How do you feel about wires?

[Melooon]

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Today I would like to talk to you about the exciting topic of wires! I know! settle down!

    

There are all sorts of wires for things, mouse wires, power wires, lamp wires, long wires, monitor wires etc! There are too many wires! But I'm also conflicted! I don't like peoples obsession with hiding wires, I think there is a kind of honesty and utility in having lots of visible wires. But they also stress me out!

I really enjoy having long headphone wires, I have a 7 meter extender so I can walk around the room with my headphones on and its comforting knowing that my sound is prudently contained inside its wire and not floating around wirelessly like some sort of galumphing herd of radiowave bison 



I'm also a fan of transparent wires, although they seem to be a lot less popular these days. When I find whoever is responsible for that they will suffer 

How do you feel about wires?

[sloth_army1]

I'm a big fan of wires. I briefly owned a pair of wireless headphones for my PC, and it just felt wrong. If I'm not surrounded by as many wires as possible at any given moment what's even the point of using a computer? I need to be tangibly able to feel and see as much of what is going on and around my computer as possible. Also on a less arbitrarily emotional level I just prefer to deal with plugging something in than connecting it to bluetooth most of the time.

I have an attachment to USBs, but I'm getting more used to USB-C chords too.

My favorite type of wire is probably an HDMI chord. Kind of an obvious one, but having one on me has solved too many problems to not give it credit.

I also have to give props to the thin copper wires that they give you to shove into breadboards in into electronics classes. It's always enjoyable to feel them slide into place and see your circuit start to work.

[Dan Q]

Let's take a look under my desk too. Promise not to judge?

My cables aren't so much tidied away as just... there. My primary concern is that they don't get snagged on anything when the desk raises or lowers! I've glot plenty on top of my desk too.

I love that USB-C is fast-becoming "the" standard for connecting things, but I still keep a plethora of "legacy" connectors too. My bike lights charge off USB B Micro, and my GPSr charges off USB B Mini. And my watch charges on a stupid proprietary connector that I hate. (I'm also not a fan of Apple's return to the MagSafe connector, and I charge my MacBook through one of its Thunderbolt/USB-C ports, which I'm glad is still supported.)

In fact, in general I dislike charging things off wires. Wireless charging is magical! I even retrofitted a second-generation Amazon Kindle (from circa 2009) with an induction loop so that it could wirelessly charge! But I can't fit induction coils inside smaller devices, and some devices just aren't suitable for them, so I've still got a lot of stuff that needs plugging in.

Probably my favourite connector is RJ45, which you might think of as an ethernet/wired networking connector. I've got a crimping tool and whatnot so I can make my own ethernet cables of whatever length I need (I made a long Cat6 run around the outside of my house to bring high-speed networking to both ends, which was necessary because I live in a building with a stone core and WiFi doesn't penetrate it well). It's surprisingly fiddly!

I love the satisfying click of an RJ45 connector getting plugged in. I love how many different colours you can get ethernet cables in, and that if I were more organised mine would all be colour-coded. I love the fact that though it's sturdy, you can just-about "crease" it around a corner or under a door. I love that while it's "for" networking, you can push just about anything down it so long as the current's not too great: I've used it to deliver electricity to low-powered devices; I've used it as speaker wire; I've used it to light an LED bulb!

I don't mind that my wiring is perhaps only comprehensible to me. Consider this for example:

That's a USB-C hub providing USB-A ports and an ethernet port, which I use when "docking" a laptop. But then on top of it I've zip-tied a USB extension cable from a different computer. That gives me two USB-A ports, right next to one another, that connect to entirely different computers.

Some call me mad, but there's genius at work here (or so I tell people!). I have a USB-MIDI piano keyboard that I use for musical purposes: it uses a USB-A (to full-sized USB-B!) cable. Sometimes I want it connected to the docked laptop; sometimes I want it connected to the desktop under the desk; either way I want it to live in the same place on my desk when it's in use. This Frankenstiens-monster of a hub lets me do that: pulling it out of one port and putting it into an adjacent port swaps which computer it's connected to! (And, surely, makes anybody visiting my desk question my sanity.)

[ThunderPerfectWitchcraft]

Long time ago, I did an anti-wire graffity after terribly stumbling over one (at a rather bad spot, as well: It send me airborne, and I flew into a pile of crushed rocks) while going bombing with some friends (this is surely time-barred by now). But my reservations about this class of object was only caused by the momentary pain - I actually like wires, and prefer them over wireless connections any day - they are faster, more secure, and more reliable ;).
I always thought that I have to many wires in our flat, but seeing the pictures of you guys, I seem to be a rather harmless case.

[ABlueRose]

I love having wires! Wireless typically means having to charge things, and having to keep everything charged is too much of a bother for me, although it sounds bad when I put it that way  but I just really like being able to use things when I want to use them, instead of, say, getting on my computer    and five minutes in my headphones die. Being able to plug them in is so much easier for me, and wired things seem to last longer than wireless in my experience

[Cobra!]

I have a love/hate relationship with them.

On one hand, I hate how many things need different wires and how sometimes a connector might be the same but it's not compatible. When it comes to power cables that can even lead to frying the machine in question!
It's also a nightmare having a jungle or tangle of them and you need to find a specific one, and feeding it through the mess.

On the other hand, I think they beat the alternative most of the time.
Bluetooth devices can be more easily lost, and require power to run, either through getting batteries, or recharging them. They're also way more expensive!
I've lost count how many times my siblings have lost their earbuds and need to fork out for new ones... It's also annoying seeing newer phones and other devices just lack a standard headphone jack, to push people even further into that ecosystem. Not to mention the environmental impact of them! But I digress.

I do love prepairing for any wire I might come across or need. I got a firewire card for my PC without anything to plug into it yet. Then I realised MiniDV cameras use it! Problem solved!

But yeah, I typically prefer wires, but they do have their downsides.

[Yaya]

I really like wires and cables! I used to work in sound and lighting, and while the software could give me trouble and at times not feel intuitive, the hardware side of things always clicked. I had a great manager who used to help me see cables and wires as "paths" for whatever "signal" (audio, power, etc...) was being sent through, which helped a lot when it came to troubleshooting--not just for tech but general problem solving as well!

Talk about wires always makes me think of the magic/more magic story

If I ever feel jaded about things that story helps to reinvigorate my love for digital creation and exploration! 

[_ghost_]

I love wires! I do use a lot of wireless stuff in my day-to-day just because a lot of it is more convenient, but I do really love plugging things in. My wireless headphones have the option to be connected with an aux cord, although I don't have one long enough.

I refuse to use wireless earbuds ever again. I prefer larger headsets anyway (I assume my ears are shaped weird; I've never once had a comfortable pair of ear buds regardless of shape, size, or whether or not they had the little rubber cushion things on them), but there is just... no joy to be had with wireless earbuds. AND they're inconvenient. The fact that they aren't attached makes me so angry.

[Aurpheus]

I do love wires also ! Plug and play ! Ngl I hate when I need to use bluetooth most of the time, I hate that sometimes it doesn't seem to recognise anything or it connects to anything else... And wifi connections ain't that much better !

Also I sometimes feel like I hear a difference in quality when it comes to atleast sound ? I do enjoy my bluetooth earbuds for like running and stuff but I feel like my older wired headphones and stuff...

And finally when it comes to wires at least you know when it's plugged in and if it's working / not working !

Just gotta arrange them a little if it's like a computer or a complicated setup (I had a ton of old consoles and had to make that work on a furniture for it, hiding the cables...) but that's what twist ties and stuff are for right ?

[Dan Q]

Also I sometimes feel like I hear a difference in quality when it comes to atleast sound ? I do enjoy my bluetooth earbuds for like running and stuff but I feel like my older wired headphones and stuff...

It's not impossible! But it's hard to conclusively declare it the only factor.

A pair of wired headphones connected to an analogue audio source will necessarily result in higher-fidelity reproduction than a pair of Bluetooth headphones connected to the same source, all other things being equal. That's because the digitisation of the source to allow it to be delivered over a packet-switching radio network necessarily results in a loss of quality, albeit possibly one that's not distinguishable by the listener. The same is true for digital sources, to a lesser extent, depending on the delivery mechanism: if the audio gets decoded (from e.g. MP3), then re-encoded (for transmission over Bluetooth), then decoded again (for conversion into physical motion of a speaker membrane), then quality can be lost, just like when you re-compress a JPEG (although for slightly different reasons).

But the reason I say that there may be multiple factors and use phrases like "all other things being equal" is because there are almost certainly other factors at play! Wired headphones are more-likely to be constructed with the intention that they're used while stationary; wireless ones are more-likely to be constructed for people who might be "on the move"... and that means that tradeoffs get made. Wireless headphones and especially "buds", which are already heavier on account of their batteries, often get their size and weight stripped-down to prevent them from being intolerably heavy for use while e.g. jogging. This often means less insulation (with active noise cancelling substituted instead), weaker electromagnets on the drivers (saving power at the expense of less volume, especially at the bass end of the spectrum) etc. So comparing wireless and wired headphones is a little apples-and-oranges: it's about more than just the way the audio is transmitted/how much it's re-encoded: it's also about how many of these headphones are built!

[HisVirusness]

I will always prefer wires, in every context.  WiFi and Bluetooth are nice to have, but I prefer a stable, reliable, and most importantly physical connection that I can see with my own two eyes.  In general, I'm not a fan of large abstraction in service of tiny convenience; if something's wrong and I can't see it, how can I truly fix it?