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.

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 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.

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?

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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

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

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

> 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

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.

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.

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?

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.