Do wireless headphones cause lesser sound quality?

Well after 7 years or so of good service my headphones finally died on me last night. I started to look around and I saw a few wireless headphones I really liked. I have a question though does sound quality take a hit by not having a direct line into the jack port? Also is there any problems with mic quality if you get a wireless headphones with a microphone.
 

finitekosmos

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Dec 24, 2017
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That depends...

It's like anything with audio, it can be highly subjective, everyone has a different perceptive range within the limits of human hearing (the audible range for an average adult person is up to around 20Khz). However, thats not the simple limit. Different headphones have different sound properties too some sound flat, some lean too much to low frequencies and others lean to high frequency ranges. It's possible to correct (I suppose) to an extent using a Graphic Equalizer but using wireless/bluetooth headphones can actually bypass this kind of post processing on audio devices.

The only thing I can advise is that you test things out to see if they sound good to you and if they'll work for you. Your budget is also of importance here too, Sony make excellent Wireless in-ear headphones in the form of the W1000x which retail at around $400-$500, I prefer wired in-ear phones like the Sennheiser IE80's which are priced at around the same price. You may personally prefer over ear headphones in which case I'd consider the HD660s which are beuatiful for the price at $799.

In addition to this, bluetooth is also limited in its bandwidth delivery too, Sony's W1000x series headphones support a wireless protocol called LDAC which increases wireless bandwidth for High resolution audio, however whether you'll hear that difference is up to the individual ear. LDAC needs to be supported by both the headphones and the player you are listening to in order to work.

 

finitekosmos

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Actually, the other thing to bear in mind with wireless headphones is that they need to be charged. The battery will wear out eventually, and a lot sooner than the 7 years you've had your previous phones.
 

TJ Hooker

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If you plug your headphones into your PC jack, the audio is being generated by your onboard motherboard audio codec (or your sound card, if you have one). With wireless headphones, you circumvent that entirely and the audio is instead being generated by a DAC within the headphones. Whether that's better or worse would depend on how good your motherboard or sound card are, how good the wireless headphones are, and how good the wired headphones you had were.