The connection type has nothing to do with it though. Modern bluetooth is basically transparent with 256kbps AAC, like you'd have to be an omega-expert listening in a silent room to identify it vs lossless. Certainly the difference you're noticing is just the headphone quality.

Honestly for me the Airpods 4 with ANC are one of the greatest feats of audio engineering ever. For such a tiny form factor they reproduce really great sound, big soundstage, AND they have good ANC without needing a closed earbud seal. They also have internal mics that listen to the response of your ear to adjust the sound profile, which you can hear happen in real time after bumping the earbuds. Obviously you can get better sound if you make different tradeoffs and wear over-ears, but they are absolutely cutting edge for what they are.

▲

michaelt 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> Modern bluetooth is basically transparent with 256kbps AAC, like you'd have to be an omega-expert listening in a silent room to identify it vs lossless.

Sure, unless you want to do something rare and exotic like, say, have a microphone on your headset. Then you get the HFP/HSP profile, which makes two tin cans linked by a string seem high quality by comparison.

▲

tshaddox 11 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

Surely it would be very rare to want to listen to music at its highest quality while simultaneously recording your voice. It’s perhaps conceivable for some sort of niche mode of music or audio production, I suppose.

▲

echoangle an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

If you’re outside with a smartphone, why do you actually need that though? If you call someone, their audio will be bad anyways, and when do you need playback and microphone at the same time? Outside multiplayer gaming, I don’t really know any application where high quality audio playback and microphone is needed at the same time.

▲

ssl-3 an hour ago | parent | next [-]

I can understand people just fine with the voice profiles provided by Bluetooth. Strictly speaking, I don't need anything better than that.

But it sure is nice to be able to make phone calls where people don't sound worse than they did with digitally-switched analog landline telephones in 1995. Bluetooth doesn't get there at all.

The losses of Bluetooth even compound generationally: The inescapable tin-can audio of Bluetooth at one end first gets transmogrified by at least one intermediate lossy codec for transmission across/betwixt the network(s), and then gets tin-canned harder when the far end of the connection is also using Bluetooth.

For perspective: 1995's phone calls were ultimately limited by the G.711 codec, which itself dates to 1972. I'm not setting the bar very high here at all.

	▲	echoangle 19 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Calls on AirPods don’t sound worse to me than on the phone speakers, I don’t think the AirPods noticeably decrease the quality compared to the stuff happening on the phone network.

▲

michaelt an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I think it's fairly obvious why one would want two-way audio on a telephone :)

▲

echoangle 20 minutes ago | parent [-]

As I mentioned in my comment, I don’t notice the worse Bluetooth quality on calls because the audio itself is already bad, so making calls isn’t really a reason to not use Bluetooth.

	▲	agentdev001 3 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Your comment frustrates me! With that said, how about Discord? I have high speed internet 90% of my waking life, high enough for Discord to be high fidelity. I actively avoid using discord to join calls on my phone- because Bluetooth absolutely destroys quality. I use the same pair of headphones to use discord on my PC, with a separate mic, no problemo.

▲

smallmancontrov an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Need? A committee of the dumbest software on your pc/phone will get together to tell you what you need, and they have decided you need tin-can audio quality so that the microphone can be active so that AT&T spyware embedded in the Taco Bell app can listen for off-hand comments about refreshing your phone to opportunistically target you with the spam-cannon.

▲

ssl-3 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Modern pocket supercomputers don't divulge anything useful about the kind of connection that is being used for Bluetooth audio so we don't know if it's using 256kbps AAC or something else instead, and it cuts out in some areas of [insert city], and when it comes back it sounds demonstrably worse.

It's an inscrutable mess.

Wires don't have these problems. Plug them in. Use them. Clean the contacts every now and then if/when they get crudded up.

▲

numpad0 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> 256kbps AAC

That only works with A2DP one-way audio. The two-way HFP mode still uses the horrible classic BT compression unless the new BLE-based LE Audio is used(but IIUC Apple still don't support it). Besides there are still many devices that only supports BT's own 2000s-optimal SBC codec.

▲

matsemann 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Connection type means the sound quality drops significantly when headphones are used for speaking, though. Maybe don't notice as much in normal calls / only speech, but using Bluetooth when gaming and some kinda of voice chat makes all game music / ambient sounds sound so crunchy.

	▲	w4der 3 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		For some reason my iphone sporadically won't go back to "music quality" mode after cutting a call on a wireless speaker or car play, and it's incredible how bad music sounds with telephone quality.
	▲	throwuxiytayq 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		The trick is to switch input to the laptop/external mic. Audio quality stays great. It’s kind of ridiculous that Bluetooth still needs the shitty lo-fi mode when the mic is on - I was recently surprised that this is still the case with modern headphones like it was a decade ago.

▲

thefz 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Nah put on some quality headphones and the sound stage will blow your head off.

	▲	jack_pp 3 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Comparison is the thief of joy. I remember when I first got a 1080p display, comparing it to my previous 480p one the difference was amazing, but before I got the 1080p display I had no problem with my old one. All that to say.. what's best, cheap, no wires, no headaches and happy or expensive, wires, having to download music and make a library etc and always looking for the next high, the next minor improvement? One of the happiest days of my life was when I listened to my music on a 10$ mp3 player with 2$ earphones after 3 months of not listening to it. So yeah, you may be right, even though I've tried 3000$ open-ear audiophile headphones, with an amazing amplifier, listening on tidal and it didn't blow me away but even if it did, I'd be stupid to even try, then I'd know what I'm missing and craving a 5000$ setup when I'm already happy with the 1 inch box I can easily carry wherever I go.
	▲	NBJack 35 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Beyerdynamic has ruined me. And it's not even the best out there.