3 ms·

if your phone only has a 3.5mm jack, you will have to provide high quality audio through it (if you want to be able to sell it to people interested in listening

if your phone only has a 3.5mm jack, you will have to provide high quality audio through it (if you want to be able to sell it to people interested in listening to music on high quality earphones) if your phone only has a digital jack and a certification process, you can decide to provide high quality audio to your digital headphones and low quality audio to the 3.5mm adapter. It's not guaranteed that the DAC you are getting in the 3.5mm adapter is as good as the DAC that you were getting before inside the phone (and given that the 3.5mm adapter costs $9.99 I would be surprised if it was) I am personally really interested in somebody testing the new external adapter DAC against the 6s internal DAC and see what the quality loss is like. Maybe these days you can create a quality DAC and sell it for super cheap, but it might also be the case that the adapter DAC is going to be much worse than it was before, and in that case there's not much you can do about it if Apple does not license the technology to 3rd parties to create their own.

topranks 10y ago
Yeah I would like to know this. The DAC sockets on recent iPhone models (5 up) has been pretty good.
sneak 10y ago
You cannot hear the difference in DACs on modern 16 bit devices. The difference in DAC quality is so far below your perception that any perceived difference is placebo. If you do not believe me, I strongly encourage you to perform a blinded ABX test. I, too, was surprised by the results.
- extra88 10y ago
  Apple could degrade it in software. They already degrade DRM'd video playback when it's on a display connection unprotected by HDCP, e.g. when using a VGA dongle. I've generally been in favor of Apple's hardware changes; for example the original iMac helped the entire industry adopt USB and the Lightning connector is much better than the 30-pin connector (and has a number of advantages over the microUSB pretty much everyone else uses). I've been in favor of their video port changes (except microDVI on the original MacBook Air) even though it created problems for me and my colleagues at work. I'm unhappy about Ethernet being dropped from all their laptop models but it really was an obstacle in their physical design. This change seems unnecessary and I don't like how Lightning is on Apple devices only. I'm not sure there's an evil DRM plot, I could totally believe Jonny Ive or some designer just didn't like this analog turd messing up the symmetry and digital purity of their designs, especially a connector that's 30+ years old.

topranks 10y ago

Yeah I would like to know this. The DAC sockets on recent iPhone models (5 up) has been pretty good.

sneak 10y ago

You cannot hear the difference in DACs on modern 16 bit devices. The difference in DAC quality is so far below your perception that any perceived difference is placebo. If you do not believe me, I strongly encourage you to perform a blinded ABX test. I, too, was surprised by the results.

extra88 10y ago
Apple could degrade it in software. They already degrade DRM'd video playback when it's on a display connection unprotected by HDCP, e.g. when using a VGA dongle. I've generally been in favor of Apple's hardware changes; for example the original iMac helped the entire industry adopt USB and the Lightning connector is much better than the 30-pin connector (and has a number of advantages over the microUSB pretty much everyone else uses). I've been in favor of their video port changes (except microDVI on the original MacBook Air) even though it created problems for me and my colleagues at work. I'm unhappy about Ethernet being dropped from all their laptop models but it really was an obstacle in their physical design. This change seems unnecessary and I don't like how Lightning is on Apple devices only. I'm not sure there's an evil DRM plot, I could totally believe Jonny Ive or some designer just didn't like this analog turd messing up the symmetry and digital purity of their designs, especially a connector that's 30+ years old.