Why Headphones and Earbuds are My First Choice When I Sit Down to Listen to Music.

Though I have a fabulous sounding pair of Elac Uni-fi 2.0 floor standing speakers that are a joy to listen to when I want the room filled with sound, it is more often that I slip on my Bowers and Wilkins P7 wired headphones, HIFIMAN wired planar HE400S headphones, Wireless Apple AirPods Maxs, or even my wireless Apple AirPods Pro 2’s.

Each has its place. If I am in a quiet setting and I will not disturb anyone with my music, I always reach for open-back headphones, my preferred headphone design. To me, the sound is more natural; they are open and airy. The bass is more detailed and full, without the pressurized over-emphasis that can happen when the ears are sealed by being fully covered with solid cups. The sound stage likewise is presented in an open, wide, and spacious way. They are also, from a temperature standpoint, cooler, which can make a difference when I’m listening for an extended period.

However, what you are listening to will be heard by those around you, open-back headphones can broadcast your music out to your surroundings. You will never find open-back headphones in a recording studio, where ambient sounds mustn’t leak into the other musician’s ears, or mics. I wouldn’t use open-back headphones while commuting or traveling with others. However, I am not comfortable with completely cutting myself off from my environment when outdoors or traveling, with either closed-back headphones or In-ear headphones that seal off the ears. In that case, I will use headphones that have a transparency mode that uses mics to pick up ambient sounds, much safer for many reasons!

When I want to listen to music and I am in a noisy environment or don’t want to disturb others, I reach for my Bowers and Wilkins P7 closed-back headphones. They do a fantastic job of blocking external sound; the passive noise suppression is excellent. They are very detailed and warm sounding, but the bass has nowhere to go, and it tends to become a little muddy and a bit muffled, and after a while the pressurized cave-like feeling leaves me longing for my open-back planar cans.

When I want to listen discretely or while traveling, I will almost always use my AirPods Pro 2s. I’ve had so many styles and brands of earbud types that I’ve developed preferences for the very comfortable and sophisticated AirPods Pro. I tried earbuds that press deeply into the ear canal, basically sealing the sound within the canal which would boost bass and make the music sound richer. However, there was that issue again of being cut off from my environment. I’ve found the style of earbuds that fit snuggly into the opening of the ear canal, like the Apple AirPods, but don’t get buried deeply, to be both more comfortable and compatible with outdoor activities. They, like many of the various brands, now have transparency mode for keeping the listener connected to their surroundings.

Most wireless earbuds today are built in basically the same way; they have a battery, battery-monitoring system chip, speaker, microphone, microphone preamp, and Bluetooth receiver. The more advanced models also have advanced circuitry for voice recognition, sophisticated telephony, and blending into an ecosystem that allows them to “talk” to other devices to sync up seamlessly. Many also can sense when they are in your ears and know when to pause and resume playing, as well as being “findable” when misplaced or lost. The newest generations can even be used as hearing enhancers that are controlled by an app on a smartphone for those with mild hearing loss. It is truly amazing how smart these tiny devices are.

Here is an exploded view of the AirPods Pro. Its complexity delivers spectacular sound.

Regardless of the style of the headphones in all their varied features, the quiet intimacy of the music is enveloping and engaging in a way that a room full of music doesn’t always provide. Of course, there are times when only speakers will do; it’s hard to imagine a cocktail party with everyone wearing headphones…

My living room, where I have my speakers as part of my home theater set up, is an acoustic challenge. Floor-to-ceiling windows are a few feet behind the listening positions, and there is a floor-to-ceiling window to the right of the speakers and the REL T/5x subwoofer that is placed in the corner behind the right speaker. I also have beamed ceilings which are lovely, but they add their own reflective challenge.

I’ve done the best I can to compensate, and the system sounds great to me, but all those deficiencies don’t matter when I put on my headphones. The music is all there, sounding just like it was recorded. The soundstage opens around me and immerses me with detailed music that is clear and vivid.

And then there are the Binaural recordings, which can only be heard in their full glory with headphones or earbuds. I can listen to the three-dimensional soundscapes of Gordon Hempton’s nature recordings without startling the household with sudden rainforest thunder.

Binaural recordings are an evolution from stereo recordings. They take the microphone set-up that stereo recording uses and change the method of placing mics in front of the sound source to one that recreates how we use our ears to place sounds three-dimensionally in space and distance. Two microphones are placed in ear-like cavities on either side of a dummy head or placed on the recordist’s ears. Because the head shape recreates the density and shape of a human head (this is referred to as Head-Related Transfer Function, or HRTF, or Anatomical Transfer Function, or ATF), the microphones will capture all the acoustic data the brain uses to echo-locate and create an aural image of the environment, thus delivering sound as it would be heard by the human ear in all its natural and three-dimensional glory.

Now I have always preferred to listen with wired headphones or wired earbuds, knowing that I was getting as much of the information as was available compared to Bluetooth. I know that the Codecs (the various forms of audio compression) are always evolving, but, at least so far, as terrific as my AirPods Max’s are (and they are the only way to listen to spatial audio when watching movies with headphones), they still lack a certain life to the sound I get with my wired headphones.

No matter how good the Bluetooth format is, it is still lossy, and thus not all the data of the wired analog signal will be there. With analog, there is no additional compression to the music. Wired headphones are also plug-and-play; no pairing is needed with the music source.

Having said that, however, there are times when wireless is the winner. Portability for example, I don’t have to go find a cable and adaptor long enough to plug into the A/V receiver and drag across the room and then plug in my headphones if I want to listen to a movie quietly.

Then there is the possibility that the headphone cable gets broken or frayed just enough that static and cutting out start showing up, though honestly, I can only think of a few times that has happened, and it was always with very inexpensive headphones that came with Walkman-like devices, and the better headphones have replaceable wires. Also, as technology for our audio sources evolves, the 3.5mm jack used by the vast majority of wired headphones will need even more adapters than I’m using now, which may get very cumbersome.

Bluetooth does have some impressive codecs currently, for example, aptX adaptive (279kbs to 420kbs) or LDAC (up to 990kbs, 24-bit), which are available for Android devices, have higher sample rates and bitrates, which, in addition to delivering high-resolution music, result in lower latency, which is ideal for the headsets used by the gaming faction.

AAC (up to 320kbps) works for both Android and Apple devices, though it works best on Apple products as it is the codec that they have chosen for their standard. YouTube Music is 128kbps AAC.

Fairly recently, Bluetooth LC3 has come on board and is a boon for the hard of hearing. Hearing devices are benefitting from the higher audio quality and efficiency and will help the hearing impaired with far more advanced and capable hearing aids due to multi-stream support. (As an aside, when considering a new set of wireless headphones, check the specs to see what codecs they support so that they will play well with your wireless audio sources.)

Here is an interesting factoid: the name “Bluetooth” came from King Harold Bluetooth of Denmark. Jim Kardach, one of the Intel engineers who was involved in the adaptation of the new technology that promised to unite disparate devices, came up with the name when the team needed a placeholder name for the new technology. He had been reading a historical novel about the second King of Denmark in the 10th century who united Denmark and Norway: Harold Bluetooth. It is said that he had a dead tooth that was a dark blue/grey color, so was given the name “Bluetooth”.

Jim Kardach said that since they intended to unite computers and cellular devices with a short-range wireless link, much like King Harold had united Scandinavia, Bluetooth seemed like the perfect name. When it came time to select a final name, two names were in the running: RadioWire or PAN (Personal Area Networking). However, although PAN was their first choice, they discovered the name was already in use all over the Internet, and they didn’t have time to complete the trademark search for RadioWire in time for their launch. Bluetooth was their only choice, and the name caught on so quickly on the Internet, that they decided to keep the name. The logo was created by binding two letters “H” and “B” in the Younger Futhark Runes (Hagall) and (BJarkan) = ®

As a reviewer here at SECRETS, I look forward to exploring the advances in wireless headphones; they do provide some extra functionality that wired headphones can’t. Honestly, I am already finding the differences are smaller than I previously thought they were. In the meantime, I will reach for my wired headphones when I want to squeeze every note and nuance out of my music. Ultimately, wired or wireless, the one thing that won’t change is my passion for the joys of listening with my treasured headphones.

For my initial comparisons of wired vs wireless, I sat down with a few of my favorite recordings that I can count on to deliver highly detailed, well-recorded music that will highlight the entire spectrum of highs, mids, and lows as well as the transparency that allows the recording to vanish and leave me simply immersed in musical bliss. For the sake of brevity, I decided to keep my list short; heavens know I could have gone on for hours! My music player is my Apple iPhone 13, and my music source is Apple Music and Apple Music Classical.

•Shabda, from the Music of the Spheres, Mike Oldfield 2008 Mercury Records Limited, under exclusive license to Universal Music Classics & Jazz, lossless 44.1kHz ALAC (Apple Lossless Audio Codec)

This is the A/V gear that I use: