Marius — glad you’ve enjoyed our efforts thus far. To the things that you’re curious about…

Yes, going wireless by way of Bluetooth does involve use of lossy compressors, so if you’re not satisfied with a good one like AAC at a decent bit rate, you might notice an effect. We’ve concluded that, for the large majority of people and barring some corner case content, the audible impact of the codecs and data rates used is very small and outweighed by the convenience benefits of not being tethered to your device or laptop. Everyone has to make these judgements for themselves, though, and you might lean the other way. You can use a QC35 both ways, wired or wireless too, so you can change your mind, depending on the situation any given day.

As to around-ear versus in-ear performance, I should only speak to our products. Today, they’re quite similar in overall noise reduction when you combine the active cancellation (which targets lower frequencies) and passive isolation from the structure around/in your ear (most effective at high frequencies). We pay a lot of attention in each form factor to balancing reliance on active and passive means as well as the physical comfort of wearing the device. The in-ears _do_ rely more on active cancellation, but if you do a careful listening comparison, the differences are subtle if you get a typical fit. Will that always be true? My colleagues know where I’d place my bet. You’ll just have to wait for future models to see…

dan