The article should have buried sony for how egregious they are. They require the app to collect location information, and ear. https://www.sony.com/electronics/support/articles/00233341 I'm not sure what else they collect.. but those are the 2 bad ones.
They've got a few settings that are software controlled (one being the bluetooth's internal volume) What happens if you get a software update and you open the app on a plane without wifi? You can't use it because it requires the internet to get the latest _required tos_ to use your headphones. You can't proceed further without being forced into an agreement. Clicking "don't accept" pushes you back to the tos screen.
I recently tried out wireless noise-cancelling headphones from both Bose and Sony, and (the important privacy issues aside) the user experience with these apps is just horrible.
You unpack your Bose headphone, eager to use them. But before that, you have to download an app on the iPhone, then download a software update program on your laptop, which in turn opens a program in the browser that downloads an update, then you connect the headphones with a wire to the laptop that the update gets installed, and THEN you can start using them.
I didn’t find that an issue at all, and not sure what you mean about the laptop part I only use the mobile app to upgrade my qc 35s.
I do find the Bose UX to be horrible though for another reason, which is the incredibly stupid “feature” that the headphones can be connected to multiple devices at once. Since I use it both with my phone and laptop and they’re often in range of each other, sometimes the audio control will just switch back to the other device than the one I’m trying to use, I assume because of some background process that’s still open, and I lose my sound. If one device is on the edge of connectivity range, it’ll beep every couple of minutes as it connects and disconnects even though I’m not even using it. Then if I ever want to connect a third device like a tablet, it’s made to switch back and forth between exactly 2 devices not 3 so things get even more messed up.
It’s quite annoying, and I feel like I’m the only one bothered by these issues because I don’t see a lot of other people complaining. But I’ll definitely be switching to a different brand away from Bose when these headphones wear out. Probably the upcoming over ear Apple headphones, since I find airpods to not have any of these issues and generally work great at switching between two devices without being stolen back by the previous device.
I love this feature, but Mac is the bully in this situation. It captures the connection often even when nothing is playing and when Mac is asleep it still tries to connect and probably due to low power mode takes FOREVER for the phone to sync and realize what I actually want is to play audio from my phone not laptop...
Yeah maybe this is another case of walled garden apple stuff where it only works well if you're 100% in their ecosystem. They seem to have very chatty bluetooth headphone code in general, like the airpods are effectively always in pair mode you don't have to hold a button down or anything to get them to start pairing to another device. But the end result is it does work with fewer headaches than my Bose QC35 and is still just as easy to switch between devices. And apparently there are further improvements with that coming in iOS14 too.
I've had these PLT headphones swap from phone to laptop when phone is playing music and laptop makes some noise (email notification, etc.) Whilst it's handy for the rare circumstances I want to start listening on the laptop without stopping the phone, it's a massive pain in the arse the other 99% of the time. Not least because it doesn't automatically switch back and start playing again.
I suspect it's the generic Bluetooth chipsets, mind, rather than anyone in particular because this happens with the PLT headphones and the Taotronics dongle I've got.
Your comment is funny to me because I have a pair of WH-1000XM3 and the one feature I'm missing the most is Bluetooth multi-point pairing. It's super easy to switch devices with the Bose (even though yeah, it can be finicky) meaning you don't have to re-pair your devices every time you want to listen to music on your phone, use them for a Slack call or for a TV show.
I used to love my Bose QC 35 ii's but now I'm convinced they're kind of a scam.
Bose deliberately made the battery enclosure very difficult to open so that you can't replace the battery yourself. Why do you need to replace the battery? Because if you use them every day, the battery degrades so that a full charge only lasts about 1 hour, down from 20+ hours, within just 2 years.
So you aren't really paying $250 for a pair of headphones, you're paying $125 a year to rent them, as they will only last 2 years due to planned obsolescence. This seems to have been a deliberate decision by Bose as the previous model had a removable battery.
> Bose deliberately made the battery enclosure very difficult to open so that you can't replace the battery yourself. Why do you need to replace the battery? Because if you use them every day, the battery degrades so that a full charge only lasts about 1 hour, down from 20+ hours, within just 2 years.
I've used my QC35 II's 6 to 8 hours a day for 5 days a week for 4 years. They last approximately a full week on one charge; they'd die mid Friday if I used them a lot that week or early Monday if I forgot to charge over the weekend. I've had them unplugged and unused since March (work from home) and they still had 60% when I tried them just now.
Okay, that's interesting. I've used mine ~6 hours per day for 5 days a week for 2 years. Why can't mine hold a charge for more than an hour? Maybe there's something I don't understand about how batteries work that I am doing and that I could do differently.
I mostly don't use bluetooth. I keep them wired 95% of the time and noise cancelling just eliminates office noise. The remaining 5% of the time is typically on a flight to somewhere connected to my iPhone a couple of feet away.
I wish I could justify wired headphones but I'm too much of a dolt, I've chopped the cord too many times and broken more laptops than I would like to admit.
Could yours be stored or used in extreme heat frequently?
Beyond that, it could just be a battery defect. Devices that last for multiple days should last for several years before seeing that kind of degradation.
You can’t change the noise canceling settings without the phone app. They also default back to “full” after you power cycle the headset. I wanted to use them with a PC and no ANC but no luck without the clunky phone process.
Even worse, on my QC35 II's, the hardware button defaulted to Google Assistant on Android, and I had to use the app anyway to set it to modify ANC on press.
I have the original QC 35's and they never originally gave us the option to change the ANC. Only through an update and using the app that they switched it on.
If our headphones didn't use can app, we would still be stuck without being able to modify the ANC level.
So far Shure hasn’t done anything that dumb, but you have (or rather, had. They seem to have to be coming out with over the ear model) to be ok with tethered headphones.
I kind of like the tether. Harder to lose them under a bookcase. And less of a problem if they plop out during exercise.
I have the Bose Quiet Comfort 35 II. I use them with a MacBook Pro through Bluetooth pairing. I never installed any app and never connected the headphones physically to anything.
What is the OP talking about? And why would anyone install an app to use headphones?
>>Why would someone buy noise cancelling headphones if they don’t need that feature?
You don't ALWAYS need/want that feature.
Some reasons:
* Safe battery life
* Hear conversation or important sounds in the background
Most headphones (all I've purchased) have a dedicated hardware button. In fact, all of them have 3 modes: Noise cancelling ON, noise cancelling off (Switch), noise cancelling off + enhanced microphone (quick transient button, to quickly hear e.g. captain announcement etc). Can't imagine having to do that through software, it'd defeat the convenience.
That being said, fully agree; my Sennheiser HD380 with 3.5mm jack have lasted a decade and I don't know when or if I'll ever need to replace them. They sound and feel as good as new.
The expensive Bluetooth headphones and headsets are a disposable commodity with inferior user experience for at least some use cases (Pairing? Latency? Battery? Software? You don't have to worry about those with 3.5mm:). Yet, there's a positive ARMY of people who always join in to defend the removal of 3.5mm jack - even though they gained nothing from it, and some of us lost a lot :-/
huh, my Sennheiser headphones can control the noise cancelling with buttons on the headphones. Some limitations were annoying (2 connected devices at once, it gets very confused by my dual boot machine) but sounds like I dodged a bullet with brands requiring custom apps
They may want to disable that feature occasionally.
I sometimes wear glasses which prevent the headphones from forming a perfect seal. If I walk around with the headphones on, I get a "wow" going on which is quite tiring. Turn the NC off and they're ok. I only rarely do this, so I wouldn't have bought a dedicated pair only for this purpose.
Exactly. If you are disabling noise cancellation on the QC II, you bought the wrong headphones. There are much nicer ones without noise cancellation for less money.
I just ran into this very issue. I opted out of downloading anything. It was working fine until just now for whatever reason the volume is so low that I can hear a background hiss. The source laptop volume is maxed out.
If this is Sony's way of forcing me to use their app, they guessed wrong. I just bought these and am considering returning it.
Did you try raising the volume directly on the headphones?
If it's a WH-XM1000, you can do that by sliding the finger up on the right earphone.
For some reason mine's volume works as expected on an iphone (phone and headphone control the same volume) but on a pc (windows / mac / linux) the controls work separately...
long time user of the sony wh-1000xm2. never have had any such issue. i have noticed that it seems like the headset and phone have independent volume controls but both phone and headset have physical controls, no app required.
The Jabra 85h is great in this regard. Totally fine without the app, the app itself has a ton of features and useful items including changes to side tone and auto noise cancellation. The app pulled in a firmware update when I first connected and ran that in a few minutes without me touching anything. I would like to compare my set to the top Bose and Sony sets but at almost double the price of the 85h, I can't bring myself to spend the money.
I have the Sony WH-1000XM3 noise cancelling headphones, didn't have to install an app at all and the noise cancelation on them is absolutely incredible. Along with the amazing sound quality, they're the best headphones I've ever owned.
Hmm, I've tried the Sony (WH-1000XM3) and Bose (QC35) headphones at an electronics store and could pair both rather seamlessly with my Android device. NFC helped to make this even easier than pairing AirPods.
They have a feature that’s quite handy to me (the proprietary quick changing from one Apple device to another IFF it has the same Apple ID — so no good for shared hardware like a tv) but “quite handy” is far from invaluable.
You can program a tap on each earbud to do certain things: again, handy but you don’t have that ability I doubt you’d be upset.
Apple’s quite clever on figuring out how much “bleed out” from their own stack works for them (e.g. iPod support for PCs, which open standards to embrace, which not, etc). They are hoping you’ll switch to an iphone next, but even you don’t you are revenue.
If you're not used to it you'd probably not be upset but having an iPhone and Airpods I'd be upset going back.
I switch between my Mac and my iPhone daily so if I had to re-pair to do that that would suck. My guess is many modern alternatives let you pair more than one device at a time which would be another possible solution (better or worse I don't know). Apple's switching sometimes fails for me and when it does it's infuriating since it can end up taking several minutes to fix when all I wanted to do is use the damn headphones.
The tapping is pretty useful too though the features I use (pause/play/skip to next song/backup) are also part of the bluetooth headphone standard so while I can't change them to something else my other bluetooth headphones have the same standard features that I actually use.
This is also one reason I didn't like the Airpod Pro's. Tap is replaced with squeeze. Squeeze requires 2 fingers, Tap works with a knuckle. I can tap with full hands. I can't squeeze it full hands so they effectively downgraded the product with pro.
Bluetooth is supposed to require that but not all implementations do.
Apple has some additional out of band signalling so that if it is paired on one device you don’t have to do any handshaking to switch it to a device it’s never seen before as long as that device uses the same Apple ID.
It’s nice, it reduces friction but as you say it’s a small. Ice to have at best.
I've owned the Sony WH-1000XM2 for several years and while the Android app location collection is unnecessary, ear data is entirely optional.
You have a valid point that the app can misbehave regarding updates and lack of internet connection. I personally find myself never using the app, it only really provides 3 somewhat useful features; equalisation (which forces the audio codec to SBC which is inferior to LDAC so I've never used it); automatic profile switching, e.g. ambient sound if detecting you are walking and finally, the level of noise cancellation to apply.
This model has a dedicated switch on the headphones to change the profile where a long press even "calibrates" the sound based on atmospheric pressure, not sure I buy into that gimmick, but they're perfectly useable without the app. I have them paired with Android, Windows, macOS and Linux and all work perfectly (with the minor exception being Linux does not support Bluetooth absolute volume). The headphones also support volume control from the unit for devices which have an older Bluetooth stack which does not support absolute volume.
Overall, I agree the app needs improvement but I'm not sure there's anything that warrants burying the company of these decisions. I suspect for many users, the app is entirely useless and not worth installing.
I immediately deleted Sony’s app after disabling EQ and probably some other gimmicks on my XM3s—has worked alright with Apple devices.
(Well, as ‘alright’ as could be expected. Switching between devices requires slow re-pairing through long power button press, but I don’t think Sony’s app would’ve resolved that.)
This is one area Bose are notably better in, i.e. connected to two devices simultaneously. I find the XM2 can remember pairing for at least 2 devices, typically my phone and laptop but I have to manually disconnect from one device and connect using the other when switching. This is quicker than entering pairing mode but still an upto 30 second process, but much of that time is due to the awkward Bluetooth settings menu in recent versions of gnome.
Geez, that's brutal. I'm glad I'm seeing this....it never crossed my mind that this sort of thing would be something that might get built into headphones.
If I want to avoid this sort of thing, I'm thinking / hoping it's sufficient to simply avoid headphones that require an app.
"I'm thinking / hoping it's sufficient to simply avoid headphones that require an app."
Every effing time they convince users to install an app they magically have a tool to steal peoples personal data.
Not just headphones: the kids toy drone can be controlled using an app from the cellphone? The security camera just purchased doesn't use standard protocols over a web browser but needs its own app? The IoT system doesn't use standard protocols as well but forces the use of their app? Bad, bad and bad! And so on for every piece of hardware that needs a proprietary app that -betting all my horses on that- will ask for full permissions to access everything.
In this context, headphones are among the easily replaceable accessories with secure and better sounding ones. Just get wired ones and avoid architectures that force the use of wireless phones just to make a bigger business out of a misfeature.
You could get a 'dumb' bluetooth adaptor for your wired-but-cable-changable headphones. e.g. https://thebtunes.com/
Or you could just get some basic noise-isolating bluetooth headphones. It sounds like most/all of these headphones that spy on people are ones with active noise cancelling.
> If I want to avoid this sort of thing, I'm thinking / hoping it's sufficient to simply avoid headphones that require an app.
Or just get one with a good old 3.5mm jack.
Beyer Dynamic, AKG and Shure have several options much cheaper than these Bose or Sony headsets which still give you at least 10x the audio-performance.
For headsets, if you care about usability, portability, longevity and performance, wired is still the no-brainer choice.
> Beyer Dynamic, AKG and Shure have several options much cheaper than these Bose or Sony headsets which still give you at least 10x the audio-performance.
It's complicated.
The lowest level opinion is "Bose and Beats are awesome, soooo much bass!!!" That's the typical consumer.
The level above that is what you said. That's sometimes called mid-fi. At least these things don't have major flaws anymore.
The next level is companies and products specifically focused on high performance - Stax, Audeze, Sennheiser, Etymotic, etc and their best models. That's the "audiophile" level (and here truth is mixed with a lot of bullshit also - stay away from head-fi.org, it's a cesspool of pseudoscience).
And the level above that is when you realize imperfections in headphones can be corrected via DSPs, for the most part.
I have the Sony noise cancelling flagship model. By default, it's deeply flawed. It's tuned to the taste of the average consumer at Walmart ("moar basssss!!!"). But apply the oratory1990 corrections (from Reddit) and they sound like some nearly-flawless high end devices. The corrections are based on precise lab measurements of the headphones, and basically revert some of their flaws via digital processing.
Thanks for the tip. I also have the Sonys. Anyone who thinks they sound great needs a hearing test. Not a patch on my 2 favourites, Sennheiser HD-25 (or any €100+ Sennheiser for that matter) and Beyer Dynamic DT-990 Pro (great home listening and mixing headphone). Even after tuning the Sonys to correct their flaws they still sound tiring. Will check out the settings you recommend.
The DT-990 are not bad. The treble is a little overemphasized. The easy bass is also a bit emphasized, but then they give up on the deep bass (start dropping below 50 Hz). Still good headphones, two classes above the uncorrected Sony NC.
With proper corrections based on objective measurements, any headphones can sound neutral and balanced.
What you're hearing in the DT-990 is the open back. I'm not sure on your assessment regarding any headphone. you'll never get the noise cancelling ones sounding good because there are 2 processes affecting the sound. Also the hardware itself needs to be capable.
I have a pair of Bose QC20s which are (or were, when I bought them) state of the art for noise canceling, and have a 3.5mm headphone jack. No app required and they even work as normal wired headphones if the battery goes flat.
Same with the Sony WH1000 xm3. The only thing missing when working wired is the microphone, but I basically never use that anyway.
The problem with the wire, at least the provided one, is that it's pretty stiff so it picks up a lot of noise and the plug doesn't lock to the headphone side so I'm not sure how well it would hold during prolonged usage. But the plug is standard, so at least the cable can be changed easily.
This is a good point. Last I looked at the reviews, those were still state of the art for noise cancelling, if only because wired in-ears also have nice sound isolation. I should dust mine off...
I’ve had the best heat headphones Bose has to offer in the Quiet Comfort series and to me this “state of the art noise cancellation” sounds like artefact- and distortion-inducing noise.
I’ve returned them and replaced them with much better, naturally damping, closed head-phones. And the audio is so much better, at a fraction of the cost.
Noise cancellation in the hifi-space is just snake oil, and I’m not having it.
Does... does anyone actually think noise-cancelling is for increasing audio quality? I always thought it was just for handling obnoxiously noisy environments, like airplanes, screaming children, etc.
Aside, but noise cancelling (at least what's currently on the market) doesn't really do much for screaming children. It only handles relatively constant noise well, ideally low/mid-frequency constant noise. Great at silencing stuff like airplane engines, wind, HVAC hum, freeway rumble, etc. But not very effective for people talking, crying babies, car horns, ambulance sirens, slamming doors, etc.
> Does... does anyone actually think noise-cancelling is for increasing audio quality?
No, but noise cancelling headsets are often sold as premium headsets, with the obvious implication that they are to have high sound-quality. And quite often, they don’t.
No one who's thinking through how it works, which is by picking up the ambient noise and then modifying the output to include the inverse on top of whatever you're listening to.
usability and portability are what makes BT headphones great. Which BD or Shure gives me 10x the audio-performance while still being able to be used without cables (optionally)?
They're a company that makes a lot of decisions from the viewpoint of participants in a high-trust society like Japan. Many times, those viewpoints don't translate well to other markets.
That trust is hugely misplaced. They frequently make terrible decisions that negatively affect others.
- Them being hugely defensive about the fan backlash over Tlou2 https://www.altchar.com/game-news/sony-contacts-website-over...
- They've removed early release credentials from reviewers who give sour reviews
- The shit return policy for the digital only games
- The way they are trying to push digital only
etc.
I realize Sony isn't the only one doing this but with every iteration it feels like they are trying to be as crap as possible.
Hmmm....well, I'm at least aware of the issue now based on this conversation and will definitely at least try to determine whether it applies to any of my future purchases.
You have to do prior research. Bose don't tell you on the box that the headphones are bricked until you connect it to the app to do an update before it will allow you to connect it as a normal bluetooth device.
> I'm thinking / hoping it's sufficient to simply avoid headphones that require an app.
I'd hope so - as far as I know there's no way for a Bluetooth headset device to get internet access via the thing it's paired with. It's getting harder and harder to be confident about this kind of thing, though.
I've been using my Sony W-1000XM3s with my Android phone for months and I haven't had to install an app. The only thing the app would get me is a bunch of equalizer shit (which my music player could do and I never use anyway), dynamic noise cancelling of some form (which I'm not sure why I'd ever use, just an on/off toggle is good enough for me).
As shitty as the app collecting data is it isn't as if the app is required for me to have had an excellent experience with these headphones so I'm not really all that bothered that the app is invasive.
If any real functionality was locked behind it I'd be annoyed, but honestly the app seems like an afterthought with no real purpose other than "EVERYTHING NEEDS AN APP" type thinking.
First off, I say the following as kindly-spoken words :)
I'm grateful that you and I both know to be critically-minded, and we understand the difference between essential features and data-grabs, but honestly... my Dad needed me standing over the sketchy wifi thermostat (that required an app and Facebook login), loudly complaining about how invasive it was, to even understand that this was not OK and worth returning the product. And he's spent years osmosing conversations with his tech-savvy, upper-middle class son. Further, many people take for granted that they can trust a brand like Sony, so they're not in critical-thinking mode about this stuff -- it's quite confusing to know what is reasonable when you're just trying to get the thing done that was literally just a male-female plug before.
I do believe you're a caring person (most ppl are), but the practical effect of your position would lead someone to judge that you don't actually care about the data of the vast majority of normal people across many demographics. I kinda suspect that isn't true, so I'm wondering if maybe you'd find some dissonance in your own views on closer inspection <3
I do care about people's data in general, but also I don't recall the documentation for the device pushing the app much or at all and instead just suggesting you use whatever your device's way of connecting to bluetooth devices is, though I might be wrong there. If it did then it is a bit worse than I recall.
However if the app isn't really pushed at all then this is so minor an infraction compared to so many others happening in the technology space it honestly doesn't really illicit a response from me.
I do want to point out that not really giving a damn isn't the same as thinking it is a morally ok thing to do. I definitely agree that they shouldn't be doing it, but again given the state of the industry I'm honestly just glad the app isn't required.
Lastly I do kind of think personal responsibility has to enter into things somewhere. I understand that the average joe doesn't really understand how these work, and that the information you share is greater leakier than you might think it is given how things are phrased - and I absolutely agree that it is terrible. However for years now high profile data breaches have been a thing. The fact that the average joe hasn't defaulted to a "I don't understand why this device/app wants X information or how it could use it, therefore I won't use this app" is what is letting companies get away with this kind of thing in the first place. You don't need technical competence to be wary of this stuff (in fact I know someone who isn't technically competent who is concerned and they ask my opinion on things).
> this is so minor an infraction compared to so many others happening in the technology space...
Ah ok, that's understandable. I get desensitized to a lot of this too :)
> I do want to point out that not really giving a damn isn't the same as thinking it is a morally ok thing to do
Good point. I'm glad to be reminded of this :)
> Lastly I do kind of think personal responsibility has to enter into things somewhere.
Ah, this is prob the root of much of our divergence. I recognize that tons of my view emerge from my skepticism of what seems to me a cult of personal responsibility in the west. I lean much more toward collectivist mentalities, and suspect individualistic perspectives in USA are it's achilles heel.
The content and information flow of the world (and so a single life) has become densely packed with so much more context compared to 100 or so years ago when these ideals took form and served us. A founding principle of personal responsibility will increasingly fail us as we become emmersed in an ever-complexifying data and knowledge landscape. imho we can choose to be darwinian about that, or we can insist that our duty is to push knowledge and learning up through the system to _shared_ strata, to higher levels of societal abstraction beyond individual daily affairs. At least that's my hot take :)
Anyhow, thanks a ton for engaging! We may disagree, but your perspective got a lot more "real" to me as you shared :)
I'm definitely a collectivist when it comes to many things, and this is one of them. I just explained myself poorly. I think we should have legislation that prevents this kind of data vacuuming, or at least makes it more transparent to lay people. I'm from Australia too, not the US and we definitely are more collectivist in general than the US is.
The comment about personal responsibility is more representative of why I don't especially feel sympathy about this stuff on an emotional level anymore. We've had multiple, huge, public data breaches in years and the average citizen does not care. Hell in Australia we have some of the worst data privacy laws in the world. I wrote my member about it and only know one other person who did. The "personal responsibility" thing isn't a comment on people not reading the T&Cs, it is a comment on them letting the entire industry get away with this shit time and again.
The fact that people on the whole don't seem to care makes it hard for me to feel a good deal of emotional sympathy when it bites them at this point, even if I do feel they shouldn't have been bitten.
I am fervently glad that I'm happy with my WH-1000XM3 in its stock configuration. I took one look at what the permissions they wanted for the app, and said "No effing way."
I shouldn't have been too surprised, though, given that it was Sony that brought us rootkits on music CDs.
as far as i can tell, the only thing the app does is dynamically change the noise cancellation level based on your location and accelerometer, so if it doesn't have location permission it's kind of pointless to use the app.
the headphones still work fine without the app, they're just bluetooth headphones that the OS can interface with directly if you don't want the location-based profiles.
> Clicking "don't accept" pushes you back to the tos screen.
This is a textbook example of a GDPR violation. In fact, it is a clear violation of the first of the five requirements for consent.
See recital 43:
"... Consent is presumed not to be freely given if it does not allow separate consent to be given to different personal data processing operations despite it being appropriate in the individual case, or if the performance of a contract, including the provision of a service, is dependent on the consent despite such consent not being necessary for such performance."
I have the WH-1000XM2 and the location permission is optional if you want the app to change noise cancelling profiles according to what you are doing (walking, running, on the bus). The ear scanner is another optional thing you can do to improve the 360 audio which only works on a few apps.
This was raised when Australia rolled out its' Contract tracing app.
On Android if you need bluetooth access you have to ask for locat ion access, because it's possible to derive location from bluetooth data. (Like wifi data).
They've got a few settings that are software controlled (one being the bluetooth's internal volume) What happens if you get a software update and you open the app on a plane without wifi? You can't use it because it requires the internet to get the latest _required tos_ to use your headphones. You can't proceed further without being forced into an agreement. Clicking "don't accept" pushes you back to the tos screen.