Can you spot the mistaken assumption? It's right here: "Data doesn’t need to go to the headphones, nor do the headphones need to send data back. Digital-to-ana

Can you spot the mistaken assumption? It's right here: "Data doesn’t need to go to the headphones, nor do the headphones need to send data back. Digital-to-analog conversion has to be done eventually, because speakers don’t produce sound waves with 1s and 0s." True for speakers, but headphones are often more than dumb speakers at this point. They're active noise cancelling devices. They're a component of immersive video (why do people buy 5.1 surround systems when they could just wear headphones?). Or even if you have the standard earphones from the box: do you ever pause the sound, skip a track, or answer a call using the buttons on the cable? If so, you're sending data back to the phone. Surprise! What other forms of interactivity could we open up if we broke the "one-way, stereo audio only" assumption explicitly? Don't get me wrong - my preferred earphone vendor doesn't even have Bluetooth support yet and I don't really want to buy another pair of custom Etymotics. But despite that, I recognize there are real experience-driven reasons to do this.