I don't think your experience is representative. The wired headphone business is booming. If am doing high-fidelity listening using good headphones, I'm n

I don't think your experience is representative. The wired headphone business is booming. If am doing high-fidelity listening using good headphones, I'm not playing the audio from my phone anyway; I am at home with my proper audio equipment. Audio quality over headphones is typically a thing that Apple does really well. Objectively measured, the iPhone's DAC and headphone amp are darn good: http://www.kenrockwell.com/apple/iphone-6-plus.htm#measurements http://www.kenrockwell.com/apple/iphone-6-plus.htm#measureme... The built-in amp may be lacking in power if you're using hard-to-drive headphones. Bluetooth [...] high-fidelity I've read that Bluetooth headphones that support the AAC codec sound great (theoretically this can avoid transcoding if your music is AAC) although they're few and far between.