6 Ways You're Using Your Headphones Wrong

Let me guess: You don’t spend much money on headphones or earphones, because they always break, and you end up buying a new pair every year or so. Variations on this theme are regularly presented to me, often as an excuse for not buying a decent pair.

- Tim Gideon

It’s time for some tough love. The headphones don’t break—you break the headphones! Luckily, there are a number of ways to avoid the early demise of your headphones and get far more than a year’s worth of life out of them. Here’s what you’re doing wrong and how to fix it.

WADDING UP WIRES

The most common way to destroy your headphones is by mistreating the cable. The real tragedy here is that the drivers inside the headphones are likely doing just fine—all they need is a cable to deliver the audio. But in models that have hardwired cables, that kind of damage is often a death sentence. This isn’t always true; Sennheiser, for instance, makes plenty of headphones that have what appear to be hardwired cables, but with some effort, manual consultation, and patience, they can actually be replaced. (And, of course, if you or someone you know has soldering skills, then just about every cable can be replaced.)

The better solution for those who lack this type of patience is to start with a pair of headphones that have a removable (read: unpluggable) cable. They often cost more, but not always. In fact, many Bluetooth models come with removable cables so they can be used passively in wired mode.

But let’s assume that you don’t want to keep buying replacement cables your whole life.