Relatable Tech

Sound Quality Is Fine — It's the Ear Pads That Are *Falling Apart*

The crumbling PU leather problem that headphone users have been quietly enduring for years.

· 6 min · Togetter

What's going on

Anyone who’s owned a pair of over-ear headphones for more than a year or two has probably run into this: the soft cushions that press against your ears start to flake, crack, and fall apart — leaving little black bits on your face, your collar, and everything you set them down on. The culprit is almost always PU leather (synthetic polyurethane), which is inexpensive to produce and feels fine at first, but breaks down predictably over time as it absorbs sweat and skin oils.

This isn’t a budget-gear problem. It happens to expensive headphones too — partly because environmental and sustainability pressure has made real leather increasingly hard to justify in manufacturing, leaving most brands with synthetic as their default. What makes it especially frustrating is when the pads can’t be swapped out at all: you end up with a pair that still sounds perfectly fine, but looks and feels like it’s actively disintegrating.

A post asking the headphone industry to fix this — before worrying about any more sound quality improvements — struck a chord with a lot of people who’ve quietly been living with it for years.

Comments

Hey headphone industry — sound quality is fine for now, just please make this part out of something that doesn’t fall apart.
This, for real. I’m begging you.
Little black flakes absolutely everywhere…
Dead serious. Even a pair you really love starts feeling kind of sad once this happens to it.
If it stopped working I’d understand, but having to replace a perfectly functional pair just because the pads got gross — that stings. You can put a cover on them, sure, but the whole point is I shouldn’t have to.
This is literally why I switched to wireless earbuds. I prefer headphones, honestly. Just couldn’t deal with it anymore.
Once you’ve been through this, you start thinking twice before buying anything with synthetic leather touching your skin.
I’ve only ever bought cheap headphones myself — does this happen with the pricier ones too?
I’d been accepting it as punishment for only being able to afford budget gear.
It happens to literally anything made with synthetic leather — no matter the price. You’re not being punished, don’t worry. Unless being a DJ or an audiophile is itself a crime, in which case I’m afraid there’s nothing I can do for you……
These days with all the eco and sustainability pressure, real leather is hard to justify, so even expensive headphones tend to use synthetic. I personally use Mimimamo covers (Mimimamo: a Japanese brand of stretchy fabric covers that slip over ear pads).
Mine happened to my Beats. Cost tens of thousands of yen — you’d think they could spring for better material.
Bad enough that they fall apart, but when you can’t swap them out either — you’re completely stuck. Also I just want to be able to wash them occasionally. Is that so much to ask.
Genuinely…… The ear pads on a headphone from 1974 being in better condition than something you bought recently isn’t funny anymore……
I really need to stop walking into the convenience store with a bunch of flakes stuck to my ears,,
If they’re going to shed, at least make them skin-colored. Having what looks like bits of nori (dried seaweed — a staple ingredient in Japanese cooking) stuck around your ears is genuinely mortifying,,,
I’ve got the Beyerdynamic DT250 — velour pads right out of the box, no issues there. My advice: just avoid anything with PU leather to begin with.
I sweat a lot so synthetic leather falls apart on me embarrassingly fast. For a long while now I’ve been exclusively on the AKG K702 — fabric pads all the way.
Rather than trying to avoid hydrolysis (the chemical process that causes PU materials to crumble over time) with real leather, it probably just makes more sense to treat them as consumables and swap them out regularly, honestly.
These covers on Amazon work really well — washable too.
Got so tired of buying proper pad covers that I started just pulling thin socks from the hundred-yen store over them 😂w (hundred-yen store: Japan’s version of a dollar store)
For the ear pads, depending on the model you can sometimes find third-party replacements — but when the headband itself is wrapped in synthetic leather, there’s genuinely nothing you can do about that part. Really need a solution there.
This exactly. I use covers too, but the fit ends up slightly off when you do. Just want them not to fall apart in the first place.
Not talked about enough: the CD900ST (Sony MDR-CD900ST: a widely-used professional studio headphone in Japan) has a thin foam disc stuck to the inner plastic cup that sits directly against your ear — when that deteriorates, the sound genuinely changes. Swapping just the outer pads won’t fix it.
That’s literally how they make their money.
It’s Sony, so of course the Sony Timer (“Sony Timer”: a Japanese internet joke about the belief that Sony products are engineered to fail right after the warranty expires) is built into this part too.
Or at the very minimum — please sell the parts separately!
And let us remove and wash them too, please.
For Sony’s classic style, replacement pads are all over Amazon and Rakuten — honestly that availability is a big part of why they’ve been bestsellers for so long. With other brands, you can barely find them at all.
Sony’s ones can be swapped out.
I use the same 7506 (Sony MDR-7506: a long-running professional studio headphone) and gave up on official Sony pads after my third pair.
Replacement pads are cheap and arrive fast. Super easy to swap out too.
For real. I’ve been through several different Sennheisers and every single time, only this part lets them down.
Non-replaceable pads are obviously unacceptable, but even setting that aside — for comfort and hygiene, designing them with periodic swapping in mind is probably just the right approach.
Truly indestructible pads are probably asking too much, so at the very least — please keep selling replacement parts for a good long time.
They’re a consumable part, so please just sell official replacements. You can find things on Amazon, but genuine parts fit better — and third-party options often don’t sit quite right.
Fine, they’re going to wear out eventually — I accept that. But could you at least build them with replacement in mind?

My take

PU leather really does start falling apart after just a couple of years. I use covers myself, but honestly — could manufacturers at least make the pads easy to swap out? Just that one small thing would go a long way.

Comments loosely translated for tone.

Source https://togetter.com/li/2675766