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As a borderline audiophile I have mixed feelings mostly tending towards solution in search of a problem. The DACs in Apple products have a very good reputation

As a borderline audiophile I have mixed feelings mostly tending towards solution in search of a problem. The DACs in Apple products have a very good reputation going all the way back to the early iPods and supposedly they kept getting better. When I travel I bring an Objective 2 headphone amp and AKG Q701 or Beyderdynamic DT-880 600ohm and use my iPhone 6+ as a music player and DAC. I can't tell the difference between that and the Objective 2 + ODAC I have at home. In terms of pieces of the audio chain I think DAC is one of the least important in my anecdatal experience. At least if you have a decent one like any Apple device. Onboard audio from a PC/laptop motherboard is generally awful and even dedicated sound cards are full of noise and whine. I am very glad to have HDMI audio these days. A USB sound card trivially fixes the issue though. So yeah it's nice for high end DACs to become more common, but is it that useful over the convenience of a solid built in DAC? I don't think so. That said I suspect the market will respond with adapters and cases that resurrect the 3.5 inch jack without a huge fuss and still pass through other functionality like syncing and charging. For myself and most of Hacker News with above average incomes this is going to be a minor speed bump in terms of cost and a larger inconvenience in terms of more kit to lug around and swap between devices.

Declanomous 10y ago
>The DACs in Apple products have a very good reputation going all the way back to the early iPods I do not think this is the case at all. I recall the early iPods being blasted for their sound quality. One of the huge "wins" for the Microsoft Zune over the iPod was the audio quality. Everyone I know who owned a Zune was an audiophile. I have no idea what the sound quality on current iPods/iPhones/iWhatevers is like. Maybe the DAC on the old iPod was held back by the codecs that Apple chose to use at the time. I know Apple created ALAC, and improved the quality of the lossy codecs at some point. Regardless, the audio quality of the oldest iPods was poorly regarded in general.
- legodt 10y ago
  You are correct about early Zune having an advantage over the iPod. As time went on though, the larger iPods, now known as the Classic, began to ship with Wolfson DACs- a well respected DAC for portable audio. Side note: ALAC, although lossless, never upset FLAC for a reason. Primarily because FLAC was open and ALAC was closed. EDIT: Please disregard last comment, it has been corrected by a reply below this
  - theandrewbailey 10y ago
    Re side note: back in the day, yes. ALAC went open many years ago: https://alac.macosforge.org/ https://alac.macosforge.org/
    - legodt 10y ago
      Oh wow, my bad. I had no idea ALAC went open. Very interesting, thank you for bringing this up. Time to burn half the work day poking around ALAC now and learning more!
      - voltagex_ 10y ago
        Christ, I hope it's mirrored somewhere other than macosforge. I don't think anyone's actively looking after that site any more.
- rplst8 10y ago
  I disagree entirely. I'm not an Apple fan boy, but I've actually run my own tests on iPods as early as the 3G iPod (the 30 GB hdd based one, not the phone) and the sound quality from the electronics was excellent. The MP3s are a different story because they were selling 128 kbps files back then. But you could load full bit rate PCM audio (WAV files) on them, and they sounded just as good as any quality CD player.
- bonaldi 10y ago
  I think you're misremembering or are thinking of the later models when you think of "oldest". The first iPods used Wolfson DACs and were hugely well regarded. Apple changed this for the 3rd gen iPod, which was a duffer in nearly all respects (not just audio). Things started to get better again from 4G on.
  - Declanomous 10y ago
    I'm definitely not misremembering anything. The original (1-3rd gen) iPods sounded horrible. Maybe the amp was to blame, instead of the DAC, but they sounded bad. If you look back at the discussions regarding portable music players from the time, the Creative ZEN series always comes out ahead of the iPod in objective and subjective testing. I was slightly late to the MP3 player game myself, but after listening to several different MP3 players I ended up with a Dell DJ because it just sounded better than the competition. That's just my personal, non-audiophile opinion, of course. I'm not knocking the iPod. It was a better device than the competition in a lot of ways. It just didn't have audiophile quality sound.
    - bonaldi 10y ago
      The audiophiles disagree on this one, I'm afraid. The iPod absolutely did have audiophile quality sound. Then it compromised on this when they were going for growth (and using cheaper parts). It returned to form by the time of the later iPod Classics. It's difficult to find cites from that far back, but the types over at head-fi appear to broadly agree http://www.head-fi.org/t/580987/has-ipod-changed-their-sound-chips-cards-from-generation-to-generation http://www.head-fi.org/t/580987/has-ipod-changed-their-sound...
      - Unklejoe 10y ago
        Maybe audiophile quality sound when driving the high impedance input of an amplifier, but certainly not when driving headphones directly, IMO. The best portable music players I've listened to (in terms of headphone driving capabilities) were the portable CD players from back in the day. My experience from way back in the early iPod days was that it simply did not have the power to drive my headphones hard enough to provide good sounding bass, where as my old CD player (which could play MP3s on a CD), sounded much better. I always thought it was a result of some law which limited the power of headphone ports to prevent hearing loss in kids, but this could be all BS.
- nradov 10y ago
  Quantitative tests indicate the iPhone 5 at least is quite good. http://www.kenrockwell.com/apple/iphone-5/audio-quality.htm http://www.kenrockwell.com/apple/iphone-5/audio-quality.htm
- marklyon 10y ago
  The Zune did sounds really good, up until the day it turned itself into a brick. Before the cause of the one-day bricking was known, I'd already tossed it so hard against a wall it would never work again.
darpa_escapee 10y ago
> The DACs in Apple products have a very good reputation going all the way back to the early iPods I don't remember this being true at all. I was in the camp that bought iRiver's H3x0 series + other companies' offerings because Apple's products had comparatively worse audio quality.
mark-r 10y ago
I wonder how many audiophiles are aware of the drawbacks of Bluetooth? The protocol only allows for lossy compressed digital formats. Even if you're starting with a lossy compressed format like mp3 anyway, the typical system flow will result in a second compression with the consequent loss in fidelity.
- rplst8 10y ago
  This boggles my mind too. I've had a few friends that are audiophiles that love to use Bluetooth headpones and will argue about the quality of the DAC in the player. And people here talk about the 3.5mm jack being a hack or a kludge. BT was not originally intended to carry high quality digital audio - it was a friggin wireless standard for telephone headsets. Telephone audio quality isn't exactly the world standard for Hi-Fi Audio. I guess the new aptX Lossless codec allows lossless audio - but I'm not sure how many devices support it. All this reminds me of a friend who attended a seminar with Sennheiser for their professional wireless microphone technology. The instructor said something to the effect of, "always remember, never replace a connection with wireless technology where a $10 cable will do. Because, all $10 cables will outperform even $10,000 wireless systems."
- Unklejoe 10y ago
  Well, we're talking about a community which is notorious for rejecting actual science and basing their conclusions on nothing more than price. Here's a good example, Just check out that description: http://www.musicdirect.com/p-66187-nordost-frey-2-power-cord.aspx?utm_source=googlepepla&utm_medium=adwords&id=104647359630&gclid=Cj0KEQjws_m6BRCv37WbtNmJs-IBEiQAWKKt0DPbQ3HMDvKAbnPThx7WD9oHBp3NSmLnEupziOB7IX8aAip08P8HAQ http://www.musicdirect.com/p-66187-nordost-frey-2-power-cord...

Declanomous 10y ago

>The DACs in Apple products have a very good reputation going all the way back to the early iPods I do not think this is the case at all. I recall the early iPods being blasted for their sound quality. One of the huge "wins" for the Microsoft Zune over the iPod was the audio quality. Everyone I know who owned a Zune was an audiophile. I have no idea what the sound quality on current iPods/iPhones/iWhatevers is like. Maybe the DAC on the old iPod was held back by the codecs that Apple chose to use at the time. I know Apple created ALAC, and improved the quality of the lossy codecs at some point. Regardless, the audio quality of the oldest iPods was poorly regarded in general.

legodt 10y ago
You are correct about early Zune having an advantage over the iPod. As time went on though, the larger iPods, now known as the Classic, began to ship with Wolfson DACs- a well respected DAC for portable audio. Side note: ALAC, although lossless, never upset FLAC for a reason. Primarily because FLAC was open and ALAC was closed. EDIT: Please disregard last comment, it has been corrected by a reply below this
- theandrewbailey 10y ago
  Re side note: back in the day, yes. ALAC went open many years ago: https://alac.macosforge.org/ https://alac.macosforge.org/
  - legodt 10y ago
    Oh wow, my bad. I had no idea ALAC went open. Very interesting, thank you for bringing this up. Time to burn half the work day poking around ALAC now and learning more!
    - voltagex_ 10y ago
      Christ, I hope it's mirrored somewhere other than macosforge. I don't think anyone's actively looking after that site any more.
rplst8 10y ago
I disagree entirely. I'm not an Apple fan boy, but I've actually run my own tests on iPods as early as the 3G iPod (the 30 GB hdd based one, not the phone) and the sound quality from the electronics was excellent. The MP3s are a different story because they were selling 128 kbps files back then. But you could load full bit rate PCM audio (WAV files) on them, and they sounded just as good as any quality CD player.
bonaldi 10y ago
I think you're misremembering or are thinking of the later models when you think of "oldest". The first iPods used Wolfson DACs and were hugely well regarded. Apple changed this for the 3rd gen iPod, which was a duffer in nearly all respects (not just audio). Things started to get better again from 4G on.
- Declanomous 10y ago
  I'm definitely not misremembering anything. The original (1-3rd gen) iPods sounded horrible. Maybe the amp was to blame, instead of the DAC, but they sounded bad. If you look back at the discussions regarding portable music players from the time, the Creative ZEN series always comes out ahead of the iPod in objective and subjective testing. I was slightly late to the MP3 player game myself, but after listening to several different MP3 players I ended up with a Dell DJ because it just sounded better than the competition. That's just my personal, non-audiophile opinion, of course. I'm not knocking the iPod. It was a better device than the competition in a lot of ways. It just didn't have audiophile quality sound.
  - bonaldi 10y ago
    The audiophiles disagree on this one, I'm afraid. The iPod absolutely did have audiophile quality sound. Then it compromised on this when they were going for growth (and using cheaper parts). It returned to form by the time of the later iPod Classics. It's difficult to find cites from that far back, but the types over at head-fi appear to broadly agree http://www.head-fi.org/t/580987/has-ipod-changed-their-sound-chips-cards-from-generation-to-generation http://www.head-fi.org/t/580987/has-ipod-changed-their-sound...
    - Unklejoe 10y ago
      Maybe audiophile quality sound when driving the high impedance input of an amplifier, but certainly not when driving headphones directly, IMO. The best portable music players I've listened to (in terms of headphone driving capabilities) were the portable CD players from back in the day. My experience from way back in the early iPod days was that it simply did not have the power to drive my headphones hard enough to provide good sounding bass, where as my old CD player (which could play MP3s on a CD), sounded much better. I always thought it was a result of some law which limited the power of headphone ports to prevent hearing loss in kids, but this could be all BS.
nradov 10y ago
Quantitative tests indicate the iPhone 5 at least is quite good. http://www.kenrockwell.com/apple/iphone-5/audio-quality.htm http://www.kenrockwell.com/apple/iphone-5/audio-quality.htm
marklyon 10y ago
The Zune did sounds really good, up until the day it turned itself into a brick. Before the cause of the one-day bricking was known, I'd already tossed it so hard against a wall it would never work again.

darpa_escapee 10y ago

> The DACs in Apple products have a very good reputation going all the way back to the early iPods I don't remember this being true at all. I was in the camp that bought iRiver's H3x0 series + other companies' offerings because Apple's products had comparatively worse audio quality.

mark-r 10y ago

I wonder how many audiophiles are aware of the drawbacks of Bluetooth? The protocol only allows for lossy compressed digital formats. Even if you're starting with a lossy compressed format like mp3 anyway, the typical system flow will result in a second compression with the consequent loss in fidelity.

rplst8 10y ago
This boggles my mind too. I've had a few friends that are audiophiles that love to use Bluetooth headpones and will argue about the quality of the DAC in the player. And people here talk about the 3.5mm jack being a hack or a kludge. BT was not originally intended to carry high quality digital audio - it was a friggin wireless standard for telephone headsets. Telephone audio quality isn't exactly the world standard for Hi-Fi Audio. I guess the new aptX Lossless codec allows lossless audio - but I'm not sure how many devices support it. All this reminds me of a friend who attended a seminar with Sennheiser for their professional wireless microphone technology. The instructor said something to the effect of, "always remember, never replace a connection with wireless technology where a $10 cable will do. Because, all $10 cables will outperform even $10,000 wireless systems."
Unklejoe 10y ago
Well, we're talking about a community which is notorious for rejecting actual science and basing their conclusions on nothing more than price. Here's a good example, Just check out that description: http://www.musicdirect.com/p-66187-nordost-frey-2-power-cord.aspx?utm_source=googlepepla&utm_medium=adwords&id=104647359630&gclid=Cj0KEQjws_m6BRCv37WbtNmJs-IBEiQAWKKt0DPbQ3HMDvKAbnPThx7WD9oHBp3NSmLnEupziOB7IX8aAip08P8HAQ http://www.musicdirect.com/p-66187-nordost-frey-2-power-cord...