8 ms·

Intel wants USB-C to replace the headphone jack

29 points by buro9 11y ago

woliveirajr 11y ago
As always, the problem is all those old earphones, headphones, and so on. The only chance of such thing prospering is if all those main cellphones come with earphones using such connection. In computers, on the other hand, I'd love to have a phone with USB connector instead of the 3.5mm. That way I could get rid of those noise (caused by motherboard consuming power in variables ways), without using my USB-soundboard.
- cuckcuckspruce 11y ago
  How else is Beats going to sell you the same overpriced headphones for the second time in three years? Gotta think about those gold plated yachts and CEO salaries. Won't somebody think of the executives!
  - mkonecny 11y ago
    Please don't post these comments here. It's not relevant to tech discussion.
    - untog 11y ago
      I'll agree the parent comment is not a good one, but Hacker News is absolutely a place to talk about things like CEO compensation. It is not a tech-only venue.
    - cuckcuckspruce 11y ago
      I think analyzing the reasons why a technological change is proposed is directly on point. Yes, there are other reasons as well, but the benefit of obsoleting 50 years of headphones is a fantastic way to gouge the consumer.
    - saiya-jin 11y ago
      oh yes it is relevant to discussion, much more than your comment for example
- bryanlarsen 11y ago
  The proposal sends analog audio out on the auxiliary pins, so adapters will be passive and dirt cheap.
  - Robadob 11y ago
    Presumably this also means it won't fix the issues of noise mentioned in the parent comment.
    - bryanlarsen 11y ago
      You've got analog on the aux pins and digital on the main pins. The digital isn't active unless selected, so it doesn't induce onto the analog. Best of both worlds. (except for the adapter required part).
      - nix0n 11y ago
        You'd still have to worry about the power lines, and it'd be nice to have audio while charging.
  - petra 11y ago
    In theory. Once it's programmable, music companies can decide song-x shouldn't play over analog, and we could do little about that.
cuckcuckspruce 11y ago
>Moreover, as AnandTech points out, with the extra power and programmability on offer, in-ear headphones could also be used to track health data like temperature, which can in turn feed into the growing array of fitness-tracking databases. I'm glad that they're just straight up admitting that the reason that they're doing this is snooping. That's quite refreshing.
- wernercd 11y ago
  One mans "Snooping" is another mans "breakout feature". I'd be interested in a set of headphones that do heartbeat tracking for when I run... I don't like wristbands and I haven't ever really been interested in watches. As with anything, it's a tool in the toolbox to be used for good or ill...
  - cuckcuckspruce 11y ago
    How long until this technology is used to get a discount on your insurance? How long after that until it's mandatory for insurance?
    - wernercd 11y ago
      It's amazing that you are here... in a Faraday cage behind 8 layers of tor on a secure linux cd distro... It's either that, or you should be farming cows with the Amish... because everything goes against this statement... How long until cash is removed so they can track you via credit cards? How long until the Insurance company requires your credit card receipts to show you've bought local farm grown and not McDonald's? How long until... You can take the "how long" excuse to extremes... Who knows where we will be in 5/10/100 years... Who knows what wouldn't happen if "but they might use it to spy on use!!!" blocked all forward progress...
- bolivier 11y ago
  Why am I supposed to want to track my temperature? How could that benefit me? It's just data collection for the sake of data collection. Nobody is going to use the temperature data. It doesn't benefit anybody trying to snoop on you. It doesn't benefit you. It's just a stupid feature that you can throw in and market as "neat."
daemin 11y ago
If a phone only has one USB-type C connector on it, how will you both charge and listen to music with your headphones with it? Is there going to be two connectors, one at the top and one at the bottom?
- losty 11y ago
  Some type of chaining adaptor makes more sense.
  - Finnucane 11y ago
    And given that usb-to-3.5mm adapters already exist, I assume that if this happened, the appropriate adapter would appear on the market fairly quickly, so you could keep using your old headphones.
    - gambiting 11y ago
      So now I have this ultra thin cable going to the phone in my pocket, but next it will have to be a whole USB adapter - I'm really not looking forward to that. At the same time - sure, Intel should go ahead and implement this. But phones should just have both USB and 3.5" connectors.
- buro9 11y ago
  A small USB type c hub, powered from the thing it's connected to. May be as small as a cable inter-connect 3 type c sockets, 1 for the phone, and one each for whatever you want to connect to. You could daisy chain these or have hubs that offer 1 in and 6 out, etc.
  - afandian 11y ago
    One that passes analogue audio through? Or one that has a built-in DAC?
  - chiph 11y ago
    If I'm on an airplane listening to music/watching a movie on my device, the last thing I want is another dongle to keep track of.
jsnell 11y ago
Discussion on the source article from yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11575550 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11575550
- buro9 11y ago
  Apologies for not seeing that. I was actually submitting http://hackaday.com/2016/04/22/hackaday-dictionary-usb-type-c/ http://hackaday.com/2016/04/22/hackaday-dictionary-usb-type-... and realised that what had led me to look for that I hadn't seen on HN, and I trusted that HN dupe checker would just upvote The Verge one if it existed.
untog 11y ago
99% of my complaints about the headphone jack could be solved by manufacturers simply making stronger plugs. Other than that I really don't see a persuasive reason to go through this change - requiring a USB interface will surely make earphones more expensive.
- VLM 11y ago
  Because you're not a manufacturer. Think of school kids. Because you can't learn without an ipad, and a classroom of kids watching youtube cartoons instead of learning need earphones or earbuds or they'll all go crazy. Now instead of selling $5 earbuds that last 3 months until they break or are lost, they parents will shell out $20 every 3 months. Also when the jack is ruined by kids yanking on it, instead of having a 99% usable ipad they'll have an unchargable ipad, leading to even more sales.
  - petra 11y ago
    Definitely true, it's manufacturer driven. All which calls to using Android and it's openness in schools. Which didn't take a genius to know in advance. And now that Google is in bed with the music industry, let's hope they won't shove USB-c down our throats.
twoodfin 11y ago
If Apple does introduce a Lightning-only iPhone in the fall, I am increasingly convinced they'll include some whiz-bang EarPods to sell it as a feature. Any reason they can't miniaturize some ADC/DACs for nifty adaptation to ambient noise run on the phone?
- mynegation 11y ago
  You mean I will be able to listen to the music on my phone only using god-awful horrible-sounding hard ear-buds from Apple whose only redeeming quality is proprietary lightning connector? Thanks, I'll pass.
  - twoodfin 11y ago
    Surely they'll offer a dongle to give you the old analog jack. But I'm pretty excited to see what they can do when they inevitably put computation (and networking to an overpowered phone!) inside each ear & the mic (or in the case of wireless headphones, exploit the existing computation to do a little more than shuffle Bluetooth packets).
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
gwbas1c 11y ago
The 3.5mm jack will be very hard to give up. It always works, and (usually) there's no interference / hiss. I find that digital devices are complicated enough that, unless I'm buying well-researched, high quality products, compatibility issues lead to glitches. I still encounter lots of glitches with Bluetooth, so I'm not ready to give up my trusty 3.5mm jack as a reliable fallback. Furthermore, things like sampling rate and bit density will actually make supporting this somewhat complicated. If it's locked at 16 bit, 44.1khz; then the playback device needs to have an excellent noise shaper and sampling rate converter to play thing like "mastered for iTunes" that decode to floating point and assume a 24-bit DAC. In contrast, if the format allows any bit per sample, and any sampling rate, then lots of compatibility issues will arise on cheaper devices.
- sesutton 11y ago
  >I find that digital devices are complicated enough that, unless I'm buying well-researched, high quality products, compatibility issues lead to glitches. I still encounter lots of glitches with Bluetooth, so I'm not ready to give up my trusty 3.5mm jack as a reliable fallback. That seems like more of a function of wireless vs wired than analog vs digital. Audio over HDMI or optical seems just as reliable as 3.5mm.
  - TrevorJ 11y ago
    I've found that HDMI connectors are not nearly as resilient to constant plugging and unplugging.
- frabbit 11y ago
  Re interference/hiss, there's actually quite a lot on all of the Raspberry Pi B+ I've tried (5 at this stage).
mnkmnk 11y ago
This seems like a terrible idea. I don't really have any complaints with my analog headphones. Why fix something which is not broke?
- Finnucane 11y ago
  Because most of the tech industry has no other reason to exist?
alex_duf 11y ago
Great, so now you can't charge your phone and listen to music at the same time.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- Kequc 11y ago
  Hey man either we increase the size of the exceedingly tiny interfaces we interact with every day in order to get work done or we start to use more dongles. /s
ComSubVie 11y ago
I hope that nobody get's the idea of encrypting the audio data for playback. I still can remember the problems of trying to play movies over HDMI which didn't work because some device didn't support the encrypted channel.
- klagermkii 11y ago
  http://anandtech.com/show/10273/intel-proposes-to-use-usb-typec-cables-to-connect-headsets-to-mobile-devices http://anandtech.com/show/10273/intel-proposes-to-use-usb-ty... As Anandtech points out it gets HDCP, so I'm sure there's going to be some uptake for apps that require a protected path.
rob74 11y ago
"The 3.5mm headphone jack is one of the elder statesmen of the personal tech world, having become ubiquitous with the rise of mp3 players, smartphones, and other mobile devices" - maybe the author is too young to remember that, but I think the "mobile device" that really helped make the 3.5mm headphone jack ubiquitous was the Sony Walkman back in the eighties.
- pmarreck 11y ago
  came here to say the same thing. It's even called the "mini" jack because it's a smaller version of the 6.35mm "phone connector" which dates... all the way back to 1878 when it was used for manual telephone exchanges (!) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phone_connector_(audio) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phone_connector_(audio)
mrpopo 11y ago
This is somewhat unrelated, but I find that switching from analog to digital hardware is also forcing consumers to replace their hardware instead of fixing it. Turntables and tape recorders, you could somehow tweak it and it would "work again". It's becoming increasingly difficult with new tech. I broke countless headphone jacks, and if I was lucky, all I had to do was resolder the pin. Can I still do that if my USB-C headphone plug now comes with a bloody decrypter + sample-rate converter built-in?
- berberous 11y ago
  I imagine the DAC would be built-in to the headphones, not the cord. And I'm sure some models will still offer cords that detach at both ends. Also, realize that no normal consumer is resoldering pins. You are in the extreme minority. And there seems to be plenty of repair shops that can fix high-end digital components (e.g. iPhones).
- logfromblammo 11y ago
  When my headphone jack broke on my laptop, I desoldered the microphone jack and resoldered it into the headphone jack's slot on the motherboard. It had seven pins, and I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to get a replacement part for it that would fit the existing PCB holes in any other way, short of buying an entirely new motherboard. I guessed one pin each for tip, ring, and sleeve, one each for tip disconnect and ring disconnect, but then there were two pins left over. Perhaps signal and disconnect for a second ring? I couldn't find a near-enough match for the part from anywhere that I knew to look for it. If there were a universal 3.5mm TRRS standard, I could just buy the standard jack receptacle and replace the part, rather than cannibalizing my microphone jack. The other problem is that if I just removed the broken jack, my laptop would never use the speakers again, because it would think that tip signal and tip disconnect were no longer shorted, and ring signal and ring disconnect were no longer shorted. Electrically, removing the part is the same as always leaving a 3.5mm jack plugged in. I'd have to permanently short those contacts on the board to simulate a never-in-use jack, and I didn't know the pinout for the 7-pin device in my hand unless I wanted to disassemble it with forceps. So yeah, screw the 3.5mm TRRS port. Give me a universal standard. And let's not just specify the mechanical properties of the plugs, but also the allowable locations and spacing of the pins for compliant through-hole, cable-connected, and surface-mount devices!
thebaer 11y ago
The great thing about the 3.5mm and 6.35mm jack is that I can use old hardware that still works great with new headphones. The equipment I spend money on lasts and continues to work as I upgrade individual parts over a long period of time. The consumer wins. OTOH, you can't argue with their business model! Decades-old standards are meant to be deprecated, especially at the expense of the consumer. /s
scurvy 11y ago
With Intel backing this, it's almost doomed for failure. Their track record with most things entertainment related is terrible. Think about all of this various smart home, smart TV, IP TV streaming, media hub things that Intel made splashy announcements on and then flopped. Intel just gets stuff like this wrong.
satysin 11y ago
I would be ok with this as it would mean I can get noise cancelling headphones that are powered via the connection to the phone and don't need their own power source. Yes it will make the $3 headphones more expensive but considering I would never buy such headphones I don't have a problem with that. Anyway there will no doubt be $2 USB-C to 3.5mm converters available for people who want to use old headphones. The nice thing with 3.5mm though is it "just works". I worry that with a complicated interface such as USB we will end up with incompatible headsets even worse than we do today with 3.5mm TRRS.
- logfromblammo 11y ago
  It just works until the plastic housing on the receptacle cracks, and you can no longer get a good electrical connection. The big problem is that the jack acts as a lever that can transmit enough force into the receptacle to destroy either one or the other rather than breaking the connection. And the more ring conductors you want to add, the longer the lever can become. I have been really happy with all my devices that have standardized on USB for charging. In contrast, Apple's proprietary 30-pin and Lightning (and MagSafe, while I'm at it) just make me think they're being colossal dicks, doing whatever TF they want, rather than meaningfully contributing to a standards consortium and licensing their patents to it.
  - perilunar 11y ago
    I hate proprietary connectors, but I love MagSafe—it's saved my laptop many times. Why can't all connectors be magsafe?
    - logfromblammo 11y ago
      In short, that's because Apple flat-out refuses to license the patent to anyone. Never mind that magnetic power connectors had already been invented, and that Apple's patent is essentially another "this already existing thing except on a computer" patent.
leecarraher 11y ago
finally the audio drm'd connector we've been clamoring for!
theandrewbailey 11y ago
> What's their big problem with the established headphone connector? Well, it's an analog, single-purpose port on digital devices that are now defined by their multipurpose efficiency. You know, we could remove that huge screen using that same rationale. No more lugging around that huge 6" bulky old thing! Now your phone is as small as a chicklet!
cgtyoder 11y ago
That's awesome - I have to buy more shit now. For the vast majority of people, the headphone jack with built-in DAC and existing headphones are very sufficient. The forced push of new tech which doesn't improve anything other than hw manufacturers' profits is just maddening.
pmarreck 11y ago
I'm as huge a fan of USB-C as anyone, but this is simply not a good idea
headgasket 11y ago
A true advance, a Jobs and Ives worthy advance, would be to superseed it. Use the 3 prongs of a jack with mic for ground tx,rx,and keep it backward compatible with analog only devices.
pc2g4d 11y ago
Suddenly headphones become an attack vector. That's my main concern with using USB for everything. Imagine a headphone virus that attacks your iPhone when it's plugged in via USB. Imagine a charging station that slurps all your data. (Hence the USB "condom", I guess.) We've discussed this all before.
sebastianconcpt 11y ago
The 3.5mm jack always works! I have some digital headphones and my next ones are going to be analog because of its digital issues every now and then
perilunar 11y ago
Why not use Mini-TOSLINK or something similar? Digital connection but backwardly compatible with existing 3.5mm audio.

29 points by buro9 11y ago

As always, the problem is all those old earphones, headphones, and so on. The only chance of such thing prospering is if all those main cellphones come with earphones using such connection. In computers, on the other hand, I'd love to have a phone with USB connector instead of the 3.5mm. That way I could get rid of those noise (caused by motherboard consuming power in variables ways), without using my USB-soundboard.

cuckcuckspruce 11y ago
How else is Beats going to sell you the same overpriced headphones for the second time in three years? Gotta think about those gold plated yachts and CEO salaries. Won't somebody think of the executives!
- mkonecny 11y ago
  Please don't post these comments here. It's not relevant to tech discussion.
  - untog 11y ago
    I'll agree the parent comment is not a good one, but Hacker News is absolutely a place to talk about things like CEO compensation. It is not a tech-only venue.
  - cuckcuckspruce 11y ago
    I think analyzing the reasons why a technological change is proposed is directly on point. Yes, there are other reasons as well, but the benefit of obsoleting 50 years of headphones is a fantastic way to gouge the consumer.
  - saiya-jin 11y ago
    oh yes it is relevant to discussion, much more than your comment for example
bryanlarsen 11y ago
The proposal sends analog audio out on the auxiliary pins, so adapters will be passive and dirt cheap.
- Robadob 11y ago
  Presumably this also means it won't fix the issues of noise mentioned in the parent comment.
  - bryanlarsen 11y ago
    You've got analog on the aux pins and digital on the main pins. The digital isn't active unless selected, so it doesn't induce onto the analog. Best of both worlds. (except for the adapter required part).
    - nix0n 11y ago
      You'd still have to worry about the power lines, and it'd be nice to have audio while charging.
- petra 11y ago
  In theory. Once it's programmable, music companies can decide song-x shouldn't play over analog, and we could do little about that.

cuckcuckspruce 11y ago

>Moreover, as AnandTech points out, with the extra power and programmability on offer, in-ear headphones could also be used to track health data like temperature, which can in turn feed into the growing array of fitness-tracking databases. I'm glad that they're just straight up admitting that the reason that they're doing this is snooping. That's quite refreshing.

wernercd 11y ago
One mans "Snooping" is another mans "breakout feature". I'd be interested in a set of headphones that do heartbeat tracking for when I run... I don't like wristbands and I haven't ever really been interested in watches. As with anything, it's a tool in the toolbox to be used for good or ill...
- cuckcuckspruce 11y ago
  How long until this technology is used to get a discount on your insurance? How long after that until it's mandatory for insurance?
  - wernercd 11y ago
    It's amazing that you are here... in a Faraday cage behind 8 layers of tor on a secure linux cd distro... It's either that, or you should be farming cows with the Amish... because everything goes against this statement... How long until cash is removed so they can track you via credit cards? How long until the Insurance company requires your credit card receipts to show you've bought local farm grown and not McDonald's? How long until... You can take the "how long" excuse to extremes... Who knows where we will be in 5/10/100 years... Who knows what wouldn't happen if "but they might use it to spy on use!!!" blocked all forward progress...
bolivier 11y ago
Why am I supposed to want to track my temperature? How could that benefit me? It's just data collection for the sake of data collection. Nobody is going to use the temperature data. It doesn't benefit anybody trying to snoop on you. It doesn't benefit you. It's just a stupid feature that you can throw in and market as "neat."

daemin 11y ago

If a phone only has one USB-type C connector on it, how will you both charge and listen to music with your headphones with it? Is there going to be two connectors, one at the top and one at the bottom?

losty 11y ago
Some type of chaining adaptor makes more sense.
- Finnucane 11y ago
  And given that usb-to-3.5mm adapters already exist, I assume that if this happened, the appropriate adapter would appear on the market fairly quickly, so you could keep using your old headphones.
  - gambiting 11y ago
    So now I have this ultra thin cable going to the phone in my pocket, but next it will have to be a whole USB adapter - I'm really not looking forward to that. At the same time - sure, Intel should go ahead and implement this. But phones should just have both USB and 3.5" connectors.
buro9 11y ago
A small USB type c hub, powered from the thing it's connected to. May be as small as a cable inter-connect 3 type c sockets, 1 for the phone, and one each for whatever you want to connect to. You could daisy chain these or have hubs that offer 1 in and 6 out, etc.
- afandian 11y ago
  One that passes analogue audio through? Or one that has a built-in DAC?
- chiph 11y ago
  If I'm on an airplane listening to music/watching a movie on my device, the last thing I want is another dongle to keep track of.

jsnell 11y ago

Discussion on the source article from yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11575550 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11575550

buro9 11y ago
Apologies for not seeing that. I was actually submitting http://hackaday.com/2016/04/22/hackaday-dictionary-usb-type-c/ http://hackaday.com/2016/04/22/hackaday-dictionary-usb-type-... and realised that what had led me to look for that I hadn't seen on HN, and I trusted that HN dupe checker would just upvote The Verge one if it existed.

untog 11y ago

99% of my complaints about the headphone jack could be solved by manufacturers simply making stronger plugs. Other than that I really don't see a persuasive reason to go through this change - requiring a USB interface will surely make earphones more expensive.

VLM 11y ago
Because you're not a manufacturer. Think of school kids. Because you can't learn without an ipad, and a classroom of kids watching youtube cartoons instead of learning need earphones or earbuds or they'll all go crazy. Now instead of selling $5 earbuds that last 3 months until they break or are lost, they parents will shell out $20 every 3 months. Also when the jack is ruined by kids yanking on it, instead of having a 99% usable ipad they'll have an unchargable ipad, leading to even more sales.
- petra 11y ago
  Definitely true, it's manufacturer driven. All which calls to using Android and it's openness in schools. Which didn't take a genius to know in advance. And now that Google is in bed with the music industry, let's hope they won't shove USB-c down our throats.

twoodfin 11y ago

If Apple does introduce a Lightning-only iPhone in the fall, I am increasingly convinced they'll include some whiz-bang EarPods to sell it as a feature. Any reason they can't miniaturize some ADC/DACs for nifty adaptation to ambient noise run on the phone?

mynegation 11y ago
You mean I will be able to listen to the music on my phone only using god-awful horrible-sounding hard ear-buds from Apple whose only redeeming quality is proprietary lightning connector? Thanks, I'll pass.
- twoodfin 11y ago
  Surely they'll offer a dongle to give you the old analog jack. But I'm pretty excited to see what they can do when they inevitably put computation (and networking to an overpowered phone!) inside each ear & the mic (or in the case of wireless headphones, exploit the existing computation to do a little more than shuffle Bluetooth packets).
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]

gwbas1c 11y ago

The 3.5mm jack will be very hard to give up. It always works, and (usually) there's no interference / hiss. I find that digital devices are complicated enough that, unless I'm buying well-researched, high quality products, compatibility issues lead to glitches. I still encounter lots of glitches with Bluetooth, so I'm not ready to give up my trusty 3.5mm jack as a reliable fallback. Furthermore, things like sampling rate and bit density will actually make supporting this somewhat complicated. If it's locked at 16 bit, 44.1khz; then the playback device needs to have an excellent noise shaper and sampling rate converter to play thing like "mastered for iTunes" that decode to floating point and assume a 24-bit DAC. In contrast, if the format allows any bit per sample, and any sampling rate, then lots of compatibility issues will arise on cheaper devices.

sesutton 11y ago
>I find that digital devices are complicated enough that, unless I'm buying well-researched, high quality products, compatibility issues lead to glitches. I still encounter lots of glitches with Bluetooth, so I'm not ready to give up my trusty 3.5mm jack as a reliable fallback. That seems like more of a function of wireless vs wired than analog vs digital. Audio over HDMI or optical seems just as reliable as 3.5mm.
- TrevorJ 11y ago
  I've found that HDMI connectors are not nearly as resilient to constant plugging and unplugging.
frabbit 11y ago
Re interference/hiss, there's actually quite a lot on all of the Raspberry Pi B+ I've tried (5 at this stage).

mnkmnk 11y ago

This seems like a terrible idea. I don't really have any complaints with my analog headphones. Why fix something which is not broke?

Finnucane 11y ago
Because most of the tech industry has no other reason to exist?

alex_duf 11y ago

Great, so now you can't charge your phone and listen to music at the same time.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
Kequc 11y ago
Hey man either we increase the size of the exceedingly tiny interfaces we interact with every day in order to get work done or we start to use more dongles. /s

ComSubVie 11y ago

I hope that nobody get's the idea of encrypting the audio data for playback. I still can remember the problems of trying to play movies over HDMI which didn't work because some device didn't support the encrypted channel.

klagermkii 11y ago
http://anandtech.com/show/10273/intel-proposes-to-use-usb-typec-cables-to-connect-headsets-to-mobile-devices http://anandtech.com/show/10273/intel-proposes-to-use-usb-ty... As Anandtech points out it gets HDCP, so I'm sure there's going to be some uptake for apps that require a protected path.

rob74 11y ago

"The 3.5mm headphone jack is one of the elder statesmen of the personal tech world, having become ubiquitous with the rise of mp3 players, smartphones, and other mobile devices" - maybe the author is too young to remember that, but I think the "mobile device" that really helped make the 3.5mm headphone jack ubiquitous was the Sony Walkman back in the eighties.

pmarreck 11y ago
came here to say the same thing. It's even called the "mini" jack because it's a smaller version of the 6.35mm "phone connector" which dates... all the way back to 1878 when it was used for manual telephone exchanges (!) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phone_connector_(audio) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phone_connector_(audio)

mrpopo 11y ago

This is somewhat unrelated, but I find that switching from analog to digital hardware is also forcing consumers to replace their hardware instead of fixing it. Turntables and tape recorders, you could somehow tweak it and it would "work again". It's becoming increasingly difficult with new tech. I broke countless headphone jacks, and if I was lucky, all I had to do was resolder the pin. Can I still do that if my USB-C headphone plug now comes with a bloody decrypter + sample-rate converter built-in?

berberous 11y ago
I imagine the DAC would be built-in to the headphones, not the cord. And I'm sure some models will still offer cords that detach at both ends. Also, realize that no normal consumer is resoldering pins. You are in the extreme minority. And there seems to be plenty of repair shops that can fix high-end digital components (e.g. iPhones).
logfromblammo 11y ago
When my headphone jack broke on my laptop, I desoldered the microphone jack and resoldered it into the headphone jack's slot on the motherboard. It had seven pins, and I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to get a replacement part for it that would fit the existing PCB holes in any other way, short of buying an entirely new motherboard. I guessed one pin each for tip, ring, and sleeve, one each for tip disconnect and ring disconnect, but then there were two pins left over. Perhaps signal and disconnect for a second ring? I couldn't find a near-enough match for the part from anywhere that I knew to look for it. If there were a universal 3.5mm TRRS standard, I could just buy the standard jack receptacle and replace the part, rather than cannibalizing my microphone jack. The other problem is that if I just removed the broken jack, my laptop would never use the speakers again, because it would think that tip signal and tip disconnect were no longer shorted, and ring signal and ring disconnect were no longer shorted. Electrically, removing the part is the same as always leaving a 3.5mm jack plugged in. I'd have to permanently short those contacts on the board to simulate a never-in-use jack, and I didn't know the pinout for the 7-pin device in my hand unless I wanted to disassemble it with forceps. So yeah, screw the 3.5mm TRRS port. Give me a universal standard. And let's not just specify the mechanical properties of the plugs, but also the allowable locations and spacing of the pins for compliant through-hole, cable-connected, and surface-mount devices!

thebaer 11y ago

The great thing about the 3.5mm and 6.35mm jack is that I can use old hardware that still works great with new headphones. The equipment I spend money on lasts and continues to work as I upgrade individual parts over a long period of time. The consumer wins. OTOH, you can't argue with their business model! Decades-old standards are meant to be deprecated, especially at the expense of the consumer. /s

scurvy 11y ago

With Intel backing this, it's almost doomed for failure. Their track record with most things entertainment related is terrible. Think about all of this various smart home, smart TV, IP TV streaming, media hub things that Intel made splashy announcements on and then flopped. Intel just gets stuff like this wrong.

satysin 11y ago

I would be ok with this as it would mean I can get noise cancelling headphones that are powered via the connection to the phone and don't need their own power source. Yes it will make the $3 headphones more expensive but considering I would never buy such headphones I don't have a problem with that. Anyway there will no doubt be $2 USB-C to 3.5mm converters available for people who want to use old headphones. The nice thing with 3.5mm though is it "just works". I worry that with a complicated interface such as USB we will end up with incompatible headsets even worse than we do today with 3.5mm TRRS.

logfromblammo 11y ago
It just works until the plastic housing on the receptacle cracks, and you can no longer get a good electrical connection. The big problem is that the jack acts as a lever that can transmit enough force into the receptacle to destroy either one or the other rather than breaking the connection. And the more ring conductors you want to add, the longer the lever can become. I have been really happy with all my devices that have standardized on USB for charging. In contrast, Apple's proprietary 30-pin and Lightning (and MagSafe, while I'm at it) just make me think they're being colossal dicks, doing whatever TF they want, rather than meaningfully contributing to a standards consortium and licensing their patents to it.
- perilunar 11y ago
  I hate proprietary connectors, but I love MagSafe—it's saved my laptop many times. Why can't all connectors be magsafe?
  - logfromblammo 11y ago
    In short, that's because Apple flat-out refuses to license the patent to anyone. Never mind that magnetic power connectors had already been invented, and that Apple's patent is essentially another "this already existing thing except on a computer" patent.

leecarraher 11y ago

finally the audio drm'd connector we've been clamoring for!

theandrewbailey 11y ago

> What's their big problem with the established headphone connector? Well, it's an analog, single-purpose port on digital devices that are now defined by their multipurpose efficiency. You know, we could remove that huge screen using that same rationale. No more lugging around that huge 6" bulky old thing! Now your phone is as small as a chicklet!

cgtyoder 11y ago

That's awesome - I have to buy more shit now. For the vast majority of people, the headphone jack with built-in DAC and existing headphones are very sufficient. The forced push of new tech which doesn't improve anything other than hw manufacturers' profits is just maddening.

pmarreck 11y ago

I'm as huge a fan of USB-C as anyone, but this is simply not a good idea

headgasket 11y ago

A true advance, a Jobs and Ives worthy advance, would be to superseed it. Use the 3 prongs of a jack with mic for ground tx,rx,and keep it backward compatible with analog only devices.

pc2g4d 11y ago

Suddenly headphones become an attack vector. That's my main concern with using USB for everything. Imagine a headphone virus that attacks your iPhone when it's plugged in via USB. Imagine a charging station that slurps all your data. (Hence the USB "condom", I guess.) We've discussed this all before.

sebastianconcpt 11y ago

The 3.5mm jack always works! I have some digital headphones and my next ones are going to be analog because of its digital issues every now and then

perilunar 11y ago

Why not use Mini-TOSLINK or something similar? Digital connection but backwardly compatible with existing 3.5mm audio.