Get a nice pair of IEM's for audio quality. If you need Bluetooth get a fiio Bluetooth DAC or smtn similar

Who are you concerned about the data going to? Intercepting a Bluetooth signal is not really a thing anymore. Your phone OS has plenty of ways to know what you're listening to without Bluetooth itself being thr vector. If you use GrapheneOS and Linux, you're good there. The headphones themselves aren't going to have a Sim card that is phoning home.

So then you're left with third party software being the attack vector. For this reason, I would not install headphone apps, and ESPECIALLY not earbuds that require connecting/registering to a third party account like Amazon Echo buds.

This unfortunately means no custom EQ. For my open ear headphones, I tried out my top 4 choices without downloading the app, and picked the best sounding & most comfortable pair. That happened to be the Nothing Ear Open. My over ear Sony XM4 headphones that I already own are amazing but needed EQ badly, so I installed the app on an old Android, tweaked the EQ, and it saved the EQ information to the headphones themselves. Not all headphones can do this, however.

"Wired wired wired"

Meanwhile phones: "3.5mm what now? Never heard of it."

I'm not ditching Graphene to get a phone with more spyware to replace my headphones with wired to avoid the headphone spyware. Seems counterproductive.

Bro, use wired headphones.

If you want to be 100% sure no data is being collected by your headphones your nest bet is going to be going back to wired. I assume that is not an answer you want but anything that uses a Bluetooth connection can be used as a vector to collect data on you. The only thing I can think of is either having your data off while using them, but that's probably just postponing the data collection. Do you have a source on what data is being collected? Would be much easier to find places you can help reduce the amount of data being collected.

Someone gave me some Anker Soundcore, then Tue changed the app to require network access to use the features and a cloud sign in, plus AI garbage to record voice. Thankfully there is an OpenSource app for it that works without network

I agree with what @chickenf622@sh.itjust.works said. Fortunately a friend of mine introduced me to IEMs when I was thinking of buying new audio gear and I ended up buying a pair for about €80 (Letshuoer S12).

Since the day I got them I’ve used them daily, the audio quality is amazing, they sound better than my airpods 2 and I also don’t have to deal with Bluetooth shenanigans.

Maybe !audiophile@lemmy.world or !audiophile@lemmy.ml can help you decide what to get if you’re interested. My advice would be not to go crazy with the price if it’s your first pair so you can get an idea of what you do and don’t like.

AirPods have data collection built into the OS. Only thing you can do is to use different headphones.

If you're shopping for Bluetooth ones, skip the app. It's guaranteed to have a bunch of data collection. But most of them will work fine with just a Bluetooth connection. The apps are completely unnecessary.

I'm a big fan of Etymotic wired IEMs. They aren't for everyone, but they have a good balanced sound and isolate well and every once in a while you can find them on a very good sale.

You got a bunch of replies itt about different alternatives but not a lot dissecting what the problem is and what the feasible extent of the “solutions” are.

You asked for true wireless stereo airpods so I’m gonna assume you’re in the Apple world. If that’s so, I’m a privacy minded person who uses the old g2 airpods and has accepted the tradeoffs involved. When you need replacements the website therightpod.com is a fine place to go.

The airpods themselves arent really a huge vector for data collection, it’s the os that’s doing that. Apple is insane for telemetry because it’s how they find and fix bugs. The idea is to have a separate pathway for technical crash data to get to the qa and development people instead of relying on customer support for that. From the perspective of a developer, a support rep and a customer it’s a much better experience. You can turn a good portion of it off in settings.

True wireless earphones use Bluetooth. Bluetooth was never designed to be secure and has to support a large variety of mechanisms for pairing that are inherently insecure. Bluetooth must also support a truly enormous number of devices whose idea of a hardware shared secret is the Indian certificate authority “4”. Bluetooth cannot be “secure” and therefore cannot be private. The word is in scare quotes because there’s some cool stuff but people are constantly bypassing bt so how cool or safe some new method happens to be is up for analysis.

Don’t have conversations over Bluetooth that would implicate you. Don’t have conversations over a device connected to the known compromised cell network that would implicate you.

I have a pair of $5 wired iem's and they're fine. Besides privacy, there's also fewer things to go wrong with pairing, less audio latency, less batteries to keep charged and to fail, etc. And they're cheap. No idea what an airpod is but if you mean those ones with a separate radio and rechargeable battery for each ear, with the additional carrying case with its own rechargeable battery, I'd just stay away.

Wired earbuds are what I use, with a cheap USB-C to 3.5mm adapter I leave permanently on the cable.

The new FairPods? Heard something like that coming out soon

I recently got the Fairbuds 2, and I absolutely love them!