4 ms·

Honestly, I don't know why people complain about stuff like this. Please expand upon the tonne of downsides, because in practice, none of the issues you have m

by rplst8 10y ago

Honestly, I don't know why people complain about stuff like this. Please expand upon the tonne of downsides, because in practice, none of the issues you have mentioned have ever impacted my use of the jack. Keeping a small cable sized DAC attached to my headphones (once they finally exist) is not my concern. The concern is getting manufacturers to agree to a standard. So instead of one DAC, I'll need more than that, or some set of adapters for whatever that plug ends up being.

regularfry 10y ago
Jack plugs are just an awful design. If you've ever pulled a jack plug out of its socket and had the speakers make a horrible loud crack, you've experienced it: you can't unplug them without shorting the signal to ground. Their only saving grace is how robust they are, but that's mostly thrown away by 3.5mm ones, where either the plug bends with remarkable ease, or the plug doesn't bend and the socket gets knocked out of shape with the slightest provocation. There are better analogue standards around. There always have been. It's mostly a lost cause.
- rplst8 10y ago
  > you can't unplug them without shorting the signal to ground. Wrong. This is evidence of a cheaply desigined output circuit. There are many jacks that include muting switches. They are spring loaded, and when contact is lost, a muting circuit is enabled. And, if you are disconnecting the source side first, that is your problem not the jack's. Any analog connection disconnected source side first could result in this behaivor. It can be mitigated by some circiut on the amplifier side that detects a loss of connection. The technology exists, some cheaper electronics just fail to implement it. Noise on disconnection could happen with a digital circuit too if the designer of the amplifier/speaker fails to account for that case.
  - Faaak 10y ago
    > And, if you are disconnecting the source side first, that is your problem Sadly, people don't care.. Also, my jack is connected to my speakers from behind. I don't want to bend my arm in strange positions every time I want to disconnect the jack.
    - rplst8 10y ago
      True, they don't care. They do care about price, and when/if digital interconnects become the norm, don't expect the cheap implementations to handle the loud pop on disconnect situation any better.
phil21 10y ago
Why do you need a DAC? Only "high end" headsets should have those. The rest I imagine will simply be replacing the barrel connector with a USB connector and using USB-C's analog audio output over the proper conductors. Not sure why this is that large of an issue - the only problems here I can see are of course the transitioning of the physical connector type which is truly painful - and I suppose vendors could choose to disable analog audio support on devices in favor of more lock-in.
- rplst8 10y ago
  Fine, replace one analog connection with another - that will not likely be standard on all devices. Cue plethora of easy to lose adapters taking up more space in my backpack. It's just silly.
- c0nducktr 10y ago
  > Why do you need a DAC? To convert the digital signal coming from the device to an analog signal that my headphones can understand?
  - colejohnson66 10y ago
    What's to stop Apple from setting a few pins on the Lightning port for analog audio? Or is the port exclusively digital?
    - rplst8 10y ago
      I believe the Lightning port itself is digital signal and power only. There may be cables that have a small lump in them somewhere that provides an inline DAC to output to analog audio. This would be an example of a propreitary adapter though, and is not desireable.
oasisbob 10y ago
It's not like fragmentation would be a new thing - TRRS jacks are already fragmented between CTIA and OMTP pinouts. (Is the outer-most ring a ground, or the mic signal?) The former is terrible because the mic signal is on the outermost connection, so if your device has a metal enclosure the plug shorts the mic to ground. (Unless you have a special plug with no metal shoulder.)

by rplst8 10y ago

regularfry 10y ago

Jack plugs are just an awful design. If you've ever pulled a jack plug out of its socket and had the speakers make a horrible loud crack, you've experienced it: you can't unplug them without shorting the signal to ground. Their only saving grace is how robust they are, but that's mostly thrown away by 3.5mm ones, where either the plug bends with remarkable ease, or the plug doesn't bend and the socket gets knocked out of shape with the slightest provocation. There are better analogue standards around. There always have been. It's mostly a lost cause.

rplst8 10y ago
> you can't unplug them without shorting the signal to ground. Wrong. This is evidence of a cheaply desigined output circuit. There are many jacks that include muting switches. They are spring loaded, and when contact is lost, a muting circuit is enabled. And, if you are disconnecting the source side first, that is your problem not the jack's. Any analog connection disconnected source side first could result in this behaivor. It can be mitigated by some circiut on the amplifier side that detects a loss of connection. The technology exists, some cheaper electronics just fail to implement it. Noise on disconnection could happen with a digital circuit too if the designer of the amplifier/speaker fails to account for that case.
- Faaak 10y ago
  > And, if you are disconnecting the source side first, that is your problem Sadly, people don't care.. Also, my jack is connected to my speakers from behind. I don't want to bend my arm in strange positions every time I want to disconnect the jack.
  - rplst8 10y ago
    True, they don't care. They do care about price, and when/if digital interconnects become the norm, don't expect the cheap implementations to handle the loud pop on disconnect situation any better.

phil21 10y ago

Why do you need a DAC? Only "high end" headsets should have those. The rest I imagine will simply be replacing the barrel connector with a USB connector and using USB-C's analog audio output over the proper conductors. Not sure why this is that large of an issue - the only problems here I can see are of course the transitioning of the physical connector type which is truly painful - and I suppose vendors could choose to disable analog audio support on devices in favor of more lock-in.

rplst8 10y ago
Fine, replace one analog connection with another - that will not likely be standard on all devices. Cue plethora of easy to lose adapters taking up more space in my backpack. It's just silly.
c0nducktr 10y ago
> Why do you need a DAC? To convert the digital signal coming from the device to an analog signal that my headphones can understand?
- colejohnson66 10y ago
  What's to stop Apple from setting a few pins on the Lightning port for analog audio? Or is the port exclusively digital?
  - rplst8 10y ago
    I believe the Lightning port itself is digital signal and power only. There may be cables that have a small lump in them somewhere that provides an inline DAC to output to analog audio. This would be an example of a propreitary adapter though, and is not desireable.

oasisbob 10y ago

It's not like fragmentation would be a new thing - TRRS jacks are already fragmented between CTIA and OMTP pinouts. (Is the outer-most ring a ground, or the mic signal?) The former is terrible because the mic signal is on the outermost connection, so if your device has a metal enclosure the plug shorts the mic to ground. (Unless you have a special plug with no metal shoulder.)