerers to add a 2nd port.
Seems like a lot of work and money for very little benefit.
The jump from Aux to USB-C is a even bigger improvement than Tape to CD. All manufacturers etc. eventually had to switch from tape to digital, yes it's a lot of effort, but it needs to happen at some point.
I'm not arguing for a 2nd USB-C port, I think one is enough, but if you MUST have two ports, than USB-C offers so much more that Aux can't
The use case of the AUX port is to listen something via a wire. USB-C doesn't offer any improvements here (othen than having to carry one less cable in the longrun, maybe).
Sure, it might enable totally new features. But those are not really relevant when we're discussing the removal of the aux port. That's like trying to make an argument for CDs over tape by pointing out that you can use CDs as a mirror. Sure you can ... but not really the "imrpovment" I was looking for.
Aux can only carry two audio channels, if I wanted to plug my phone into a 5.1 Surround sounds system or something alike, Aux would be limiting.
USB-C has 24 pins, so it won't have that issue.
Yeah, I'm open for having a USB-C port replace the AUX port if the other industries play along and no use-cases/features are lost in the process.
But until that happens, AUX belongs on smartphones.
I hope the EU pushes USB-C as the standard for more devices, I have 3 wireless shavers, they all use different charging ports. There is no reason they couldn't have all been USB-C
I think razors, thoothbrushes, etc are exempt from the standard because their connectors have to be water resistant, which USB-C isn't. So probably not happening for now.
Perhaps, but there are many waterproof USB-C devices that you can swim with, so I don't think it should be much of an issue.
Have you tried swimming while charging said device? Mobiles like my Pixel 7 will disable it's USB port if it detects water. I doubt anything could have waterproof usb port outside of sealing the port with external mechanism.
Look on Aliexpress for adaptors for the shavers, that's made my life so much easier until I get new ones with usb-c.
I also have 3 wireless ones that shoulda been usb-c but bought em far before the new mandate.
Also I thought the rules did apply to more than just phones though I may be mistaken.
Something funny about those: sometimes they just don't work. Seriously. Depending on the phone, the brand, those splitters just will not function because the phone decided it cannot do both power and media from the same port at the same time, if it's split up. I tried 4 different ones before finding out my phone is too dumb for it, and same with most friend's phones.
Classic management response for problems they created: "You don't use your device that way, and if you do you are wrong"
Bluetooth has replaced the aux port
i held out for quite a while, but i got a shokz bone conducing headset about five years ago and i had to admit, the sound quality is pretty good, so i got a fairbud xl more recently and they both work great with my phone. i still use a wired headset and mic with my pc though
No. It's an alternative that trades sound quality and delay for being wireless. Not a replacement.
it has though, at least according to most phone makers
the average person (me included) isn't bothered by the minimal loss of quality and latency, at least on the move
There really is no perceivable difference in audio quality between wire and bluetooth. Especially considering most people use Spotify. Also most consumer headphones aren't great; you'd have to use audiophile level gear to maybe hear a difference.
I don't think I'm an audiophile, but I stream my own flacs with 800-3000 kbps and there is a very noticeable difference in quality between the bluetooth- and the wired connection on my Bose QC Ultras.
Out of curiosity I did a quick test with Sennheiser Momentum 4 using 1000 kbps flac and I personally couldn't hear a difference that I wouldn't call placebo. If I wanted to I could convince myself that BT sounds better. But there really was no difference in quality. Only the tuning might be slightly different.
One cause of a difference could be whether the headphones use their built-in DAC or the phone's.
Another issue can be proprietary codec support.
To the phone? Really, really doubt it.
Ah, here's your problem, you're listening to j-pop.
Sorry, that was a bit of a mean joke, but I couldn't resist.
All good, I laughed!