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Apple Introduces Lightning Cable MFi Specifications for Headphones

kelub said:
All of the other ones have been wrapped up, pulled around, used at their maximum length, accidentally yanked on, kinked up, etc., without any issue. They all still work.

So either you guys are full of it, you're way harder on your cables than you are letting on, or you're buying exceptionally subpar quality cables.
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I think a lot of people pull 'near' the connector when removing from the phone, thereby damaging the cable and thinking they are doing it correctly. It really is pretty short, esp if you have a case getting in the way.
 
Chaos123x said:
That's not my experience with them at all, I've tried to be extra careful with my current cable but it too is failing. Seems the wire gets a short somewhere under the rubber. It will only works if the cable is turned a certain way. Tried using cheap 3rd party lighting cables from 5 and below but they didn't last two days. I just have the cable plugged in on my night stand and use it to charge the iphone when I sleep, so not really putting it under any stress. In my opinion the lighting cables are garbage.
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When I used the 30 pin one it was nightmare for me. I used to change them quite a lot because the rubber used to wear off and leave the wires totally exposed until it failed to charge the phone. Not really sure why. But that horrible experience seem to have gone with lighting for me. Not to mention that having to plug it on any side without even looking at it made things lot easier.
 
BvizioN said:
When I used the 30 pin one it was nightmare for me. I used to change them quite a lot because the rubber used to wear off and leave the wires totally exposed until it failed to charge the phone. Not really sure why. But that horrible experience seem to have gone with lighting for me. Not to mention that having to plug it on any side without even looking at it made things lot easier.
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My 30 pins would do that also but they still continued to work, always lasted the life of the phone. The Lightings don't exhibit any physical damage but the wires inside seem to short out, I'm guessing it's a insulator inside that breaks easy. Next time I'm buying a lighting cable I'm going to try to get it at best buy with a protection plan.
 
JAT said:
Conclusion:
Now 3rd parties can make themselves a headphone amp with direct digital connection instead of relying on the conversion to USB, which nobody seems to have tried. This should give them the ability to use power from the phone's battery, as others have mentioned. This is why it is called a spec "for headphones", as the DAC and whatever else can just be put into headphones themselves.
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Already exists:

http://audio.teac.com/product/ha-p50/

This new spec allows manufacturers to go straight to differentiation of their DAC and headphone driver circuits instead of the complexities of handshaking over Lightning and implementing a USB-Audio end point.
 
commodorepet said:
Already exists:

http://audio.teac.com/product/ha-p50/

This new spec allows manufacturers to go straight to differentiation of their DAC and headphone driver circuits instead of the complexities of handshaking over Lightning and implementing a USB-Audio end point.
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Interesting. Looks like it has to be with their app, though. Otherwise, it does call it a "USB digital input". These marketing pages really don't give the minute details for geeks. Do you have anything more detailed on how it works?
 
MrXiro said:
You responded to the wrong person... I only put a joke response (it's the title of a old song) to someone who I think was joking about video replacing music in the first place.
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I know that song is back from the olden days so yeah I caught the joke. I was just pointing out that it's a flawed argument and why it's a flawed argument.
 
Menel said:
Or orientation when plugging in that end of the cable.

Won't happen. They have to maintain the universal USB A charging cable/adapter for EU regulations.
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What's the EU doing about USB C?

What would be awesome is if USB C turned out to be Lightning. Or at least backwards compatible or something. I just heard about USB C and did a bit of googling. There are some mockups but nothing set about how it looks. Apple has tried in the past to set industry standards. Firewire, mini-DisplayPort, and Thunderbolt haven't really caught on. That 3.5" disk was pretty popular for a long time.

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gmcalpin said:
If not, there will be adapters.
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Yup, a sort of Y dongle that sticks out a 1/2" or so.

I have a feeling the headphone jack will still be there at least in the next 2 models (6 and 6S) and be gone by iPhone 7 or whatever it'll be called. This will give manufacturers enough time to get fully on board.
 
There is absolutely no need for an external DAC in the headphones.
The DACs in the iPhone/iPod are already very high quality, and there's nothing wrong with the 3.5mm jack.

It's possible that they want to replace the 3.5mm jack with a lightning connector because it's thinner, but that seems unlikely.


Here's a thought though: what if it's to enable noise cancelling headphones that are powered by the device?

I love my Bose QC20i, but I hate the separate battery/control module attached to the cable:

4ZWbasL.jpg


Use the phone to power it, perform the DSP, and automatically disable noise cancellation when the headphones are disconnected, or connected with nothing playing.

It is useful to have the option of enabling the noise cancellation with nothing connected to the headphones if you just want peace & quiet, but you could still have an option on the phone to do this.

However, there have been a number of times where I've put the headphones away and forgot to switch them off. So the next time I go to use them, the battery is dead.


If that could be built into the phone, it would absolutely be worth the proprietary lock-in.

Sony have something similar with the Xperia Z2, but I can see why Apple would prefer to use the Lightning connector for it.
 
Beta Particle said:
There is absolutely no need for an external DAC in the headphones.
The DACs in the iPhone/iPod are already very high quality, and there's nothing wrong with the 3.5mm jack.
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thats very debatable. The current crop of DAC's in the iphones haven't been rated by audio enthousiasts as very good.

But you are right that there is absolutely zero need for external DAC's. in this case, It's apple being cheap and instead of upgrading their subquality parts, they are offloading it to an external source.

If Apple just changed and upgraded the internal DAC in the iPhone, they would have absolutely zero need to go this route.
 
LordVic said:
thats very debatable. The current crop of DAC's in the iphones haven't been rated by audio enthousiasts as very good.

But you are right that there is absolutely zero need for external DAC's. in this case, It's apple being cheap and instead of upgrading their subquality parts, they are offloading it to an external source.

If Apple just changed and upgraded the internal DAC in the iPhone, they would have absolutely zero need to go this route.
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Perhaps you should actually look at data rather than going by the assumption that they aren't any good.
The latest iPods and iPhones have a perfectly flat frequency response from 20-20k, and will output 1V RMS.
The iPhone 5S has about 2.2 ohms output impedance, and the iPod touch is even lower at 1.4 ohms.

Using the general rule where you want the damping factor to be at least 8, that means you can drive 18 ohm or 11 ohm headphones from these devices.

They will drive just about any headphone or IEM with ease, and actually better than many of the so-called "audiophile" portable players like Astell&Kern.

People just assume that because they are so popular, and mass-produced devices that they can't possibly sound any good, which is completely wrong.
 
Constable Odo said:
I suppose the pundits are going to say this isn't any sort of innovation, as they always do. I don't know if it's all that significant but it does seem like something that most consumer tech companies don't offer. The pundits shouldn't easily be able to just shrug this off like everything else Apple does.
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Unless you're an Apple engineer, why are BEAMING with pride for them? How is their accomplishment YOURs?

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1Zach1 said:
Except no where has it been confirmed that Apple will abandon the 3.5mm jack.
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Except knowing Apple that's exactly what they will do and considering the pull they have, there will be 100s of MFi headphones available within 12-months of release and it won't be a REAL problem. By 2016, everyone else will be scrambling to copy it.
 
I can imagine that Apple would place two lightning adapters in whichever iPhone this is introduced in. One at the top, one at the bottom. So you could charge and listen at the same time.

To all the people in this thread bashing Beat$ and countering by saying you own Bo$e....I have news for you.....
 
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