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Comment by cm2187 | Hacker News Reader

I don't understand the point about saving space by eliminating the DAC. At the end of the day, to produce sound, we need a DAC. So there will have to be a DAC somewhere. How is creating bigger dongles "saving space". The users have to carry bigger accessories.

It's like Intel's Skull Canyon mini-PC. They miniaturised the PC but the power supply is now nearly as big as the PC. What's the point of shipping a mini-PC with a humongous power supply?

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At least in term of Apple, it makes a bit more sense when you consider that apple owns Beats, the best selling Bluetooth headphones in the world, and also that they'll get paid a flat fee for each lightning compatible set of headphones made.

It's about the courage to make lots of money!

Yeah, isn't that what all those personal development gurus were telling us for years? You need courage to be rich!

The courage to lock users in. Apple has that in spades.

Not to mention that you still need DACs to drive the two/three onboard speakers.

Good point!

Although that's technically true, the DAC and the transducer do not necessarily need to be discrete components. There's some super interesting research on digital sound reproduction: https://www.ece.cmu.edu/~mems/pubs/pdfs/ieee/mems/0071_diamo... and I'm aware of at least one company that is (apparently) in fairly late stages of commercialisation (http://www.audiopixels.com.au).

In the mini-PC case I can see it as a positive thing, where you can hide the power supply somewhere and just have the smallish PC box visible. So, to me, the mini PC box makes sense even if it comes with a large power supply.

In the case of the DAC I'm not sure if the end-user will really have any benefit.

I think all the supposed benefits are just a distraction away from the main reason behind this change: it's the corporations trying to slowly close off the analogue hole by moving the more difficult-to-work-with digital signal closer to the user-device boundary, giving them more control over content distribution --- if they could, some of these people would add DRM to your ears and brain or even eliminate the DAC and replace it with a direct neural interface --- all under their control.

If you were using Bluetooth audio, or some other source that accepts a digital feed, previously you'd be carrying around two sets of DACs, one of which would be doing nothing but taking up space. Attaching an analog audio cable to a device already dramatically increase it's size; stashing a DAC and ADC in there doesn't make it much bigger. Moving the DAC outside of the device also means you get less analog interference from other noisy stuff inside your device, like radios.

The mini PC example isn't quite the same; you always need a power source to actually use the thing. That being said, I could imagine the PS being much smaller if you had access to 12V direct current, like in a car. So it's potentially nice to not require NUC people to carry an internal AC->DC when they don't need it.

but you need a DAC for the internal speakers anyway.

Most phones use extremely mediocre DACs. This might actually be better than being stuck with the DAC in your phone.

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