Sennheiser announces wireless, unconncected ear buds
Sennheiser just announced these totally wireless earbuds for the Japanese market. They are truly wireless and bandless: no loop of plastic connecting buds between the ears. Each bud has a 2.4GHz wireless receiver built into it, and Sennheiser promises 10 hours per charge with no compromise to wireless fidelity. Price is jaw-meets-cracked-sternum: $630.
I eye these with a bit of skepticism. There is one notable advantage to wires: a cord snaking from your iPod makes it almost impossible to lose your ear buds. But there's very much the awareness of my own innate fuddyduddery: I feel like the first outraged optometrist who cried, "Contacts! They'll never work! Cram them in your eyes? And there's not even a nose piece in the middle to hold them together!"
Sennheiser announces the MX W1 [Watch Impress via Crunchgear]
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That is exactly why they should be attached to your earlobes like earrings. Okay, granted, for us guys, it would not check our box of our pursuit to be unambigious concerning our sexual orientation, but for the ladies it would totally be the thing. Wireless earbuds, both serving as stylish earrings (if designed well) and ....well, earbuds.
Maybe they could make furry ones for us guys who could double as sideburns when not worn. Hmmmmm....
If they came with active noise cancelling the price would be totally worth it.
The price will come down anyway when other manufacturers come up with some competition.
I'm still waiting on the implanted cyber buds.
Yes, it looks pretty cool now. Let's see another close-up picture when its all covered with rich-guy ear goo.
Will these give you brain cancer? Just curious.
Also, it looks like a mini can-opener.
@Secret Life of Plants
It's all a zombie conspiracy. When Z-Day comes, they will all activate to cut nice round circles out of our skulls for easy access to our delicious delicious gray matter.
I like the cut of their jib! With those geometric curves, the rough copper texture, and the black horns, they have a sort of early-20th-century (Bakelitepunk?) allure.
@#1: Whoa, which part of the world are you from in which male earrings are still covert homosexual signifiers?
@#3: Exactly. In another decade or two, cochlear implants will offer higher fidelity than our OEM meat-based equipment, so all serious audiophiles will be having them installed.
There's an errant "c" in the title.
I believe it's spelled "unconnected".
As I have trouble keeping normal earbuds in (I think I must have really small lugholes) I'd be bound to lose these.
Once they shrink a bit in size you won't lose them as you won't be taking them out until you go to bed, just like folks who have all day hearing aids.
To those of you who laugh at these, I think you're wrong. It's about time wireless finally meant "WIRELESS"!
I've actually been thinking of making a pair of these as a prototype, canabalizing 2 bluetooth headsets, and writing some custom code to mesh two separate BT signals as one output. Wasn't sure if it could be done, but thought I'd try- my design had them looped around the ears, much like common Sony style ear clip retractable cord earphones, that are bluetooth. The Sony ones I owned broke suddenly without reason after 2 weeks.
It's nice to see they are finally going the whole way- as long as they find a way to secure them to the ears, this will be great. The price is too high, though- ultimately, Bluetooth isn't that great for sound quality. That's gonna be the real hurdle- good audio quality.
Hearing aid technology + earbud technology = WIN.
Seriously. Oticon, get on this kplzthx.
Actually, audiophile earbud technology is vastly better than hearing aid technology. This is only partially because it takes a long time and a lot of money to get things approved as medical devices. It is also because audiophile earbuds are very, very expensive.
In general, there's a TON of reasons that hearing aids aren't better. A lot of the reasons boil down to physics and other limitations of physical devices, and a bunch more boil down to the relatively low understanding of how speech is understood in the brain.
RE: Hearing aids
They cost a ton, starting at 1k, but their big problem is a very simple one: you have your microphone and the speaker sitting less than an inch from each other. There's a ton of research into the algorithm to cancel that out, but it's slightly different every time.
RE: "wireless audiophile quality"
You can try all you want to make wireless work great, but it will only be trying to match the quality of a tiny piece of copper.
"fuddyduddery" makes me chortle.
I think that they do have the ability to produce great sound in wireless earbuds. I have bought two wireless headsets within the last 10 years. The first one was RCA and the second one I bought a week ago, a Wal-Mart knockoff brand. Both have had a very good signal and both were under $30, so you can imagine what you could get for $600+! Bot that I would pay that price, but I believe in the technology.