Apple Seemingly Discontinuing Lightning to Headphone Jack Adapter

18 pointsposted 8 months ago
by tosh
(macrumors.com)

14 Comments

jojohohanon

8 months ago

Someone (ASR) claimed years ago, but I noticed only recently that the adapter is actually a fairly high quality DAC.

https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/q...

terribleperson

8 months ago

the presence of a decent quality DAC in the official dongle is neat. I'm not super surprised, since Apple probably wouldn't want poor-quality audio associated with their brand.

edit 3: the rest of this comment doesn't add anything to the discussion, it's just griping. you are welcome to ignore it.

A DAC in every dongle. A DAC in every pair of earbuds. We went from one DAC to piles of them. I don't know that I will ever stop being bothered by this 'improvement'.

edit: yes, I know we don't actually put DACs in earbuds. I think. Please tell me that's not happening.

edit 2: Oh no that's really what's being done. I didn't realize Audio Accessory Mode was going away.

BriggyDwiggs42

8 months ago

I don’t know much about this, what’s the issue with shoving DAC’s into everything?

terribleperson

8 months ago

It's wasteful (contributes to e-waste). It also drives up costs or drives down quality at the lower end. Phones are digital devices, so they produce digital audio. Audio is analog, so you have to have a DAC somewhere in the chain. Before the removal of 3.5mm ports, there was a DAC in the phone. Earbuds could be relatively simple devices. No on-board processing, just wires and speakers. Even cheap earbuds ($20) could have decent sound quality.If it was a good phone, it was probably a decent DAC. If your phone had a shit DAC you couldn't correct for that though. Now the phone sends digital audio over USB C. The earbuds, or your dongle, have to contain a DAC. In theory, if you buy an expensive standalone DAC and use good 3.5mm earbuds, or buy good USB C earbuds, this could be an improvement from the previous situation. On the cheap end of the market, it's now harder/more expensive to make earbuds at the same quality as before. Given how disposably people treat earbuds (understandably, since they're easy to lose and easy to break), this all isn't great.

BriggyDwiggs42

8 months ago

Oh that makes a ton of sense. Thanks for the rundown :)

cheaprentalyeti

8 months ago

You have to be forgiving with Apple, they're down to their last 60 billion cash-on-hand, and with inflation that's not as much as it used to be.

dghlsakjg

8 months ago

This makes a lot of sense.

The only phones they have that can use this are also expected to be discontinued soon, and third party DACs exist.

chews

8 months ago

this is gross, it's the only way to use high quality headphones with the iPhones shipped before the the newest USB-C ones.

dghlsakjg

8 months ago

Other lightning compatible DACs exist. Apple’s dongle aren’t the only hardware for using wired headphones.

If you want you can just get a lightning to usb-c adapter and then an entire world of DACs and amps are available.

BriggyDwiggs42

8 months ago

When they switch to the next standard for their ports, ill finally be able to achieve my dream of getting a x -> usb c -> lightning -> aux chain set up for my car audio.

wilsonnb3

8 months ago

does lightning -> usb C -> 3.5mm not work? it requires an extra adapter but is better than nothing.

Schiendelman

8 months ago

No, it isn't gross. Third party manufacturers both make lightning audio adapters and lightning to USB-C adapters.

snvzz

8 months ago

Courage.