Audio - Ear Buds and Headphones

High quality audio gear isn’t a perfect fit as a smart home category of products, but this kind of gear - specifically headphones and earbuds, qualifies as the kind of tech gadgets and gear that is of interest to many of the same folks into home automation.  One could even rationalize that many earbuds, with their built in microphones, can be used when controlling one’s home.  A good example would be tapping the center button on earbuds to activate Siri, in order to accomplish some smart home task.  For that reason, and especially because your editor here is a old time audiophile, we do review the occasional pair of higher end earbuds or earphones.

Most of us today own at least one inexpensive pair of ear buds that came with our smart phones.  You do not have to settle for low quality sound from low cost ear buds or head phones.  As is the case with stereo or surround sound speakers, the sonic quality varies drastically from pretty low fidelity to amazing sound quality limited only to the quality of your music source.

The better ear buds and enclosed headphones available typically use two, or even three separate drivers - think woofer, mid-range and tweeter, for superior sound quality. The triple driver ear buds - that our editor uses, provide far superior sound quality to the standard Apple buds many folks use.

Many of us creating our own smart homes are into music, and or home theater.  Consider that it is sometimes said that home automation started in the home theater.  True or not, that is another connection between high quality audio in the form of ear buds and headphones and a complete smart home.

Our interest, especially in ear buds is even greater now that we will see a large number of wireless ear buds, thanks to Apple’s recent move eliminating the standard headphone jack from their iPhone 7 phones.  And of course smart phones like the 7 are integral to controlling almost everyone’s smart home.  Look for us to cover this gear in both reviews and our Too Cool Tech: Gear Gadgets and Gizmos blog.