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Best argument against "headphone jacks are old tech!"

If you wait until something is obsolete to remove it you waited to long.

Apple is a company that seems to take the leaps earlier than some on certain tech. They aren't going to wait around until no one is using a jack anymore and then remove it. They are going to do it and at this point they know that they will be helping push the market ahead. Headphone companies aren't going to want to miss out on sales to iPhone customers, they are going to be more motivated now to develop wireless or lightning enabled models.
 
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UAV said:
no it does not provide the same quality of sound it's actually a bit less than the old jack/ kinda like replacing the round wheels of your car with square ones.
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That doesn't seem like a good comparison at all!

Why should it be worse. The lightning connector will be outputting a digital signal to the EarPods, which will then convert that to analogue. It's the same process that used to happen inside the phone, but it's happening outside.

Unless they're using a lower quality DAC in the earpods than they used to use inside the phone, then I see no reason why the quality should be worse. And if they are using a lower quality DAC in the EarPods, then thats not really the fault of the lightning connector, it's the fault of the EarPods.

Disclaimer: this is what I believe to be happening, and is all IMHO as a someone who is NOT an electrical engineer.
 
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joeblow7777 said:
I can't say whether he has an agenda or not, but is anything that he's saying wrong or misleading? My understanding of what he says is that the signal exits the via the lightning port as digital, and the adaptor/dongle converts it to analogue, which is previously what was done internally in the headphone jack. His explanation seemed pretty clear to me, unless I'm missing something.
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He specifically says 4 signals (TRRS) are passed through Lightning, and then some "bridge" it has to go through in the adapter -- that makes no sense whatsoever. He also says there's a ground so that you don't "electrocute" yourself with your headphones. None of this makes any sense, and I'm pretty sure it's impossible to be electrocuted by a pair of headphones.
 
Spankey said:
To begin, I will say this. The headphone jack is not "old tech". The phono jack is.

Apple has moved from the phono to the more versatile lightning port. Allowing a digital audio pass through in the future will only improve sound quality with headphones of better DACs than the phone. In the meantime, Apple is providing the adapter free of charge which can be left on your headphones of choice and never be removed.

The next argument comes with listening to music while charging the phone. The question needs to be asked. Who charges the phone while on the go..as in being mobile..while walking. Probably no one. In the few times your phone is near dead and you have to charge and listened to wireless headphones, but the Apple dock. It's small and can easily be placed on a nightstand, desk, end table, or wherever you are charging.

Wireless. Bluetooth audio quality, in my listening experience, is better than listening to lossy audio through a wired connection. Over the ear headphones are offering charge times of 20-40 hours with noise cancellation. Smaller ears can offer around 8 hours. Still plenty of listening time. Once freed from a wired headphone I don't see how many will go back unless doing critical listening. My critical listening is not done with lossy files on my phone.

So the bottom line is no one is really losing anything except being able to listen while at the same time charging directly to the phone without a dock. So what.

There is one issue Apple has not addressed. How to charge lightning headphones while charging. I'm sure a next gen dock will address this.
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A couple of 'holes' in your argument.

I listen to headphones while charging the phone quite often and this is both at work and at home. I doubt that I'm the only one.

Audio quality is dependent on the DAC used. You still have to convert the signal to analog to 'hear'.
 
bufffilm said:
I listen to headphones while charging the phone quite often and this is both at work and at home.
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Right. At work and at home but once you are plugged in you are not walking around. So buy a dock and sit down and listen to music while you charge.

Yes on the DAC as well. You have the potential for better DACs in more premium headphones than you do on the phone. I have never been really impressed by the DACs on the phone. For example, my car head unit can convert AAC from a USB and play it directly. The audio sounds almost lossless when compared to the same songs played through the phone.
 
Spankey said:
Right. At work and at home but once you are plugged in you are not walking around. So buy a dock and sit down and listen to music while you charge.
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I detest docks.

And I have my phone in a case which makes using docks a problem. Lastly, docks aren't free and take up space.

For those reasons (and a few more I didn't mention), your proposal is bad.

On the DAC that Apple provides: I'm not saying it is particularly good or bad. I feel it gets the job done.

People that want better quality sound can choose something else. But the 3.5mm jack doesn't have to go away for that to happen. There are plenty of third-party options out there now.
 
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bufffilm said:
I detest docks.

And I have my phone in a case which makes using docks a problem. Lastly, docks aren't free and take up space.

For those reasons (and a few more I didn't mention), your proposal is bad.
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Other than detesting docks, have you been in the store and seen the new docks. All the phones are on them. They are tiny. Can't help you with the cost but that is the option if you have to charge and listen at the same time. Not an issue if you have wireless headphones.
 
Mac 128 said:
He specifically says 4 signals (TRRS) are passed through Lightning, and then some "bridge" it has to go through in the adapter -- that makes no sense whatsoever. He also says there's a ground so that you don't "electrocute" yourself with your headphones. None of this makes any sense, and I'm pretty sure it's impossible to be electrocuted by a pair of headphones.
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Like any electronic device, there is electricity running through them. A ground wire is pretty normal. I guess in this case it takes excess charge back to the phone, and complete the electrical circuit? I'm not sure. Not my area of expertise, but this is the same thing that the third prong on 3 prong plugs is for. In any case, that has nothing to do with the audio, he was just explaining all the components in the wire.

As I said, with the signals he's talking about them being digital coming out of the lightning port and then converted to analogue as it goes through the adapter.
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ventmore said:
From the few videos I've seen, it would seem that Apple is (understandably) being conservative with the water resistance rating of the iPhone 7.
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The rating is determined by independent testing, isn't it? Apple doesn't just decide what level of water resistance it's rated for.
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penajmz said:
Yet it survives in deeper water than other higher rated phones.
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Says who? I'm not disagreeing, I would really like to know who tested this and how.
 
joeblow7777 said:
Like any electronic device, there is electricity running through them. A ground wire is pretty normal. I guess in this case it takes excess charge back to the phone, and complete the electrical circuit? I'm not sure. Not my area of expertise, but this is the same thing that the third prong on 3 prong plugs is for. In any case, that has nothing to do with the audio, he was just explaining all the components in the wire.

As I said, with the signals he's talking about them being digital coming out of the lightning port and then converted to analogue as it goes through the adapter.
[doublepost=1474220436][/doublepost]

The rating is determined by independent testing, isn't it? Apple doesn't just decide what level of water resistance it's rated for.
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Then yes he's factually incorrect, which means the rest of his pseudo intellectual rant likely is too.
 
joeblow7777 said:
Like any electronic device, there is electricity running through them. A ground wire is pretty normal. I guess in this case it takes excess charge back to the phone, and complete the electrical circuit? I'm not sure. Not my area of expertise, but this is the same thing that the third prong on 3 prong plugs is for. In any case, that has nothing to do with the audio, he was just explaining all the components in the wire.

As I said, with the signals he's talking about them being digital coming out of the lightning port and then converted to analogue as it goes through the adapter.
[doublepost=1474220436][/doublepost]

The rating is determined by independent testing, isn't it? Apple doesn't just decide what level of water resistance it's rated for.
[doublepost=1474220502][/doublepost]

Says who? I'm not disagreeing, I would really like to know who tested this and how.
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shunting123 said:
People have likened this to Apple's removal of the CD-ROM on the MacBook Pro. These are two totally different things. At the time Apple made that decision, most consumers found little use for these drives -- removing them had almost zero downside, on top of allowing Apple to make thinner and lighter devices. This headphone-jack removal should have come next year at the earliest.
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You realize Bluetooth headphones are currently outselling corded ones by a very wide margin rights.
 
Mac 128 said:
Then yes he's factually incorrect, which means the rest of his pseudo intellectual rant likely is too.
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I didn't see it as a rant or pseudo intellectual. I posted this because in all the months that people have been arguing about this, this is the simplest and most straightforward explanation of the difference between lightning audio and traditional headphone jack audio that I've encountered so far. I didn't even know what DAC stood for before watching this! :D
 
joeblow7777 said:
I know, I'm beating a dead horse, the headphone jack is gone and people will get over it.

But I could never understand the argument of people saying that its removal is "progress" because it's old technology and should therefore be abandoned. I would always reply that the wheel is old tech too! Why does that matter if it still does what it was made for better than anything else? What I lacked, not being an audiophile at all, was a technical explanation.

This video from "Pocketnow" explains in layman's terms why the old audio jack is still not obsolete. Say that Apple got rid of the jack to free up internal space, fine, but don't say that it had to go because it's old or outdated tech.

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If you want to use headphone jack wired headphones, can't you use the included adapter?
 
Except now I have to carry two sets of headphones in my work bag. Does my Macbook Air have a lightning port? No.

Last week and for the last FOREVER I could use one set of headphones everywhere. That is no longer the case.
 
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rawlus said:
You realize Bluetooth headphones are currently outselling corded ones by a very wide margin rights.
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This is factually incorrect. Wireless headphones have for the first time earned slightly more profit than wired ones, but wired headphones still outsell wireless ones by a substantial margin.
 
joeblow7777 said:
I scanned though the video. Very interesting, but it's not really a scientific test, especially considering that he tested just one unit of each. You can't draw conclusions with a sample size of 1.
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Yes because all of us will go into a lab and try to drown our phones.
 
Mac 128 said:
You are confusing terms
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You're absolutely correct, my mistake. But my point stands: Apple showed a cutaway of the innards of the AirPods during the introduction event. Now while that might not be a perfect teardown it's still more than enough to understand what's inside of 'em. At 1 hour 28 minutes and 10 seconds into the video (not sure if the link will start at the time code, if not then you can skip ahead to that point manually):


Mac 128 said:
We have not seen inside of the EarPods yet.
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Now I have to wonder if you're confusing the terms as well since the EarPods - while having the Lightning connector on them this time instead of the traditional 1/8" inch (that's 3.5mm to non-Americans) - are the same internally as the circuitry is inside the Lightning connector itself.
 
rawlus said:
You realize Bluetooth headphones are currently outselling corded ones by a very wide margin rights.
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That probably has something to do with the fact that wired headphones come with most devices but bluetooth ones always have to be bought separately. I have never needed to actually buy a set of wired earbuds because I have a set from every smartphone and iPod I have ever owned.
 
adammull said:
Except now I have to carry two sets of headphones in my work bag. Does my Macbook Air have a lightning port? No.

Last week and for the last FOREVER I could use one set of headphones everywhere. That is no longer the case.
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You are correct, and that's why I've been saying Apple totally botched the removal of the headphone jack. Unless a customer only uses their Lightning EarPods with their iPhone 7, and newer iOS devices that run iOS 10, then the Lightning headphones just become a burden. Instead it's much more convenient to use the included adapter with the old 3.5mm EarPods, so that they will be compatible with everything they own. The Lightning EarPods are a total non-starter for most. The lack of a 3.5mm adapter or even a USB-C adapter is just confusing and stupid.
 
joeblow7777 said:
That probably has something to do with the fact that wired headphones come with most devices but bluetooth ones always have to be bought separately. I have never needed to actually buy a set of wired earbuds because I have a set from every smartphone and iPod I have ever owned.
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Or it's because people like the convenience of wireless and are realizing that the sound quality trade off is a lot lower than it used to be.
 
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