USB-C and Lightning headphones aren't great news for everyone
engadget.com
engadget.com
But here's the thing. 3.5mm jacks are analogue, and they're everywhere. They're out dated by modern standards, but overall they just work. If the industry actually cares about thickness, they'll put a 2.5mm jack on the phone, or cut the 3.5mm jack in half (this was talked about a few years ago, but I haven't seen any production phones implementing this).
As the article points out, the phone still needs a DAC and an amplifier to, you know, be a phone. Phones will typically have an earpiece speaker and a loud speaker, so you still need a DAC and amp to power those.
So, apart from reducing the port count (cheaper BOM, yay!) and making phones thinner, what is this really about?
It's about DRM.
As soon as headphones are digital, manufacturers can start locking down headphones.
Oh, you want HiFi audio? Well, the iPhone 9AB is only HiFi certified with Beatz(TM) headphones, so those fancy Bose headphones you bought for $500 last year, yeah, those are gonna give you ear-bud quality music.
I don't know if the lightning connectors are any better, but just by the fact that they're shorter, i'd hope they'd get removed from the socket, or just have the plug break, instead of the socket.
You'll have to produce data to back that up.
As to your data: Basic physics. Any plug in a socket is a lever. Its length determines to how much force any force impacting the part outside the device is translated to, at the end of the lever; inside the device.
USB-C plugs are shorter than 3.5mm plugs.
Thus, they're less likely to wreck your phone, and more likely to wreck themselves.
> Thus, they're less likely to wreck your phone, and more likely to wreck themselves
It's not about the force, since that goes both ways (because Newton's third law). It's about how deep damage may happen or how sooner will a jack give in before the socket does. 3.5mm plugs usually have more strength than lightning plugs (but not more than the USB-C plugs I've seen), so it is understandable if lightning plugs destroy themselves before dealing much damage to the socket.
But a shorter lever (of considerable strength to not break first) will apply the same amount of force over a smaller area than a longer lever. Less area => more pressure => more damage to socket.
This is exactly why I can (and have done so for the last three years, same phone) pick my phone up with the earphones, but not with the end of its microUSB cable: the shorter socket cannot handle the weight of the phone.
But there are situations in which I do use the 3.5mm jack, e.g. in my car.
In any case, it seems to me that co-locating the audio port with the USB port has another potential downside. If you destroy the 3.5mm headphone port you can still use and charge the phone (and use bluetooth headphones, for example). But if you destroy the USB port because your headphone cable torques in badly you have maybe 15 hours of life left in your phone before it's completely useless.
I switched to bluetooth and lived with a muddier sound.
All this pain due to DRM.
DVD and HDMI companies (mostly Hollywood, but also directtv and some other subscription tv companies) pressured MS to get rid of all loopholes in Windows that let people ignore DRM.
Microsoft complied, removed HAL for audio, killing 3D sound as side effect, and created WDDM with draconian rules to get certified, among them that drivers weren't allowed to setup custom resolutions that weren't in EDID, requiring hacks (like CRU) to be able to use monitors to full capacity, effectively being the final strike against analog video, as most people could not figure how to use their 2560x1600 @80hz screens (on ms forums complaints are usually that they can't go beyond 1280x1024 @75hz even when they were sure it was 85hz in windows xp)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16829102...
$35 new.
But my understanding is that the ASUS Xonar is getting better reviws recently anyway. And that's $5 cheaper. Neither of these are "Audiophile grade" (which gets into $100+), but that's because Audiophiles demand higher-quality components.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16829132...
Using a search engine that search all online stores, for "sound blaster" 3 models are available:
Audigy SE PCI (not PCI-e) for 100 USD Zx for 350 USD. ZxR 550 USD.
Xonar in that search engine, or any other, return 0 results.
Looking into "sound card" categories, there are lots of PCI sound cards, a incredible amount of USB "sound cards", and a couple different PCI-e 25 USD generic sound cards (with VIA, Realtek, etc... chips).
Also from what I've heard Xonar doesn't do OpenAL correctly anymore, because it relied on some Sensaura code in their drivers, and Creative in their typical jerk behaviour bought Sensaura and refused to renew the license.
On the other hand, USB DACs are a preferred choice by many audiophiles (many prefer PCIe of course... but a good chunk prefer USB). I wouldn't discount any of the USB DACs, although I'm personally not familiar with that market. I'd say just get a USB one, possibly one that has been verified by that insane audiophile community.
I'm an audio professional - from consumer to prosumer to pro, the best soundcards these days use USB (well, except for the Avid stuff).
I don't think this has anything to do with DRM. I think it has to do with the logic of building one device that works on everyone's computer and doesn't need drivers.
Historically, PCI / PCIe was required because it was the only way to move enough audio data at low latency back and forth to the computer. Historically what has plagued the manufacturers of dedicated devices is the difficulty of finding good driver developers and then getting drivers certified. I watched companies actually fail because they build a great audio device and couldn't get working drivers written for it once it was built (I'm thinking of Gadget Labs but I'm positive there was another one too).
Once USB became fast enough to do the job - and once USB Class drivers became a thing - the decision to build devices for USB (instead of for PCI which not all computers even have) became a no-brainer.
It is about processors on the card (that back then had about half of the amount of transistors that the PC main CPU had, so they could pack quite a punch in processing power) that could do realtime audio calculations.
I am not talking just about "effects" from the audio professional sense, I am talking about realtime creation of audio according to the scene geometry and stuff happening, for example A3D could calculate actual reflections, not just simulated reverb/echo.
If you want to see an example of this in real life: go near a window that has a barrier in front of it of some kind, in a relatively enclosed space.
Then wait for some noise to happen outside, in the direction opposite to the window.
Suppose you was facing "forward", the window (and the wall beyond it) is to your left.
Then an airplane passes by your right.
The naive way to do it (that is what most games today do without a soundcard to do it for them), is play sound from the right speaker (be it in a 5.1 or in the right speaker of a headphone), or to simulate it is "outside", play it muffled.
The correct way to do it, is play from the left, because it reflected on the wall, and came inside through the window. Vortex soundcards for example, made by Aureal, could calculate that (back then, only one reflection, so sequences of reflections that could go around corners didn't worked, but back then was 1996, this was already amazing, the Aureal+QSound sound card demo still impresses people to this day: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUDTlvagjJA )
Mind you, these can't be done with USB, the protocol has too high latency (even with USB 3.1, due to the handshakes needed), in fact evne PCIe has too high latency compared to PCI, and when the switch from PCI to PCIe happened, soundcard makers had to put a ARM chip on the PCIe cards to do some calculations that originally were supposed to be done by the PC main CPU, because the latency of PCIe was too high.
Also this doesn't add up:
> in fact evne PCIe has too high latency compared to PCI, and when the switch from PCI to PCIe happened, soundcard makers had to put a ARM chip on the PCIe cards to do some calculations that originally were supposed to be done by the PC main CPU, because the latency of PCIe was too high.
You say that the convolution was supposed to be performed by the host CPU, but had to be moved to the PCIe card due to latency. That doesn't add up. If the convolution can be calculated in realtime by the CPU, then the only data that has to travel to the soundcard is the 16/44 (or 2496) audio which is easily handled by PCI, PCIe, USB, etc. with negligible latency.
If a processor had to be introduced, it was to perform convolutions because the host CPU couldn't keep up.
>As soon as headphones are digital, manufacturers can start locking down headphones.
The article is unclear, but the USB3.1 spec does specifically support analog audio over USB-C explicitly for compatibility with 3.5mm audio headsets. So if Motorola don't support this mode then you may have a point. But right now it's unclear exactly what this phone supports
> they'll put a 2.5mm jack on the phone, or cut the 3.5mm jack in half
If I need a passive adapter for my existing headsets, I'd rather get a USB-C port which supports analog audio. Atleast then my adapters would be standardized.
Significantly more expensive headphones for at least the next several years and possibly longer. If I were a headphone manufacturer I would be thrilled by this development. As a headphone buyer, less so.
In most cases we will give up being able to charge and listen at the same time, unless willing to add an additional external dongle. Meanwhile manufacturers will continue their, uh, curious belief that cell phone battery capacities are anywhere near good enough.
The question then only becomes, is the phone's DAC connected to the USB-C connector, or did the manufacturer omit it to save a few traces in the board? Did anyone test that Moto-Z with a passive USB-C to 3.5mm socket adapter, to see what happens?
If there's no standard way to communicate that "yeah, the sideband pins are now analog audio out from the host", I don't think you can buld USB-compliant accessories that assume that.
This would mean that the adapter (and/or low-cost headphones, I guess) would still need to include a CPU that can speak USB to negotiate with the host about the sideband pins, would be my assumption. A bit like how max current (used to) work.
In that case, the article is wrong because the USB 3.1 spec already supports analog audio via the Audio Adapter Accessory Mode. Whether this phone supports this mode is unclear, but it's part of the existing spec explicitly to allow passive USB-C to 3.5mm adapters
Official spec: http://www.usb.org/developers/docs/
page 166 of the USB-C spec: http://www.those.ch/designtechnik/wp-content/uploads/2014/08...
The lack of a headphone jack is a complete and utter deal-breaker. I'm not carrying a dongle around so I can use my headphones. (A quality dongle will need to have some size and heft; see the Schiit Fulla. It can't even run off of Micro USB power alone as it stands, though it does work with some phones with some work.)
I guess we'll see in time whether the idea takes off.
I have USB-C on my laptop at work, and so far I'm pretty unimpressed with it. I'd much rather just have a second DisplayPort.
This sounds like a good reason for the change rather than an argument against it.
Audio performance is determined by the quality of the DAC, the amp, the speakers, and the enclosure. If the DAC and amp are part of the headphones, then all factors affecting audio performance are independent of the phone. You can decide what level of audio performance you want and then buy headphones that provide that performance.
Also, many people use the same set of headphones with multiple devices. When I'm buying devices I consider how they fit in with my other devices. If I have a higher end tablet I might buy a lower end phone because many of the things I would have done on the phone had I only had a phone will be done on the tablet. Device makers tend to put the better DACs and amps in the higher end devices, and so under the current approach if I want the best audio on all my devices, all of them have to be higher end devices (and I have to get expensive headphones too).
That's a great point. And for people like me who don't use audio on their phones ( other than the occasional voice call ) it means I'm not paying for other people's use-cases.
Really?
Apple went all-USB, people complained. USB mice and keyboard became the standard.
Apple dropped the floppy drive, people complained. No floppy drive became the standard.
Apple dropped the CD drive, people complained. No CD drive (on laptops) became the standard.
Apple dropped full-size display connectors, people complained. This, too, became the standard on laptops.
> Apple dropped full-size display connectors, people complained. This, too, became the standard on laptops.
You need to step out of that Apple reality distortion field, not every laptop is an ultrabook.
Yes, some people do still have the older corporate IT bricks but even there the trend has clearly been to optimize for size and battery life. Display connectors are a bit of a confound since e.g. an HDMI connector is already a huge improvement over a VGA/DVI port but are clearly on a similar trajectory.
Not really. They had a few generations that just had a DisplayPort connector. Now Macbook Pros have HDMI plugs, which are full sized connectors these days.
LOL. Apple started with Apple Desktop Bus and then when that failed they tried unsuccessfully to force Firewire on their users and only caved and went with USB when literally the rest of the world switched to USB.
> Apple dropped the floppy drive, people complained. No floppy drive became the standard.
I don't think Apple was the first company to make a computer without a floppy.
> Apple dropped the CD drive, people complained. No CD drive (on laptops) became the standard.
I don't think Apple was the first company to drop the CD drive.
Moreover how is "lack of something" a standard?
> Apple dropped full-size display connectors, people complained. This, too, became the standard on laptops.
You live in a bubble. Did you know that lots / most of non-Apple products use HDMI outputs?
Apple has a long history of foisting "nonstandards" on its users (and then selling them God-awfully-expensive cables). Starting with ADB and SCSI, AppleTalk, Firewire, Thunderbolt, DisplayPort, etc. I've been an Apple customer since before the Mac existed, and I've had to put up with Apple's insistence of constantly opposing whatever connector trend was mainstream with the rest of the world.
You really need to learn about the subject before trying to “correct” other people:
* ADB had a 13 year run starting in 1986: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Desktop_Bus
* Firewire is a standard (IEEE 1394) and was intended as a replacement for high-performance SCSI interfaces, which is why it focused on transfer speed and scalability at the expense of cost — and was complete overkill for keyboards, mice, etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_1394#History_and_developm...
* Apple was the first major manufacturer to standardize on USB and helped drive its adoption – in fact, it wasn't until the second generation iMac before they even added a Firewire port: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMac_G3#iMac_.28tray-loading.2...
This is particularly amusing for anyone who was around in the 90s because back then there were more than a few people like you were decrying USB as Apple's attempt to get consumers to waste a ton of money replacing perfectly good hardware just to have a new connector with, as they felt was obvious, no significant benefit to the user.
As for the rest of your “points” do note that you're arguing against “Apple was first” claims which were never made. Each of the actual statements made are simply factual — every time Apple dropped a feature, people complained. They got over it and most of the market turned out not to care but that doesn't mean that there weren't opinion pieces, angry rants, etc.
But that's just it: I was around in the 1990s and I owned Macs and PCs throughout that period.
ADB had a 13-year run, sure, but it wasn't a "standard" for any device except a Mac. PCs used PS/2 connectors.
Firewire is a standard, but Apple was the only company really pushing it.
You're right - and I'm dead wrong - about Apple pushing USB.
> it wasn't until the second generation iMac before they even added a Firewire port
I thought Firewire was a common option on G3s in the late 1990s? May be misremembering.
> was intended as a replacement for high-performance SCSI interfaces
Thanks for bringing that up. Yes at the time SCSI interfaces were more high-performance than IDE (and allowed more devices) but only at the expense of the more common emergent standard of IDE / EIDE.
You do raise some good points however, and you're also right that of course Firewire wasn't a replacement for ADB, I'm not really sure why I said that :(
The ability to install any OS from a USB (as well as USB capacity improvements), streamable music and Steam game libraries as well as overall penetration of broadband simply made including an optical drive pointless from a data density standpoint, especially on laptops, where space is at a premium.
The exact case goes for the floppy.
Check again. "The USB Type-C Specification 1.0 was published by the USB Implementers Forum and was finalized in August 2014." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_Type-C)
Cellphone thinness reached the "good enough" stage a very long time ago. Then all making them thinner did was start to make compromises for that thinness. For one example, while components and software continue to get more and more power efficient, they're removing more raw battery capacity within the phone so they can shave 1mm.
No 3.5mm is a deal breaker for me. I don't want to have to remember to charge my headphones, or add extra weight to my IEMs, plus now I cannot charge and listen at the same time (or use the port for anything else).
All this move will result in is more people sitting on public transport blasting audio through the front speakers because their headphones died or they cannot afford $100 IEMs or $150 headphones. I think it will be extremely telling if the iPhone continues to ship with free IEMs, if not then that is proof enough that even Apple cannot make the economics work.
Overall this is a horrible step backwards.
100% agree. Instead of my phone being 1.5mm thicker, I'm carrying around a huge silicon case with a battery and a bunch of circuitry included.
Although I'm sure that's all based on studies that 85% of users don't need more battery life on 90% of the days out of the year, and 96% of users when confronted with a prototype phone that was 0.5mm thicker replied "oooh I would buy this". The tyranny of the market.
That said...
> No 3.5mm is a deal breaker for me
I switched to using bluetooth headphones in 2006 (was that really a decade ago?), so the disappearance of the 3.5mm jack in particular doesn't affect me at all.
I do hope they put a lightning connector on both ends. That way we're not losing a port but at least trading it for something which is arguably better. I frequently could use a top-side power port, e.g when the phone is sitting in a cup-holder showing GPS but needs a charge, and the app won't rotate 180'.
For backward compatibility, could the lightning port drive an analog output that would just require an analog adaptor to allow connecting existing headphones?
Love it so much that when the tieclip-style clip broke, I ordered a new clip off eBay instead (Sony has a couple of successors to it, but I'll pass until this one completely dies on me).
I think this is a more interesting solution than changing physical connectors.
I'm shocked at how good the sound quality is on my Sennheiser Momentum 2.0 Bluetooth headphones. If anyone had told me that I could get that kind of dynamic range and nuance in the audio over Bluetooth, I wouldn't have believed him. And that's with Bluetooth 4.x.