Wireless headset: Price + quality = worth it?

[BloodDrunk]

hello
I'm thinking of getting a wireless headset for listening to music and playing. I was looking at what's in the market and I saw they are quite expensive. My question is: are they worth the price? Considering they are wireless, how will the sound quality be (I'm mostly gonna be within meter or 2 from the receiver)? I'm looking for the ones that have receiver, not bluetooth, because if they're bluetooth, that will require me to get bt stick, too, and I'm sick of buying this and that and everything so I can use 1 thing

Yes/No?

I loathe cabels, for the record.
Got myself wireless keyboard and mouse and dear lord the freedom...

EDIT: Also, do they run on batteries, OR they have inbuilt battery which needs to recharge and shit?

 

[BloodDrunk]

Dead.Site.

 

[Dr Super Good]

Dead.Site.

The site was down most of Wednesday...

I honestly cannot recommend you a decent product. Headphones are in the domain of "stupid consumers" so they lack proper detailed specifications. For example there are not frequency response diagrams, something critical for determining how good a product is.

 

[Zwiebelchen]

Headphones are in the domain of "stupid consumers" so they lack proper detailed specifications. For example there are not frequency response diagrams, something critical for determining how good a product is.

Bullshit. There are industry level headsets readily available at any good music store.
Get a pair of anything beyond entry level quality and you will also get proper response graphs.

If you don't care about dropping a couple dollars more, a pair of AKGs or Beyerdynamics or the higher tier Shure ones will not disappoint you. Sennheiser also offers good quality in their higher price segment (just avoid the consumer level Sennheiser stuff).

As a rule of thumb: if you really care about audio quality, go for the big names and expect to pay at least 200$. This is the price point at which you will get high quality drivers and flat response. But keep in mind that higher quality cans will also require a lot more wattage than cheap consumer level grade.
You might want to invest another 100$ into a headphone amp to get a clean signal from your soundcard.

...
You do have an external soundcard on your computer, right? Because otherwise, get a consumer-level headset and don't care about audio quality. No matter how good your cans are, your on-board soundcard and the cheap-ass D/A converters in it will make sure it sounds like shit regardless of what you put after.


Regarding wireless headsets: expect that to double the cost of your cans. Wireless is expensive as soon as you leave mass-produced consumer-level gear territory. The audio quality is pretty equal to wired cans there, so don't worry about that. In fact, sometimes it's even slightly better, as the signal quality doesn't degrade with cable length.

 

[Dr Super Good]

Bullshit. There are industry level headsets readily available at any good music store.
Get a pair of anything beyond entry level quality and you will also get proper response graphs.

Yes but then you are paying through the roof for them. Ironically they probably have the same internals as consumer grade headphones, just with a big price on them.

You do have an external soundcard on your computer, right? Because otherwise, get a consumer-level headset and don't care about audio quality. No matter how good your cans are, your on-board soundcard and the cheap-ass D/A converters in it will make sure it sounds like shit regardless of what you put after.

This is nonsense. A cheap DAC is more than enough to produce output of such quality as to saturate the human ear's ability to tell the difference. I mean audible sound is only 16 bit at ~40 KHz for crying out loud. Even a cheap ADC for audio capture has the potential for near perfect sound. Human hearing is hardly precision stuff.

What is more important is that the amplifier from the DAC is of an audio quality. However seeing how that is pretty much all there is to a sound card, I would imagine it is even on cheap ones.

Regarding wireless headsets: expect that to double the cost of your cans. Wireless is expensive as soon as you leave mass-produced consumer-level gear territory. The audio quality is pretty equal to wired cans there, so don't worry about that. In fact, sometimes it's even slightly better, as the signal quality doesn't degrade with cable length.

The amount of sound signal degradation that occurs over the average 1-2m long cable? Probably <1db.

 

[Zwiebelchen]

Cheap D/A converters in sound cards are prone to introduce noise and color the sound. It's not about fidelity or bit depth here. Also i was talking about on-board soundcards (= the one on your average mainboard) not actual cards you plug into your mainboard.

A good external sound card for around 100$ will do the trick and provide you with all the periphery you need. And AES and other digital outputs if needed.
Some also have built-in headphone amps. It's a worthwhile investion if you don'thave one yet.

About cable signal degredation: it's not about dB, it's about capacitance. You will lose high frequency content in longer cables. It certainly doesn't matter for 2 meters, but it does for 5+. And the reason to go wireless in the first place is that you don't want to be limited in that, so I just assumed he would go for a longer cable.

 

[Dr Super Good]

Cheap D/A converters in sound cards are prone to introduce noise and color the sound. It's not about fidelity or bit depth here. Also i was talking about on-board soundcards (= the one on your average mainboard) not actual cards you plug into your mainboard.

Sounds more like cheap amplifiers rather than cheap DACs. Sound hardly is precision stuff as human hearing is terrible, the only really expensive parts are the amplifiers and loudspeakers.

A good external sound card for around 100$ will do the trick and provide you with all the periphery you need. And AES and other digital outputs if needed.

Most decent desktop motherboards have all such outputs already. Additionally any other features of the soundcard can only be used by specialist applications since Windows Vista and later dropped sound card acceleration support.

it's not about dB, it's about capacitance.

Given the length of the wire involved, and the scale involved, I would imagine both inductance and capacitance to be negligible. Especially when it comes to attenuation of audible frequencies, which are only up to 20 kHz.

Some noise will be picked up because the cable acts as an aerial, however even that should be tiny unless you run the cable next to power cables or other noise sources.

You will lose high frequency content in longer cables.

Most audio content does not have much high frequency content in the first place. Additionally "high frequency content" is actually very low frequency when it comes to actual signal processing.

To put it in perspective, perfect stereo audio needs 2*40,000*2 bytes per second or 160 kilobytes per second. Even with antialiasing bandwidth it is only ~200 kilobytes of bandwidth per second. The HDMI cable driving my display needs to transmit 1*1080*1920*60 bytes per second or 124.416 megabytes per second.

And the reason to go wireless in the first place is that you don't want to be limited in that, so I just assumed he would go for a longer cable.

Wireless headphones often have their own losses associated with them. For a perfect stereo audio 160 kilobytes per second are needed. Many wireless systems fail to provide such bandwidth, meaning that lossy compressed audio is transmitted. Will one hear the difference? Probably not.

 

[Zwiebelchen]

Sounds more like cheap amplifiers rather than cheap DACs. Sound hardly is precision stuff as human hearing is terrible, the only really expensive parts are the amplifiers and loudspeakers.

Noise is introduced at any level in analog signal processing depending on the shielding and general manufacturing quality. So, yes, cheaper converters WILL cause a higher noise floor. Not that SNR really matters for modern music, since everything is compressed as fuck anyways...

Most decent desktop motherboards have all such outputs already. Additionally any other features of the soundcard can only be used by specialist applications since Windows Vista and later dropped sound card acceleration support.

Most of the time, unfortunately, you will need the analog outputs. And those are usually horrible quality on mainboards.
I had mainboards where you could literally hear your mouse movement as EMI noise.

Given the length of the wire involved, and the scale involved, I would imagine both inductance and capacitance to be negligible. Especially when it comes to attenuation of audible frequencies, which are only up to 20 kHz.

It's not negligible. Do you even audio, bro? Why do you think things like line buffers and audio boosters exist? Why do you think DI-boxes exist?
Literally every stage-grade cable snake ever has to be powered to fight signal degradation due to the cable length.

Some noise will be picked up because the cable acts as an aerial, however even that should be tiny unless you run the cable next to power cables or other noise sources.

Depends on the quality of your cable. The better the shielding, the less EMI is picked up.

 

[Dr Super Good]

Noise is introduced at any level in analog signal processing depending on the shielding and general manufacturing quality. So, yes, cheaper converters WILL cause a higher noise floor. Not that SNR really matters for modern music, since everything is compressed as fuck anyways...

Except the frequencies involved are so low that...

Do you even audio, bro?

No I studied electronics. Like how to actually design audio systems.

Why do you think things like line buffers and audio boosters exist? Why do you think DI-boxes exist?

Mostly to part gullible people from their hard earned money. That and the sort of cable used is often unshielded and very thin. This is why I connect my router to the master telephone socket with a high ended shielded cable.

Literally every stage-grade cable snake ever has to be powered to fight signal degradation due to the cable length.

It is more for traditional reasons when electronics were nowhere near as well designed as we can achieve today. Thick cables are needed mostly for durability (people abusing them during setup/takedown) rather than to preserve sound quality. That and one needs to make money from specialist hardware.

 

[PurgeandFire]

@BloodDrunk: Some use charging, others use batteries. Depends on the headphones. I've seen both.

I have friends who use bluetooth headphones and they haven't had complaints. It is pretty liberating. But they are definitely pricey, especially if you want them to be halfway decent. Since you don't want Bluetooth, I'd probably stick with wired. I don't know of any headphones that are decent non-bluetooth (what do they even use? Wifi? FM?), but it'll be difficult to find anything that compares to the quality/price of a bluetooth version.

As for wired, I think at the end of the day, this'll be the key thing to consider:

You do have an external soundcard on your computer, right? Because otherwise, get a consumer-level headset and don't care about audio quality. No matter how good your cans are, your on-board soundcard and the cheap-ass D/A converters in it will make sure it sounds like shit regardless of what you put after.

 

[BloodDrunk]

Woah, this thread got some replies after all.
Thanks! And hmm, I think I'll be then waiting to bulk up abit to get some decent ones..I really do NOT want cables, and will go for bluetooth then, bluetooth stick ain't so expensive (I hope).