OK, but let’s get theoretical. If you listen to song you know well side-by-side on Bluetooth versus a properly wired setup, you’ll notice an unmistakable drop in quality, Greco and other experts tell me. “You don’t have to be an audiophile to hear the difference,” he says. Anyone who has heard a classic record at a high-end audio store and who also uses a Bluetooth device can probably recognize this as true.
That said, the amount of music lovers whose daily listening occurs via the kinds of stereo set-ups that populate high-end audio stores is fairly small. Even among those who do, what about when they’re going for a run? Wireless headphone sales are up for various reasons, Brad Russell, an analyst at market-research firm Parks Associates, tells me, including lower prices and longer battery life. “More importantly,” he says, “customers are purchasing multiple pairs of headphones to accommodate different use cases.” So you might listen to one set of headphones while working out, and another on a long flight.
But here’s the thing: In the types of places where wireless headphones would be most useful, a higher resolution level might not even be noticeable. The gym, the car, the subway, a busy street, a packed day at the beach—each adds a high level of ambient noise. “You couldn’t hear the best quality even if you had it in most of the situations where you’re listening to audio over Bluetooth,” Sound United’s Greco adds.
And yet “to Bluetooth or not to Bluetooth” isn’t the only quandary facing listeners concerned about audio quality, of course. “There are so many moving parts,” says Brian Lickel, who works in sales at Needle Doctor, a Minnesota-based audio store that specializes in turntables. “If the file you’re playing is not a high-quality file, or even just not a well-recorded song, then you’re also at the mercy of that.” Different headphones or speakers offer different levels of sound quality. With wired connections, going through a headphone jack, USB, or lightning connector can also affect the sound; as can variations in digital-to-analog converters, which turn the digital data on a phone or computer into an analog signal that can be heard through headphones or speakers. Every link in the chain can change the way music sounds.
Bluetooth technology itself has come a long way. What is Bluetooth, exactly? It’s a standard for transmitting information via radio waves over a short distance. Officially begun in 1998 by then-giants like IBM, Ericsson, Nokia, Intel, and Toshiba, Bluetooth was so hyped at first that it turned into the butt of what passed for jokes: On January 1, 2000, The New York Times wrote that Bluetooth “will allow you, theoretically, to call your Palm Pilot while riding in a taxi, if you can think of a reason to do so.” Which must’ve been a sick burn in Y2K. In just a couple of years, though, seeing businesspeople jabbering into headsets like crazy people talking to themselves was no longer so uncommon. Before very long, Bluetooth was familiar from wireless computer keyboard and mice, as well as from hands-free calling systems in cars.
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