"on-usb amp to a crappy aux port on commodity hardware?" Well, the cool thing about flexibility is that I can do that if I want to, and it will still work if I

"on-usb amp to a crappy aux port on commodity hardware?" Well, the cool thing about flexibility is that I can do that if I want to, and it will still work if I don't. Yes the amps in phone headphone ports are crap but as long as you're aren't trying to walk around with $500+ cans with crazy high resistance everything still works fine. And as for the mainstream, you really have to step back and think about all the people in this world with audio players... first world and third, high and low tech, city slickers and country folk, blah blah blah. What port do the majority of those devices have?