The plastic broke. Super glue is the best option if you really want to use broken headphones

Wtf is auto eq. We’re talking about incredibly specific tuning backed up by measurements.

You didn’t list any headphones so it’s hard to comment. You may just be one of the rare people who doesn’t prefer harmon tuning. You may also be using eq incorrectly and not applying the correct values and settings. No way to know since you left no information.

Growing faster in the last 5 years than at any other point.

In a desktop setup no. Its actually faster to use my wired gear on my main system then to attach my airpods pro2. Plus it sounds so much better so definitely not dead. The market cap for high end headphones is 20x what it was in the early 2000s. It’s always been niche.

Verkligheten by soilwork. It’s my go to benchmark for detail retrieval and imagining soundstage. There is a subtle crunchy sound that rotates 360 degrees around you that I’ve only heard a couple headphones reproduce.

Susvara, empyreans, utopia, and verite were all able to do it, utopia did it the best and the other three it went in and out a little.

Notably the lcd4 could not which was surprising to me. To be fair the detail is specifically in the air region which means tuning can play a part but most headphones and speakers won’t even retrieve it.