Is there no hope for wireless earphones/earbuds to have decent sound AND be reasonably priced?

[mancesco]

I recently bought and immediately returned two different set of earbuds: Soundcore Life P2 and OPPO Enco Air W32. I'm no audiophile and yet they both sounded awful, with no bass to speak of and a metallic feel to it. These were 70€ a piece, and to me that sound was equivalent to cheapo ten bucks earphones I might find at a petrol station. I get it, wireless costs more, but this is just ridiculous.

 

Up until recently, before they died, I was daily driving a pair of Aukey earphones (bluetooth, but wired together behind the neck) which I had bought in 2019 for 17€, and they sounded amazing by comparison. How much am I supposed to spend in today's market to get anything half decent exactly?

[Dedayog]

Uhm, reviews?  By audio sites?

 

Or focus on companies that already make audio?  

 

Are you looking for recommendations for earbuds or just wanted to vent a little?

 

 

[mancesco]

1 minute ago, Dedayog said:

Are you looking for recommendations for earbuds or just wanted to vent a little?

Both, really. I just feel like the market has gone insane. Everybody jumped on the wireless earbuds bandwagon and they have to cut down on sound quality just to stay in that price range.

 

The thing is, I DID look up reviews for those sets that I bought. Reviews were positive, Amazon reviews had 4.5 stars in sound quality, so I trusted them and got burnt anyway. And I always have the feeling that audio sites tend to cater to audiophiles, I never manage to get a recommendation for anything, either you spend two hundred buck or you're SOL.

[Anghammarad]

The ones from Anker are pretty decent for bluetooth... 

 

There ar in ears, ear covering... I got a bigger model for roughly 40 bucks... long battery time, lasts the whole day, can be tethered to 2 devices at the same time, like phone and laptop...

 

the only drawback, as soon as the headset function kicks in, the listening quality drops immensly... 

 

For only listening to music/movies... awesome though Anker Soundcore Life Q10

[Chris Pratt]

Well, there's two facets here that are working against you.

 

First, earbuds, by their very nature cannot help but have poor sound, especially as far as bass is concerned. Their tiny drivers can only do so much. This is also a huge snake oil territory, because as much as Apple or Bose or whoever want to claim their earbuds are somehow able to magically defy the laws of physics, it's just not true. Earbuds are convenient and easy for walking around, exercising, etc., but you trade sound quality for that. It is what it is.

 

Second, all wireless audio devices, particularly Bluetooth devices, will have worse sound quality than their wired counterparts. Even headphones that have wired/wireless options will sound better when wired up. There's audio codecs that can give better wireless sound like aptX and AAC, but they're not universally supported, and even when they are, they still can't match wired.

[mancesco]

2 minutes ago, Anghammarad said:

The ones from Anker are pretty decent for bluetooth... 

 

There ar in ears, ear covering... I got a bigger model for roughly 40 bucks... long battery time, lasts the whole day, can be tethered to 2 devices at the same time, like phone and laptop...

 

the only drawback, as soon as the headset function kicks in, the listening quality drops immensly... 

 

For only listening to music/movies... awesome though Anker Soundcore Life Q10

Sorry what do you mean by headset function, I'm not familiar.

[Dedayog]

2 minutes ago, mancesco said:

Both, really. I just feel like the market has gone insane. Everybody jumped on the wireless earbuds bandwagon and they have to cut down on sound quality just to stay in that price range.

 

The thing is, I DID look up reviews for those sets that I bought. Reviews were positive, Amazon reviews had 4.5 stars in sound quality, so I trusted them and got burnt anyway. And I always have the feeling that audio sites tend to cater to audiophiles, I never manage to get a recommendation for anything, either you spend two hundred buck or you're SOL.

I feel you on this.  I use mine for listening at work to podcasts or mood music.  Nothing remotely needing quality, so I haven't looked at many of the expensive-r ones.

 

[Spuriae]

Are you sure you're getting a good seal with your eartips? The P2 should be fairly neutral with a bass boost.

(from Rtings.com)

 

The original Galaxy Buds are close to perfectly Harman-neutral and are reasonably priced in most markets, if you just want conventionally good sound quality in a TWS at a decent price.

[Anghammarad]

Just now, mancesco said:

Sorry what do you mean by headset function, I'm not familiar.

you can use them only one directional for listening, or use them as a headset with phone control... then it is sending and receiving and switches the codec which wrecks the listening sound quite a bit.

 

[mancesco]

4 minutes ago, Nimrodor said:

Are you sure you're getting a good seal with your eartips? The P2 should be fairly neutral with a bass boost.

(from Rtings.com)

 

The original Galaxy Buds are close to perfectly Harman-neutral and are reasonably priced in most markets, if you just want conventionally good sound quality in a TWS at a decent price.

I used the biggest eartips in the box, with the others they'd just fall off.

 

4 minutes ago, Anghammarad said:

you can use them only one directional for listening, or use them as a headset with phone control... then it is sending and receiving and switches the codec which wrecks the listening sound quite a bit.

 

Does that happen only during a call or is there a possibility that the headset mode somehow kicked while listening to music? Now I'm wondering if that was the case all along...

[Anghammarad]

1 minute ago, mancesco said:

I used the biggest eartips in the box, with the others they'd just fall off.

 

Does that happen only during a call or is there a possibility that the headset mode somehow kicked while listening to music? Now I'm wondering if that was the case all along...

It is only when you are getting a call, or use it in discord voice chat, in short as soon as you use the microphone as well . else the sound is excellent... 

[Herr.Hoefkens]

if they dont have to be "wireless" but if "portable" is adequate 

i mean if you use them with your pc. and dont mind a wire to your phone you can use really good ones , that last as long as your phone lasts 

and connect them wireless to the pc using 

-soundwire (google play) - homepage

-audiorelay (google play) - homepage

...or any bluetootaudio recevier that is powered by usb and a baterypack

[Spuriae]

2 minutes ago, Chris Pratt said:

First, earbuds, by their very nature cannot help but have poor sound, especially as far as bass is concerned. Their tiny drivers can only do so much. This is also a huge snake oil territory, because as much as Apple or Bose or whoever want to claim their earbuds are somehow able to magically defy the laws of physics, it's just not true. Earbuds are convenient and easy for walking around, exercising, etc., but you trade sound quality for that. It is what it is.

The tiny drivers also have to move a much smaller volume of air. PV=nRT -> SPL ∝ 1/V. It's much easier to get large bass response from in-ears because the air volume reduction is greater than the displacement volume reduction, but the bass goes away significantly if the seal with the ear is imperfect. This is true of closed-back headphones in general as well, but not to the same extent.

5 minutes ago, Chris Pratt said:

Even headphones that have wired/wireless options will sound better when wired up.

Sometimes headphones with wired/wireless options use an ADC -> DAC combination rather than allowing you to passively power the drivers. This signal chain usually causes more spuriae than decent modern bluetooth codecs. For modern ANC headphones the tuning is based on negative feedback and requires the signal to be digitized for proper tuning (passive generally sounds significantly worse). No disagreement on wireless being inferior generally.

[IPD]

14 minutes ago, Nimrodor said:

The tiny drivers also have to move a much smaller volume of air. PV=nRT -> SPL ∝ 1/V. It's much easier to get large bass response from in-ears because the air volume reduction is greater than the displacement volume reduction, but the bass goes away significantly if the seal with the ear is imperfect. This is true of closed-back headphones in general as well, but not to the same extent.

Sometimes headphones with wired/wireless options use an ADC -> DAC combination rather than allowing you to passively power the drivers. This signal chain usually causes more spuriae than decent modern bluetooth codecs. For modern ANC headphones the tuning is based on negative feedback and requires the signal to be digitized for proper tuning (passive generally sounds significantly worse). No disagreement on wireless being inferior generally.

I'm gonna disagree with that, because bass is something you FEEL.  And you aren't getting that from earbud size drivers.

 

Amazon reviews as a judge of audio equipment?  Well that's just asking for trouble.  I'm not sure what "audiophile" sites you are poo-pooing, but that hasn't been my case with them.  Now if you are limiting yourself to JUST earbuds--and wireless ones at that--then yeah, maybe the market for quality starts at $200.  But if you want good quality audio, there's plenty high-quality options <$100--if you can bring yourself to use a wire.  Otherwise, yeah, quality wireless options are going to start in the $125-150 range and go up.

 

And for pete's sake, don't buy blind.  At the very least, search for reputable BRANDS.  I haven't the foggiest who "soundcore" is, nor "OPPO".  I know brands like Shure, Audio Technica, Sony and Sennheiser; you know, the kinds of brands you see popping up a LOT when audiophiles get asked to make recommendations.  That's where I'd start looking through product lines to see if something meets your needs.

[Mister Woof]

One benefit of having shot hearing - they all sound terrible. Save money on headsets.

[Spuriae]

9 minutes ago, IPD said:

I'm gonna disagree with that, because bass is something you FEEL.  And you aren't getting that from earbud size drivers.

You're not going to get tactile bass from headphones in general without damaging your hearing (and getting a heavily distorted output – headphones ideally dampen bass vibrations!). If you want tactile bass, use speakers or a tactile transducer.

 

For an argument (which I recognize you may not necessarily be making) that larger headphone drivers can give a significant tactile bass response, try the following experiment. Put the headphones (go ahead and whip out the 100mm planars) on your ears, play a 50Hz tone, and bring your headphones to a reasonably loud level (without audibly distorting the bass). Without turning off the sound, move the headphones off your ears and hold them to your cheeks. Note that the amount of "tactile" bass is negligible; sensations of tactility which may have occurred while listening are largely an illusion caused by the brain interpreting signals from the ears.

 

For audible bass (as heard by the ear), earbud sized drivers are perfectly fine when pushing earbud volumes of air.

[mancesco]

I'm writing this just in case anybody has my same problem. I eventually found some that I actually like: Anker Soundcore Life A1. They are normally 60€, but I found a good deal for half the price. They sound pretty good and even have three EQ settings, fit easily and securely in my ears, the charging case is very compact.

 

I don't know why the previous ones I tried at the same price range sounded so dreadful (unless I was so unlucky to have received defective products), but I'm finally happy with my purchase, and at a discount too.

 

Thanks everybody.

[JasperSlade]

On 10/24/2021 at 6:08 AM, mancesco said:

I'm writing this just in case anybody has my same problem. I eventually found some that I actually like: Anker Soundcore Life A1. They are normally 60€, but I found a good deal for half the price. They sound pretty good and even have three EQ settings, fit easily and securely in my ears, the charging case is very compact.

 

I don't know why the previous ones I tried at the same price range sounded so dreadful (unless I was so unlucky to have received defective products), but I'm finally happy with my purchase, and at a discount too.

 

Thanks everybody.

Do you use these for phone calls very often?  I've also been looking at some of Anker's Soundcore lineup, but my main need is towards microphone quality rather than sound quality.  Was wondering what your experience is in that regard.