How I Came to Own Amazing Headphones

I lost a dongle, okay?

Rewind the clock.  Back in, oh I think it was November, I was travelling to fair Auckland.  This particular day was a fairly long day in a workshop, and I left with a sense of accomplishment plus a migraine.  I curled up in my seat on the plane, put on my headphones — Sony’s Wireless Golds — and cried myself to sleep.  When I landed in Wellington, I packed up my stuff, and got off the plane.  Or rather, I packed up almost all my stuff: the USB dongle that allows the Sony headphones to connect to a PlayStation or Personal Computer were lost.  Fell out of the bag, is my guess, and my brain was saying no to just about everything and didn’t give me the necessary prod.

I’m pretty sure my fly was down for most of the day too.

No problem, I figured.  These are premium headphones, I’ll just give Sony a call for a spare, and a few coins will make the problem will go away.

Turns out, not so much.  After a fairly agonising round of phone calls where I bounced between Sony, PlayStation support (different humans), and Sony Spares (more different humans), lost baggage with Air New Zealand, and so on, I learned a bunch of things.  First is that Sony’s phone support for PlayStation is … suboptimal; this is the first time in my life I think I’ve hung up on someone in frustration.  Second is that Sony do not do spare parts for their premium headphones: their solution is to a) contact the retailer for a warranty claim (!), b) buy spares off eBay or Amazon, or c) buy a new set of headphones.  When I asked them if they thought I would — after this experience — buy another set of Sony headphones or choose to shift my brand choice, they were noncommittal.

Enter my sometime heroes, Mighty Ape.  They ran their standard Boxing Day sale, and I nabbed a set of Plantronics BackBeat Pros for a song.  I’ve been using these today and they are, quite possibly, the best sounding headphones I’ve ever owned.  While losing access to my Sonys is not ideal, I’ve experienced a quality uplift that has put me in a state similar to pure joy.  And!  I get to keep the mic-without-a-stupid-boom benefit that I like, and get active noise cancelling to boot.

I like my music.  And I especially like my music when it’s not being overwritten by people around me, doing whatever it is that noisome humans do on a daily basis.  And, as a special prize for hanging on this long, you get to see my duckface.