With completely wireless earbuds, the rule is: when the battery fails, they have to be disposed of. Not so with the Fairbuds, that allow you to replace batteries in just a few seconds. Combined with a repairable design, the earbuds should therefore have an extremely long lifetime.
I’m not a DJ, but I can listen to high end audio from 3.5mm, even a phone, and you just can’t over Bluetooth. Its lossy janky and barely a standard.
AptX over Bluetooth is lossless and has been available since 2016. Android only though.
No, it isn’t. It just has higher bitrates, but still not enough for lossless.
If that’s true it seems like the name is fooling people
https://www.whathifi.com/advice/aptx-lossless-what-is-the-breakthrough-bluetooth-codec-how-can-you-get-it
Saying that AptX is lossless since 2016 is blatantly false. And yes, just like with HDMI and USB, AptX standard naming and Qualcomm feature naming schemes are a misleading mess.
There are 4 flavours of AptX (linked article states this as well), and only the latest supports lossless, but is available only on very few chipsets and devices so I even forget that it exists, because for all practical purposes it doesn’t.
Denon Perl Pro, Bose earbuds and Cambridge Audio M100 are the only non-chinese earphones that I know of that support AptX lossless and the latter are not even listed by my local importer. Plus, you need a very specific (expensive) phone to use them because AptX Lossless is not available for all chipsets. Basically, Asus ROG 8 or Xiaomi Redmi K70 Pro for ones available to buy for me, and then it’s not available at every retailer, either, and the b2b wholesalers I have access to through work only list ROG Phone 8 (~1200€ retail).
In conclusion, to make use of lossless AptX you have to jump through many hoops and spend a lot of money—700+€ phone and the 200+€ earphones. The standard is far from being, well, a standard; common and widespread. 99,9% of devices on sale and in use by people only support older AptX standards, mostly AptX HD (which is not lossless!).
My experience of Bluetooth has always been settings that I can’t change, security issues, and devices that run different implementations on both ends. See ‘barely a standard’, even when the box for each reads the same standard number.
Which is why I’m so reluctant to call it a standard; it isnt standardized.
There is also the latency if you are playing games with audio cues.
Oh. Oh god ive never even tried that. That sounds horrible.
Rhythm game enthusiast use wired headphones & kernel+pipewire settings to further reduce latency—as do musicians for recording on playback. Pro gamers use wired peripherals too for inputs & some even go analog for monitors for lower latency. Is it a stretch to say “wireless” is shorthand for “casual”? 🤔
Musicians (at least in studio) tend to use wired for the quality, which just does not exist in wireless. Less a latency thing. Live performers tend to use a monitor (speaker pointed back at them) AFAIK.
I use Guitarix to emulate effects when jamming by myself & the latency matters quite a lot when trying to hear the audio in my in-ear monitors. I couldn’t image using wireless from the bass guitar back to the laptop back to ear buds… would be too much lag to where you wouldn’t be hearing exactly what you are playing & a lot of folks mention using JACK & different kernel parameters for the latency, but I am no expert in these topics.