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Some people probably have more money than sense. Why on earth would anybody buy these that can’t be used on any non apple device? Such a sensible pick from the plenty of options out there that these will be a massive sales hit right?

Given the price of Apple products an iPhone or iPod may be the ONLY thing the have to listen to music. :)
 
What about a normal connector also supporting optical?

Maybe such short cables could be made flexible enough?


The number of people using an optical connection to their receiver is too small to justify the huge cost of R and D to squeeze that into the iPhone.
 
Design is a rip off from Grados headphones.

They are open headphones (at least they look like it, hard to see). Apart from that, I can't see much similarity. And since Grados are famous for being the absolute best headphones to cope with the very limited power of an iPod or iPhone, and this design makes this unnecessary, I doubt there is much similarity internally.

It sends the digital signal out to the headphones which do their own converting rather than using the iphones convertors, in theory it should be better quality.

Exactly. You would expect that a company building expensive headphones that are meant for people willing to pay lots of money for the best possible sound would use better parts than a company building things for everyone.

On top of that, you could build noise cancelling headphones that take their energy supply from the iPhone, not from a battery.

1) millions of people buy accessories that *only* work w/ their idevices all the time.

2) the idea of an adapter never crossed your mind, huh?

3) for enthusiasts interested in a DAC or amp, the weight of it is not their primary concern.

Just saying: With an adaptor, these headphones would probably "work" like any headphones, but you wouldn't get the improved sound quality. If anyone does sound quality benchmarks, it would be interested to see where these headphones are in quality connected to line out, and connected to Lightning.

Will there be another way to get digital signal out of the iPhone/iPad? Line out signal at least like there was with the old 30 pin connectors?

Of course. How do you think are people listening to music on their iPhones/iPads right now? There's a headphone jack, and that's unlikely to disappear soon, because that's what all the kids with $5 ear phones need.

Get ready boys and girls. Apple will ditch the audio jack soon and you will be forced to buy proprietary headphones, or use the adapter they will sell. It will be bulky, and expensive. You will hate it and succumb :/

Nonsense (see above).
 
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Some people probably have more money than sense. Why on earth would anybody buy these that can’t be used on any non apple device? Such a sensible pick from the plenty of options out there that these will be a massive sales hit right?
Mabey the 24 bit DAC's???
 
The number of people using an optical connection to their receiver is too small to justify the huge cost of R and D to squeeze that into the iPhone.

What does this have to do? Many people might want standard optical headphones.
 
Serious question -- what would be the benefit of using the lightning connection over the old fashioned audio jack? Is it better quality audio? I don't quite get the "why" from the article.

Thanks!

Then you did not read the article!
 
Get ready boys and girls. Apple will ditch the audio jack soon and you will be forced to buy proprietary headphones, or use the adapter they will sell. It will be bulky, and expensive. You will hate it and succumb :/

I don't have a problem with it personally. iTunes on my phone is the only time I use headphones unless it's critical listening on a non Apple device.
 
Some people probably have more money than sense. Why on earth would anybody buy these that can’t be used on any non apple device? Such a sensible pick from the plenty of options out there that these will be a massive sales hit right?

There are plenty of people who have nothing but Apple devices.

For example, most people have one smartphone and no iPod or similar at all, and if that smartphone is an iPhone, then all their devices are Apple devices.

Now consider that for the first time you have a music player where the sound quality isn't limited what Apple or some other company can produce for little money (because they don't want to increase the price for everyone to serve a minority), but only limited by what the headphone maker puts into their expensive headphones. For the small number of people interested, that would be an absolute hit. Probably beats much more expensive headphones that are plugged directly into an iPhone.
 
$320 for headphones I can only use with my iPhone (and iPod I guess if I get technical since I do still own one)... no thanks.

I have to believe there’s an option for using a regular 35mm jack as well or else these are going to be a major flop.

And how do you know there won't be an aux adapter so they can be used with any device? Unless you specifically heard they can't then your just complaining for the sake of complaining.
 
Lightning headphones/earphones might be something we have to get used to over the coming years.

The 3.5mm headphone jack is probably the single component limiting how thin future iPhones can be. The Lightning connector is even thinner so in a future iPhone revision (7 or 8), I would expect to see the removal of the 3.5mm jack with users being shifted towards Bluetooth audio or Lightning headphones.
 
Lightning headphones/earphones might be something we have to get used to over the coming years.

The 3.5mm headphone jack is probably the single component limiting how thin future iPhones can be. The Lightning connector is even thinner so in a future iPhone revision (7 or 8), I would expect to see the removal of the 3.5mm jack with users being shifted towards Bluetooth audio or Lightning headphones.

Maybe the audio industry can come up with a thinner standard low-bandwidth connector. Maybe not.
 
Apple Bluetooth headphones for AppleWatch

Funny how we made such a big deal about Apple shaking up the audio business. And nothing happened yesterday.

Correct me if I'm wrong here, but didn't Apple say that the AppleWatch will be able to store music to listen to? I didn't see a headphone jack, so that seems to say that bluetooth headphones will be a necessity to use the music feature of the AppleWatch.

Will October see an iPod/iPad/Beats event where Apple launches their first Bluetooth headphones?
 
Well, if the music industry can convince people they need 24-bit/192khz audio, I suppose they can convince them that they need lightning connector headphones.
 
Serious question -- what would be the benefit of using the lightning connection over the old fashioned audio jack? Is it better quality audio? I don't quite get the "why" from the article.

Thanks!

It sucks the life out of your battery faster so they can sell you a battery pack

/s
 
Optical headphones? What are you talking about?

That I would be interested in buying headphones with an optical interface, but not with a Lightning interface.

Although only noise-cancelling, so that it is worth that they require a battery to work.
 
Exactly. You would expect that a company building expensive headphones that are meant for people willing to pay lots of money for the best possible sound would use better parts than a company building things for everyone.
Except, Phillips.
 
I can't imagine the lightning connector will be able to withstand nearly as much abuse as the normal headphone plug. That's really what's keeping me from believing lightning headphones will be anything but a niche market.

You know, and the whole "I will only be able to use this on Apple devices bit. Which kind of reminds me of the proprietary headphone jacks that came on some phones, some only having 1 earbud for a reason I've never quite understood.
 
Will there be another way to get digital signal out of the iPhone/iPad? Line out signal at least like there was with the old 30 pin connectors?
There already is. Not many products have made use of it, but it certainly is possible for companies to make products that use the digital Lightning interface. For instance, Apple's own Lightning-30pin adapter contains a DAC inside it. They even tweaked the Lightning spec a couple months ago to make some part of it easier or something. (didn't bother to look up, there's an article here)

Not to mention Airplay is obviously digital output.
 
This makes sense for super high-end headphones, but Apple had better not remove the analog audio output. We regular people just need that for our $20 headphones.
 
No thanks, I"ll stick with my Audio technica M50x :cool:
Half the price, and prob better sounding and I can use them with any device I want.
 
Maybe the audio industry can come up with a thinner standard low-bandwidth connector. Maybe not.

You mean like the 2.5mm audio jack I was using, and was the standard from the 1980s onward until Apple stuck a 3.5mm on the iPod?
 
You mean like the 2.5mm audio jack I was using, and was the standard from the 1980s onward until Apple stuck a 3.5mm on the iPod?
Standard for what? Phones only, afaik. The original standard for headphones was the 1/4" jack, which is still around in many areas. And media players (like Walkman, radios, etc) have used 3.5mm since well before the 80s.
 
Funny how we made such a big deal about Apple shaking up the audio business. And nothing happened yesterday.

U2 is giving away their album for free. this is actually much bigger than you think. beginning of a new trend

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I can't tell you the last time I plugged in headphones to a non ios device. I have a favorite set of headphones and I'd gladly get a lightening version if there were one.

e

i would agree with you, but i just remembered i also plug mine into my mac mini while watching movies
 
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