Unnecessarily toxic

So, living in community, working in audio and being a bit of an introvert, I wear my headphones a lot.

I'm quite picky about my headphones. They need to be very "revealing" (sonically! get your mind out of the gutter or at least invite me into it with you 😜) and they need to be comfortable enough to wear for several hours at a time.

This led me to purchase the absolute classic Sony MDR 7605 and some slightly larger after market earpads for comfort.

Fast forward two years and I start to notice little red specks around, the plasticy coating on the earpads is breaking down. I decide that rather than walk around with red "headlice", that I'm going to peel off the remaining plastic from the earpads.

Lo and behold, the supporting fabric of the earpads is more comfortable than the coating!!!

A plain organic cotton fabric would have been better in just about every way, if only the manufacturer realised this and created the better product instead of using up hydrocarbons unnecessarily to make the product worse but shiny.

The true irony is that really expensive headphones get velour earpads anyway! You have to pay more to get the easier to produce, less impactful solution!

(Grr, get off my lawn!)