Hacker News Reader

Comment by drcongo | Hacker News Reader

I use my iPad for making music, the latency on AirPods or any other BT headphones makes them a non-starter. It makes me actually angry that they removed the jack from the iPad "pro", killing one of the very few actual pro uses for an iPad.

View on HN

For some numbers:

First gen AirPods Pro have around 130ms latency. Headphone jack has around 50ms. [1]

I can't find any measurements for second gen AirPods Pro.

1. https://www.hardwarezone.com.sg/tech-news-airpods-pro-latenc...

Try playing in time with 130ms latency.

I’m not knowledgeable on hardware/music, would an usb-c to jack converter decrease quality/increase latency? I know that it is still a bad option as you may want to charge it at the same time.. Maybe those usb-c dongles used primarily in macs? They often have jack as well, would that not be a good replacement?

It’s a replacement, but not a good one. If you want good sound quality and the ability to charge at the same time then it’s quite a bulky dongle. The audio quality varies massively too, so if you mix / master on one and then it breaks, you have to replace it with the exact same one otherwise your next mix / master isn’t going to match the last one. And if they’ve stopped making that one, you’re screwed. All of these are problems Apple have created for pro users of the iPad Pro by removing the jack.

Pro users use audio interfaces. The headphone jack is useful for quick improvised sketching or listening but Apple's official dongle will be fine in those situations as well. It's actually a pretty well made DAC for its size: https://www.kenrockwell.com/apple/lightning-adapter-audio-qu...

For any serious work you'll probably be around a decent audio interface anyway.

I've got several high end audio interfaces, but they're not much use on a plane or a train.

Attach the adapter to your headphones. Done.

Yes, it's slightly more inconvenient but I wouldn't dismiss the whole product due to a missing port few people (including me) use these days.

It is attached to my studio cans, but that doesn't solve any of the problems I outlined above about varied audio quality between different adapters etc.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com