Wireless Headsets SOUND BETTER Than Wired Closed-Back Headphones Now

So, it used to be the case that you would never take something like this, a wireless gaming headset, seriously for sound quality. And I don't just mean sound quality for gaming. I mean sound quality, period. And it wasn't really that long ago where it would be generally good advice to recommend to somebody, don't waste your time, you know, with these gaming headsets. They're cheap and feature laden and they always sound terrible. You know, go with a passive proper headphone, a real headphone instead, and a standalone separate microphone. That used to be good advice. These days kind of don't think it is. And in today's video, that's what I'm going to talk about. So, let's get going. All right. So, the question here is obviously, are gaming headsets better than the wired passive closed-back alternatives these days? And my answer to this is kind of yeah. This is, by the way, the Cloud 3 Wireless S if anybody's wondering. But I've just sort of noticed this issue in various different headphone related communities that, you know, people don't talk about these products the way they talk about, you know, something something like this. And that's a shame. We really should be taking the sound quality that we get from these products seriously, even if we have no interest in gaming whatsoever. And certainly when we're talking about value and the tangible benefits to actually using, you know, things that go on your head and make sound, these types of things should probably be considered much more than they are. Nothing about this looks and feels like it's an audio file product, right? Like there there's nothing about this that makes you go, "Oo, yeah, that's a special sound." But it is. But I want to first go over a couple of the misconceptions that I think people might have about, you know, wireless headsets and wireless headphones in general because there are actually very few downsides to these types of products. And when I say these types of products, I mean headphones and headsets that have the ability to be active in some way. It's stuff like the Cloud 3 Wireless S here or of course the Audeze Maxwell. But I also want to give a shout out to the Sennheiser HDB 630. This is a bit more expensive, but it's a wireless noise cancelling headphone and they bundle it with this. This is the BTD700, which also makes it so it's low latency on whatever computer you plug it into. So, the obvious benefits to products like these is that they're wireless and they're wireless usually with really good range. And with the gaming products that use the 2.4 GHz dongle, they're low latency. And also with what the Sennheiser HTB 630 has done, it's also low latency. So, the fact that it's wireless doesn't require the downside of there being a sync issue if you're watching a movie or playing a game, that's kind of why these products exist. They're meant to be low latency. But one of the other common conceptions to do with wireless headphones is that they sound worse because they're wireless. And that's just not true. It's certainly not true anymore. And in fact, it's because they're wireless that gives them all the potential in the world to sound very good. So, first of all, when we're talking about these 2.4 GHz based products that has a lot more bandwidth capability than the typical Bluetooth headphones. But even Bluetooth these days with a well-implemented codec, which is what most of them have, that is not the limitation on your sound quality that people think it is. You know, it's funny. Whenever I review a Bluetooth headphone that doesn't happen to have lossless as part of its features, like lossless connectivity, people will get all kinds of fired up in the comments without really scrutinizing or caring about the frequency response at all. They think that somehow it's the fact that it's not lossless that it's not going to sound as good as a wired headphone. The reality is it's it doesn't sound as good because it's tuned like ass. That's why. Like you can be confident that any of those wireless headphones that you've heard that don't happen to have lossless on them, if they're using a modern competently implemented codec for the Bluetooth, if they sound bad, it's because the frequency response is bad. It's not because it's not lossless. But that's maybe a separate point. The main thing is that these products, these wireless headphones and headsets are active and that means they have the ability to have digital signal processing in them. DSP, EQ. Now, normally when we're dealing with wired passive audio file headphones, those of us who know are doing all kinds of EQ to customize the sound to exactly how we want it to be. With these things, they've done that, right? That's how we should be thinking about this. It's kind of like taking the handcuffs off and basically saying, "Okay, we can make this be however we want it to be." And then it's up to the manufacturers to figure out what good actually is. And this is where I have to give a shout out once again to the Audeze Maxwell for what is at least in my opinion setting a trend for good sound quality in wireless products. Maybe I'm wrong about this, but in my mind that was sort of like a watershed headphone headset because before that I remember gaming headsets were all terrible. like they all used to sound awful and that recommendation of buy yourself a proper pair of headphones and a separate microphone was the right thing to do. But again, these days these are so competent, they are so well tuned, you get all the benefits of wireless low latency and in some cases you get noise cancelling. It kind of doesn't make sense to recommend passive wired closed-back headphones most of the time. So for anybody who's still confused about this, let me be very clear. The 2.4 GHz dongle based products and even some of the modern Bluetooth products don't have meaningful downsides for the fact that they're wireless compared to the wired alternatives. You have all the potential in the world to make the sound how you want it to be to basically tune it actively, not passively. And you also get the benefits of this being wireless. You can take this to the other room. You can literally go to the bathroom while wearing your headphones without having to pause your music. What a what a time to be alive. This is insane. Now, I know there are people out there who are going to say, "No, no, no. You cannot you cannot replace my cable, my DAC, and my amp with this wireless 2.4 GHz dongle business. I need I need my buttons. I need my cables. I need my DK. I need my amp." No, you don't. Stop. Get some help. Stop it. Get some help. So, here's an example. This is how the Cloud 3 Wireless S compares to a closed-back wired headphone that came out this year. Now, if you know about these headphones, you'll probably also know that they're a bit of a meme. And this is not really a fair comparison, but I just wanted to show the kinds of extremes that we're talking about here. And when you are getting into some of these passive wired audio file closed-back options, things can get really weird. So then of course you're wondering, well, what if you compare it to the good headphones? And this is where things get interesting. So I want to go through some of the graphs here now. So this is the HyperX Cloud 3 Wireless S compared to some good passive wired alternatives. And you can see that it's all fairly close. Uh, this is how it compares to the FiiO FT1. So, this is not the Pro version. The FT1 is the closed-back. And you can see there's a bit of a dip in the ear gain here for the Cloud 3 Wireless S, but it's not really all that much. And you also get a little bit of a dip feature there on the FT1. And overall, these are both very competent, well-tuned, great sounding headphones. And if you compare them side by side, they both sound very good. And I'm not going to say that everybody's going to prefer the Cloud 3 Wireless S over the FiiO FT1, but they're around the same price. The sound quality is similarly good, similarly competent. And with the Cloud 3 Wireless S, you get wireless, you get a microphone, you get some software, right? So, forget the ultra high-end expensive esoteric tunings for most clothesbacks. Even if you look at the competent ones, the ones that we would genuinely say are the ones to shoot for, the Cloud 3 Wireless S is at least competitive with that for its sound quality, and then you get all these other benefits. Let's go up to the sound quality that you get from the Audeze Maxwell. This is around $300, and the closest decent comparison point is something like the Meze 99 Classics V2, which is a headphone that I actually genuinely use all the time, and there are reasons for that. But the Maxwell for its sound quality is just better. Obviously, there's a subjective component to all of this. I'm not going to say everybody's going to prefer the the Audeze Maxwell. But when we're talking strictly sound quality, at the very least, it would be foolish to say that the Maxwell isn't competitive with the 99 Classics V2. And I would even say that it sounds better. I would also say it sounds better than the FT1. It's pretty heavy. That's the downside, but the sound quality is there. And then if you go up to $500, you have the HDB 630, which also has noise cancelling. Yes, this is a Bluetooth-based headphone, but uh they remember they give you the dongle as well. You know, compared to these wired alternatives, the HDB 630 is competitive, if not better sounding than all of them. And it's a struggle to think of anything that sounds better than this, even just with in the wired space. I think there are maybe some um but to me, the competition for the HDB 630 comes from the Maxwell. So, I'm not saying that there aren't wellperforming or good sounding closed-backs that are passive, that are wired. There are there are some good ones. That's not the point I'm making here. The point I'm making is that we shouldn't be disqualifying of these wireless products just because of the fact that they're wireless. And in a way, it's like if a wireless product comes out that isn't well tuned, that's so much worse because you had the ability to cheat. You had the ability to use EQ and you messed it up. But really the way I see it is manufacturers are understanding what good is now way better than ever before and the wireless products are demonstrating that like they're showing us when the handcuffs of passive tuning is removed this is what they can do and it's awesome and at least when it comes to sound quality we should be thinking of these things in the same way that we do for passive wired audio file headphones. you have EQ done for you in these wireless devices now and it's so much better now than it ever has been before. Now, with that said, there are still reasons to consider passive closed-back wired headphones. Things like comfort and passive attenuation, so the isolation from the world around you, like the Meze99 Classics V2 here does this better than any gaming headset that I've personally come across. Maybe there's one out there, I just haven't found it. And I'm finding at least that many of these wireless products still maybe have a little bit of ways to go when it comes to their mechanical design. So, those are the reasons why I think it still makes sense to go with passive wired closed-back headphones because again, there are still some good ones that are out there. It's just that where we're seeing the innovation take place is in wireless. And I actually don't think that should be surprising. So, what's the takeaway here? Number one is that we should take the sound quality that we get from gaming headsets more seriously. And it's no longer the case that they just sound like crap and you're better off going with a passive wired headphone and a separate microphone. There are reasons to do that, but the sound quality has caught up. And number two, this is really where most of the innovation is taking place. That's allowing them to tune these devices in ways that passive headphones would have some sort of limitation or they'd be limited by the design choices that they may have had. Anyways, that's all I have to say on this topic for today. As always, these videos are made possible by headphones.com. So, if you value the kinds of stuff that we do here on this channel and you want to support us, consider checking out headphones.com the next time you're in the market for a new headphone or related audio equipment, or if you want to read additional audio reviews or educate yourself on all things to do with headphones, how they perform, how they measure, all that good stuff. We've got tons of articles up there on headphones.com, so I'll leave those linked in the description. As always, if you want to chat with me or other likeminded audio folks, you can do so in our Discord, also linked below. Until next time, I'll see you guys later. Bye for now.