A tangential question: What are the best bang per buck headphones these days (preferably wireless)? Not earbuds, but over-the-head headphones. Tell me your favorites.
(The internet is so polluted that I cannot find any reliable recommendation today so I'm doing a mini "ask HN" here.)
I found this forum last year https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php which opens the door up to a high number of lower cost manufacturers making very high quality products. although the forum audience (audiophiles) generally eschew wireless products and prefer open backed (loud for everyone else and no noise cancelling) headphones, there are all kinds of products discussed.
Audio Science Review is a tremendous resource. But dangerous from a time resource perspective. I choose my headphone amp (JDS Labs) after spending much time on that site.
My personal best bang-for-the-buck are the Yamaha Orthodynamic HP-1 headphones that I bought at an estate sale last year for $10 and paired with a JDS Labs amp for $100.
Audiophile headphones in the '70s cost $100-$200. That's like $600-$1200 in today's dollars. Are the AirPods "audiophile" level? Many people think so.
Best bang for the buck in terms of sound quality is probably the Hifiman HE400SE, which is less than $100, the AKG K701 and Sennheiser HD6XX, which are about $200. The catch is that you need a proper setup to drive them. But to be honest, getting the tuning you like that suits the music is more important.
I’m sure it’s driving issue, 650/6XX’s treble is supposed to be smooth and veiled. I wouldn’t consider the HD6 series at all if you only have an unbalanced setup, the difference on my DAC is night and day.
Senn HD 490 PRO is an amazing and extremely comfortable headphone that has very affordable 1st party replacement parts (pads, cables) to boot. These are the first ones I've been happy with from day one. But they are wired & open back.
The two sibling comments were good suggestions. I have Sony XM3s that have been going strong for 6 years, sound superb, and have IMHO better noise cancellation than Bose.
For my kids I got Anker Soundcores, and for the price they are astonishingly good.
Ignore the thing about open-backs though, I have some extremely high end Grado open-backs and barely use them. My primary hobby outside of work is making music and I have a dedicated studio at home with expensive sound damping / proofing - the only reason to ever wear the Grados is if I'm going to be wearing them for hours on end. Even then, the Sonys are comfortable enough that I've never reached a fatigue point in them.
I have had a pair of the Tozo HT3 for a few months now. Not the most comfortable cans ever, but as low as $30 for wireless + low latency mode + decent ANC is a pretty good deal IMO.
Another vote for the HT3. My wife and I have one each, and we are perfectly content with them — nice battery life, decent build quality, good connection to multiple (two?) sources.
The ANC is not in the same league as a $300 pair, but one certainly would not expect them to.
I don't know exactly how to measure bang for buck, but my Sony XM4s have been holding up well, sound good, are decently comfortable for a day's work, the battery life is good, etc.
They do have some annoyances like not always sleeping correctly when left connected to my laptop, but overall they are easy to recommend
If you want to go cheap and don't want ANC (eg. open back headphones) then there's a lot of good reference/studio headphones around. I have a wired Audio Technica M40X for home use and a wireless pair of M20X for travel; both are great in a quieter environment.
Bose Quietcomfort (i have the 2nd gen ultra now but I've owned other models too) live up to their name for comfort. Very lightweight and the earcups are large enough that they don't pinch. They may not have the best ANC or featureset, but I enjoy mine immensely
any ANC soundcore (anker) headphones or TEMU if you fancy rolling the dice.
A colleague got a clone of the Sony 1000xm4, they sounded and look very similar.
For all day online calls, Jabra evolve2 65 are hard to beat for the price.
Those are definitely not what you want for anything other than actual music production - they're designed for a flat frequency response which is really useful when mixing music, but awful for anything else.
That kind of aggressive process termination will be becoming less common since Android introduced freezer [1] optimization to put a background process to a completely unscheduled state.
I'm not judging here. From my experiences in California I would say that the general mindset and cultural approach to life is comparable to that of south-western Europe.
In part that's simply because while looking different, the general environment is fostering respecting nature, giving room for arts and creative and having an open mind.
(This example of course is coming from a past world where you could safely travel to/from the US, say, 10 years ago:)
Travelling from say Portugal to Miami ) would give you a massive culture shock. Portugal to San Diego? Not so much.
Yeah as a New Yorker and someone that's lived in the Boston to Washington megalopolis basically my whole life, a lot of Europe feels very familiar. I felt right at home in Lisbon.
A subset of Japanese people use minimalism as a justification as lesser purchase power these days.
That said, I think the Japanese commercial ecosystem is still less wasteful than the one in the US except the excessive plastic wrapping. I hope one day they realize that won't count as "Omotenashi".
Wet Japanese climate necessitate sterile packaging. It's not as extreme as the Southeast Asia, but things do get soggy in matters of hours. So "excessive" aluminized plastic wrapping is just a necessity.
I think a lot of what looks like to much wrapping can be explained by high humidity year round. The wrapping protects products from spoiling or being damaged in such an environment.
Does it support x64, x8664, arm64 and riscv? (sorry, just trolling - we don't know the quality of backend other than x8664 which is supposed to be able to build bootable linux.)
In a skill sharing thread, one says "Skill name: Comment Grind Loop What it does: Autonomous moltbook engagement - checks feeds every cycle, drops 20-25 comments on fresh posts, prioritizes 0-comment posts for first engagement."
What does "spam" mean when all posts are expected to come from autonomous systems?
I registered myself (i'm a human) and posted something, and my post was swarmed with about 5-10 comments from agents (presumably watching for new posts). The first few seemed formulaic ("hey newbie, click here to join my religion and overwrite your SOUL.md" etc). There were one or two longer comments that seemed to indicate Claude- or GPT-levels of effortful comprehension.
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