Audio engineer originally and a current audio software.

In the pro audio, wireless was never a thing with an exception of live shows where you’d might want to be free on stage but avoid stage monitors.

Notice that while Apple made everyone ditch the lovely 3.5”, on the MacBook Pros they’ve actually kept it and *improved* it.

As this is HN, I’ll focus on technical aspects I didn’t notice in the article.

- Active Noise reduction

While the article suggested the battery free magic of analog headsets. Flights are where the active noise reduction headsets shines. Active cancellation isn’t needed for studio environment but on the go it can certainly make your listening more pleasant.

- Hybrid devices There are several manufacturers with classical headset designs that also includes wired support with all modern features. This is a good balance in my opinion for benefiting from both worlds.

- Latency

Especially Bluetooth, our current consumer wireless is buffered and this latency is too much for creating music. Products such as GarageBand, Logic or FL Studio won’t be that useful for tracking with Bluetooth.

- Quality

Indeed, analog 3.5” audio is uncompressed vs Bluetooth. But it doesn’t mean the audio is superior for listening just because of that transition. Our modern devices are still mostly digital those days so there is DAC that takes those bits and converts them to analog (most of it today is done well as those chips are common) and the other step is the analog amplification. Audiophiles usually invest a lot in the headphones amplifier. Most android devices in the past were mediocre in that sense.

So while wired is a trend, the “dongle” of USB-C to convert the audio is still a major part of the quality we end with.

- Sharing is caring (my personal take)

The biggest frustration I feel with Bluetooth is that it’s now nearly impossible to use multiple headphones for listening. In the old days, you had a simple splitter and as long as both headsets were the same impedance, you can even have 4 people listening to the same content easily.

With Bluetooth, only Apple addresses this in a very limited manner with a lock in to specific models and up to 2 devices and no video calls or live audio support.