Can You Tell The Difference Between Wired and Wireless? 3.5mm vs Bluetooth Blind Test
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- čas přidán 7. 09. 2024
- Wired vs wireless? Is it that different? We put our team to the test. Using a pair of Creative Sound Blaster Evo headphones, we blindfolded our team and then gave them a sample of music from a phone playing out of a 3.5mm wired headset and then a bluetooth connected wireless headset.
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Episode Credits:
Host: Jack Sui
Writer: Jack Sui
Editor: Kalvin Shum
you should have taped a wire to the wireless ones
@Mainframe2066 yeah
Nope
You can really hear someone touching the cable of the headphones if you have the headphones on. The test has no sense.
That depends on the design of the headphones. Better quality ones have good cable isolation that almost entirely eliminates this phenomena.
That said, the headphones used in this test doesn't look that great to me and probably would indeed suffer from it, although it looks like Jack tried to be careful with the cable.
Also, based on the subjects' experiences, especially Wheels, it seems like this either was no issue or they just played along with it.
Also they didn't use higher end wireless ones, I'm using simulated 5.1 surround sound wireless headphones Rather than blue tooth headphones.
Thank you! There are idiots who responded negatively to me for saying the test is flawed.
@@Timmyfox Better headphones tend to have flat cables for less chances of tangle but don't make much of a difference with line noise
But in reality Wired ones really gives best audio Bluetooth is just messed up and brands are forcing us to shift towards wireless even if we have to compromise on quality.
You just fell into a trap.
The test was flawed ... I'll leave it at that.
+James May Thank you for your enlightening words. Now go away.
+Kevin Hall (KingKevinTheOne) fuck off
Job Done Right Why? Is it because you disagree with my personal opinion? Well that's very 'adult-like' of you. Since you insist, I'll stoop down to your pathetic level with this counter attack ... I'm rubber you're glue anything you say blah blah blah you know the rest.
There is no such thing as a flawed test, only results.
Dude whomever lied to you, must also be one helluva politician.
Of course you cant feel someone pulling on your headsets wire... Me and my crazy dreams...
Anthony got some new Wheels but forgot his Keys at home.
You win for today!
they can tell by the wire hanging off the wired one touching their shoulder
Nope it's true the difference is huge my Headset is wireless and wired so I have the option to swap to either the 2. When listening to music I use wired but when gaming I swap to wireless because I tend to snag my wires when playing. But the difference is huge when wired the sound is more clear and the highs and mids are spot on while on the wireless like they said it's a bit muffled.
Go to 1:57 ,You can see him holding the wire up
Very neat, great concept, but here are some improvement suggestions: Could've attached a cable to the wireless set to make it feel nearly identical on their heads. Publish your audio file properties, music app and source device. This should be pretty standard and completes the picture for viewers. Have them test multiple tracks, switching the order of the headphones.
I was just actually looking at some of the comments I don't care if they could feel the wire or not I just wanted to know if you could tell the difference in the quality of the sound perfect video thank you.
Wow. I have never seen this long and detailed argument in my life.
The wire was touching them, so that's easy to tell. You should have tapped a wire to the wireless one that you let just dangle, so that wouldn't give it away. You should have also tapped a battery to the wired one, because of the weight difference.
I'm pretty sure the wireless headphones just have the option to plug a cable to them too for when the battery dies so they just use the same headphone everytime.
What you thought that they didnt think it through? Also keys completely notice the difference and said it was miffed*
What you thought that they didnt think it through? Also keys completely notice the difference and said it was miffed*
He accidently let the wire dangle against them when putting on the wireless headphones on purpose.
That's the beauty of wireless headphones with a wired option
They could probably feel the slight nudge of that cable on the ear cup.
The result actually surprised me. I knew there was a performance disparity but I did not know it was this obvious. Great video, keep them coming.
Hello
It's true the difference is huge my Headset is wireless and wired so I have the option to swap to either the 2. When listening to music I use wired but when gaming I swap to wireless because I tend to snag my wires when playing. But the difference is huge when wired the sound is more clear and the highs and mids are spot on while on the wireless like they said it's a bit muffled.
The decreased quality occurs because audio is not sent losslessly through the Bluetooth interface. It is re-encoded using a lossy codec to limit the bandwidth necessary to transmit the audio. Any time you re-encode audio, especially from a lossy format to another lossy format, there's a loss of fidelity.
If the audio data was streamed using a lossless format over the BT interface, there would likely not be any noticeable difference from the wired headphones. Unfortunately the existing standards for BT audio do not enable the use of lossless compression.
I can tell the difference. Just look to see if it has a wire.
^^
This is Genius, I never thought about this method :D
The thing about doing these tests is it is very hard to tell the difference unless your hearing is 1. Really good and 2. You are good at memorizing noise profiles. You need really good hearing so you can find the very small differences. The moment you take off one headset and put in another your ears have already picked up the audio from your surroundings so you would need to be able to remember what the noise profile of the headset was.
It is so hard to explain this kind of stuff over text, and to be honest unless you have done some audio work or have good ears you really can’t tell the difference. Someone would need to create an adapter that can instantaneously change between cable and wireless. You can’t allow any pause or allow it to go quite. The moment it does your brain forgets the small differences.
It's all a matter of perspective - some people just don't have a clue or are not trained to hear the difference..
Wired for quality bluetooth for convenience.
good quality wireless would be fine this headphones are just shit, bluetooth in general kinda sucks
The wire is touching them. Easy answers of course. Doesn't even need to hear the sound to make a decision lol
i was thinking about this the whole time. You stole my comment!
He tried to hold the wire off them and deliberately touched them with it while they were wearing the wireless one to negate that indicator
Lonewolf and the sliding of the cable in his hand surely had to introduce cable noise.
I probably would have attached a cable to the wireless set to remove the variable.
Lonewolf and the sliding of the cable in his hand surely had to introduce cable noise.
I probably would have attached a cable to the wireless set to remove the variable.
69nites He slide the cable on his hand and around on the desk for the wireless as well to try and mask it, as well as holding the wire so it never touched the person or (hopefully) they never even felt the slight tug of the wire being on one ear. But yea, leaving the wire plugged in may have been better but the way the headphones are made it may automatically disable wireless when you plug something into the slot. Who knows.
I think they could feel the wires near them.
Wireless Headset Sucks With Sound But Are Very Good with the wireless computer setup !
I would like to note that in all honesty, there is a difference, but a general consumer won't really care. Sure, I could have earbuds or over ear headphones, but if I'm jogging, that cable becomes a hazard. I'm fine with using my bluetooth stereo headphones; they play music enough for me to enjoy and I can answer phone calls while changing tracks. Yes, wired headsets also have this feature, but I've yet to see forward/back and non-analog volume control on them.
It depends on the dac, so basically the dac in the wireless version of that headphone clearly was worse than the dac where the wired headphones were connected to.
True and I think the dac in my sony xb70bt are better than I have ever heard through the headphone jack minus portable amps which I am unwilling to use
Wired keyboard and mouse FTW!
***** wireless=more latency
***** yeah for sure, especially when you have a lot of radio interference, or have low battery, or have to plug in the keyboard often to charge it. Then that becomes several minutes of delay.
My key presses feel so muffled with wireless /sarcasm
Deathbrewer
FPS games are shit with wireless mice.
*****
Go get a proteus core then tell me that your mouse is better
If you're using bluetooth wireless then the digital audio processing is done on the bluetooth headphones and the output is as good as your headphones (meaning with bluetooth headphones, you do not need a sound card or audio processor on your PC). If you're using 3.5mm wired, the digital audio processing is done on the sound card or the audio processor inside your PC and it is being output to the 3.5mm. In my case, my bluetooth headphones are limited to 48 Khz sampling rate at 328 kbps. While using 3.5mm fed by my PC audio processor I get 192 Khz @ 32-bits. I definitely notice the difference between bluetooth and 3.5mm wired.
That was interesting to compare!
Now I wonder how things have changed 9 years later :P
Thanks for the video!
of course you can tell a difference especially in media that have high sample rate. The wireless require to downsample the sound in order to reduce the bandwidth so that it matches the frequency
YES absolutely I have a Jbl flip which has wired and wireless connection options and it is very clear which is which
The cable isn't plugged in at 4:32 *****
Can't talk about blu-tooth or however you write that, but I have wireless Sennheiser headphones. Of course, when I work with Audio, I always use wired headphones, but for just normal use (CZcams, other PC stuff...) it is just more comfortable. I can go get a drink while still listening to my stuff, because real wireless headphones work on a larger range. All in all Wireless is pretty amazing, but not something to consider if it is important to have superior audio (like a content producer).
You just compared the amplifier in the phone with the amplifier in the headphone, ofc thats more noticeable then the loss over bluetooth.
Its crazy how wireless Headphones go for like 100-150$, while wired ones go for like 30-40$ while even being a lot better than wireless ones.
I personally did a test like this as well some time ago, and im gonna be honest, I barely noticed a difference with the Music, however when watching Movies or playing Games, thats when the Audio compression from the Bluetooth Headphones really kicked in.
you missed the most important piece of info:
what Bluetooth audio codec is being used?
SBC? aptx? aptx-hd? aac?
it might be easy to tell the diff between 3.5mm and SBC, but is it just as easy to tell the diff between 3.5mm and aptx-hd?
Would have been nice to know what quality the original song was.
Bluetooth is still a limiting factor for wireless just in therms of throughput. Headphones with wireless proprietary technologies can be much better but can also interfere with other devices that use radio transmission.
It would have been better to have the wired one using USB instead of 3.5mm because then they would both be using the inline soundcard, I would have also plugged a wire into the wireless ones on the headphone side and left it unplugged on the device side so they would feel the same as the wired pair (a wire is a pretty hard thing not to notice regardless of how carefully you hold it). More swaps with a random order would have been better too, one swap means even a complete guess has a 50% chance of being right.
Round 2 perhaps?
Yeah! For sure.
I already tested my Tracks Air with and without cable, and there is some difference.
heck yeah you can tell the difference between wired and wireless..easy..especially when it comes to clarity and sound separation. Bluetooth has almost no sound separation at all, it's just muddy and muffled
Maybe with a good amp which most mobile devices(smartphones,etc) don't have but most consumers don't use external amps. I grabbed both models of sony extra bass earbuds xb70bt and xb50ap and the bluetooth version sounded better to me than wired(without an external amp)
You could tell completely without a doubt even if you had no experience with wired/wireless once a song changes due to the lag between them which is which, or more like buffer is what wireless feels like.
I have wireless beats studio 2s and it's nice to use wireless for working out or cleaning etc. but there is a difference with Bluetooth vs wired. Bluetooth has a metallic/gritty sound and less depth to it, you don't get the same sense of space and impact. It sounds like voices are in your ear versus an inch or two away from your ear if that makes sense. Anyone else feel me?
Yea i understand ya. I love Bluetooth when it comes to interviews.
There is another factor other then quality. The more bluetooth things you have the more interference you are creating and the harder to make connections and slower that connection will be. I've had to trouble shoot these situations where devices would not pair, until I had the person take the device away from all the others. Big issue? probably not. but I like to keep interference down. I have had a few situations were I could not connect to wi-fi with to many devices going. Once I had connection it was fine, but I could not get the initial connection.
i think it depends on the quality of the track. Let say u hear flac format which is 20-30mb each tracks. In this case i believe the bluetooth signal wont able to send this much data to your bluetooth speaker/headset, so what they do, they compress the size of the data to the size that bluetooth can handle. If u hear to 128kbps mp3, i think u will hear less diffrence on the sound quality.
The real difference is in the sound delay that comes from bluetooth. You don't notice that when listening to a song, but you can see/hear it when playing a game or a virtual instrument, or even watching a movie.
I would go with RF (radio frequency) headphones.
I don't notice any lag with my playstation vita and sony xb70bt earbuds or jbl xtreme and charge 3 speakers unless I have the jbl speakers connected together via the connect feature
this test should actually be conducted with video games because there should be minimal differences between wireless and wired when you're only listening to something. when you're playing games, you want your audio to be synced with the game video.
However gently you hold the wire, Jack, if you pull even just a little, they can tell immediately.
I have a pair of IE80 and i have a bluetooth wireless cable for them using my note 8 with flac files i can tell the difference instantly. the wireless connection has less bass and the lyrics of the track are muffled its more like a vibration motor compared to the high end audio they usually produce. with the original ie80 cable theres more bass and lyrics are clear
i´m a audiophile (wannabe?) but i can hear the difference even from one wire to another wire, a high quality vs a low quality, for example, i mod my Panasonic RP-HTF259 to have plug in cable becase they bring like 5 metters of cable...and i started using a cheap unmarked cable and they sound pretty bad, i tryed with other cable unmarked... sound the same... but when i bought a LG cable of 1.8m long.. dammmmmnnnn the sound changes from day to night, using a Pionner console and a Fiio amp...
It's all the interference in the cheapo cable. A lot of people don't realize it, but electricity plays a HUGE role in the overall sound. For example using an amp to power headphones will make them sound better because more electricity (and better current of electricity) generally = better sound. However just upgrading the crap out of one thing may not necessarily improve the sound. Your signal is only as good as your worst piece, or connection. Could be the audio source, a cable, a speaker, or just about anything. You are on the right path young padawan!
Thanks you broder
enginesnblades A good way to improve the overall quallity of a sound cable is to make a coil around ferrite cores on both ends, there's a noticeable difference in the audio between a "standard" cable and cable shielded with ferrite.
I love it how none of you has basic electronics knowledge and all of you act like you can hear a difference. Its in your head.
Stefan Slobodanovski If you study music long enough your ear will begin to develop. You will begin to hear even the slightest difference in any sound. You know why guitarists want thier guitar to have certain wood? Simple, we can hear the difference! Most people listening to music have no idea when such a subtle this is changed but to a musician it's night and day. You simply dont have a developed ear, so you dont pick up on the subtle things. But yes it's in our head. Itd be strange to have ears anywhere else, imo.
Do the test again and add a wire (with same stiffness etc) at same position on the wireless headphone shell. Then you don't need to take care touching and they can't FEEL the difference.
Try again with BT 4.1 or Apt-X, probably won't be able to tell the difference. The Creative EVO headset is only BT 2.1.
No matter what version of Bluetooth. Speed is enough. The point is AMPLIFIER - built in headphone is weaker then in computer.
Алексей Фомин I don't use headphones on computers though as I do with portable devices which have a weaker amp/dac through headpone jack than bluetooth headphones
I can tell the difference between Coke and Pepsi.
Are you god?
Valtteri Rui No, just someone who really loves Pepsi.
Valtteri Rui Er, God, whom you shall meet after you're dead, has a capitol G... "a god" is as you typed it, save to the "a".
Joshua Keys why? RC is better, everyone knows that :P
blueovalfan23 How could I forget about RC? I'm ashamed of myself. Lol I will say I do prefer RC over Coke.
I have Sony XM4 and they sound much better turned on and using Wired. Bluetooth is ok, but you cannot hear all the details of the sound.
this is a good test. wished you had more test subjects
I know it's not really the same thing, but I can tell instantly when someone is calling from a bluethooth device, especially one in a car. With all the advancements in wireless tech nothing matches the call quality of a land line to land line connection. Cellphones have a noticeably higher lag when trying to have a conversation, and if both are also using a bluethooth headset the lag becomes so great it begins causing problems with always talking over each other.
I just got a pair of JayBird BlueBuds X, coming form bose ie2s. And i was blown away the sounds, the bass and the all around sounds isolation. They are so convenient and I would definitely recommend them as an option for working out or commute to work or classes. Bluetooth as so far won me over.
Should have done a placebo effect kind of test and gone wired twice and see if they really could notice a difference
When shopping for bluetooth headphone, I would like to know how it sounds when bluetooth is off and just use wire. This is important to me because whenever practical I would like to use the cable for the following reasons:
1. Conserve internal battery power.
2. Conserve internal battery charging capability..
3. If the sound, when wired, is as good as any wire-only headphone with similar price, then I only need one headphone for home use and for commuting.
it's also especially apparent when you got full range speakers with beefy amps and playing FLAC files
Pulling and touching on a cable or cable touching the subject both sets should have some cable attached
Disclosure? that was super unexpected, love it
My issue is less quality and more lip sync issues, when on Bluetooth I see a delay in lips vs audio vs a wired connection where I don't .
Make sure the headphones Bluetooth supports aptX or uses proprietary wireless and its not an issue, regular Bluetooth is only designed with music in mind so can have ~100-200ms of latency.
I only get that issue when pairing my jbl xtreme and flip 3 speakers together
You gotta do a comparison with a bluetooth 4.0 wireless headset with a wired headset
You should have taped the cable to the wireless headphones, you can feel and hear when you pull the cable or just move it a little bit so they know instantly which are the wired headphones.
Recently my brother's girlfriend brought home a wireless sound bar from Samsung. When we used it with Bluetooth it was horrible, but as soon as we plugged in some wires it became amazing.
I guess it's because of the limited range, compression and vulnerability to interference that cause Bluetooth to lose quality. Also the low-quality DACs and amplifiers on many portable devices.
Must be a brand thing rather than bluetooth unless the device is old, when they have come out with some high res certified bluetooth devices My sony xb70bt sound awesome/better and louder on playstation vita slim than the corded version I tried xb50ap and my jbl xtreme sounds just as good through bluetooth or wired to me. I am unwilling to use a portable amp with corded headphones which may level the playing field though
This experiment should not be considered as a final answer to wired vs wireless.
This experiment should be just be considered as a comparison between these two specific headphones.
If I am going for sound, wired is better. Though not having the cables makes getting up from your desk or digging through your bag in the airport or library much easier.
Bluetooth also has this weired pitch effects when you move away a bit from the device and keep moving around. Also happened in my pocket all the time and i started hating the Bluetooth Headshpones and switched back to the best headphones in the world, my Sennheiser CX-300-II.
Even thou the dont have a badass sound when plugging them in, the have no limit in resolution and never override, meaning you can equalize how you want and still have an awesome clear sound.
With the 3.5mm, the music will be processed via the pc's sound card. But with the Bluetooth, the music will be processed via the headset's on-board soundcard. Hence the difference in sound.
If you use the usb connection, the sound will b processed by the headset instead. So maybe a usb vs Bluetooth would yield different results?
I have a pair of headphones that turn into wire when it is connected and there is a difference, a huge one like the wireless have weaker sound but when connected it sounds better
I tbh have everything wired, I just hate having to charge things our get batteries for them, also I always feel like performance is better when it's wired rather than wireless, though one thing I hate about wired and I hate this with a burning passion is that after time the connection can come lose and this happens to me ALL the time with bloody everything, so if there were a way to incorporate wireless charging into wireless devices I'd totally go wireless for most things excluding headphones.
Is it just me or doesnt the cable transfer vibrations when he holds it and therefore gives it away? When i swing around with my cable i can clearly hear it.
This test is obsolete now because we have qualcom aptx, aptx hd, ldac, along with new bluetooth 5.0. I guarantee it's very hard to notice a difference now.
HOLY SHIT REILY how times have changed.
I know the batteries on headphones aren’t too beefy and I’m not familiar with this model but wouldn’t this be slightly noticeable along with the obvious lack of a cable. Should have just used a wireless headphone that had a removable auxiliary option.
i think you should ask them immediately after each headphone test and choose the headphone randomly. Not just the first one is wired and the second one is wireless. Also 2 headphone test for each is not enough, maybe you should do 10 for each person and choose the headphone to test randomly.
I still love the freedom of being able to keep my headset on while taking a piss. even if the signal of the g930 often cuts off in the kitchen.
I have a bunch on wireless speakers and I always use the 3.5 jack. There's too much hissing on Bluetooth.
Am I somehow living under a rock for not ever hearing of an eye massager? That seems like it would be extremely painful.
Bad testing, especially with the 3.5mm cable touching them. Use high quality everything next time. I bet with decent hi-end heaphones all people will notice the BT connection more obviously.
yeah try razer kraken and diference between analog and digital (3.5mm jack vs usb)
The average person can't. Audiophiles can. Compressed digital audio is no match for thr likes of decent headphones, especially the higher end ones, not average consumer ones....
Why wouldn't you use the same bluetooth headset and plug them in for the wired part?
I don't know how much of the difference comes from one being battery operated or not, how much compromise was make to make it last longer
The battery has nothing to do with it, it is the data transfer medium that makes an impact
night and day difference wired had waaaaaaaaay more bass on my wireless hesh 2s. these have a removable wire
Think you should have used wireless headphones that have a 3.5mm Jack in case the battery dies. In case there was a manufacturing difference between the two.
Realistically my guess is that it may be from interferance from other devices, such as a mobile phone, wireless mouse, or any other device which may just be using a radio... I think that would explain how it's not really easy to tell the difference, but if you listen carefully, you will notice. Very cool video though! :)
oh it's the guy from Techlinked!
For your next test plug the USB cable so that way they will feel cable on both.
My tablet is Atmos digital and i bought headphones which i can definitely hear the difference from Bluetooth. Not on CZcams tho.
Well you can hardly hear it with this crapphones...
agree, if you're gonna listen to crapphones on your mobile phone it doesn't matter that much
Well if they're gonna be $250 headphones, they're going to come wired anyway.
Crapphones?
Sir, I'm gonna need some graphs.
You haven't put the link to the eye thing into the describtion. Where/What is it?
What does the eye massager do? I can't find any proper demo videos.
yes you can, but wireless are still really good and it counts on what you are doing with the headset and how....... i use logitech h600 (they are a little quiet) and they work very well, im sure the same price for a wired will sound better but i listen to music perfectly on these
Why are there so many asias in canada?
NeoChromer Seriously though, how is it possible if Asia is much bigger than Canada?
Vancouver is on the west coast and was a city that took in many refugees from Vietnam during the 70s
Is there a problem btw? Why didn't you question about Caucasian living in Asia?
Because there are like 2 Caucasians living in China while millions from China live in Canada, whats why
NeoChromer. How many racists around the world?
which version of bluetooth does that wireless headset have? that plays a huge part in sound quality.
Next time use single wired $200+ cans and plug them to a proper BT receiver VS direct source (balance audio volume).
i far prefer wired, but the huge factor in this is the DAC. On wired, it uses the DAC that is it plugged into, wireless has a DAC built into the headset. You're most likely going to get a better DAC elsewhere than on the headset itself, so that is why wired will win almost every time.
Well, you might be able to tell the difference, but the only real reason is that the wired have lower quality. When the stream is sent digitally its exactly the same when reaching the DAC. The only real difference is then what the post error is, that is the cable and the conector for the wired and non for the wireless.
But there is one more designed difference. Most wired DAC boast some frequencies to make it sound artificially better, wireless headphones don´t need to do that because the know exactly how good the speakers are. This is probably why he thought that the wireless was muffled. Actually the wired headphones was probably the faulty ones because the pre-amp the to much, but if your use to a error, you don´t hear it, and when the error is removed you will notice it as faulty.
If its a digital source, you cant beet a digital transmission, its physically impossible.
even on the same headphones. I can definitely tell the difference between wired and wireless mode (headphones will usually prioritize wired if both wireless and wired are "on" at the same time). can most ppl tell the difference? not useless you are used to $100+ headphones.
Personally I use wireless receviver for my in ear headphones. I just like the controls on the bluetooth receiver so I dont have to switch songs or stop them from my phone. And quality doesnt really get lower cuz cheap in ear headphones :P But works for me the best.
I would be cool to do the same test again but this time try the wired headset and then wait for 3 hours and try the wireless headsets and then vice versa and see if they can still tell the difference?🤔. Cool Video👍
is it the same with earbuds? headsets are all about audio but buds are a little different
Why did you use different headphones? Why not confnecting the wiered to a bluetoooth reciver
Why on wheels third test did you notice the wires wasn’t plugged in ?