> then use another type of connector for headphones.
USB-C is a nice connector, and for digital headsets it is pretty nice, but it has some disadvantages (and advantages!) compared to standard headphone jack:
1. Portable devices tend to only have 1, so no listening to music while charging. Common in car scenarios, not all cars have BT audio, and BT audio implementations in cars can vary in quality by large factors.
2. Sound degradation over BT is a problem. Recompressing an already compressed file (e.g. MP3) is going to result in a loss of quality. Since a lot of music is streamed at a bitrate that is "just above noticeable loss", further compression will result in a sound quality decrease.
3. It moves the DAC to outside the phone. This is mostly a good thing, assuming the dongle uses a good DAC, and eventually we'll see third party high quality USB-C DACs (as are already present on desktops for traditional USB)
4. Pure USB-C headphones require more engineering, and they require a type of engineering that headphone companies are not traditionally familiar with. Headphone companies are experts in making high quality analog sound systems, shoehorning the need for digital expertise is needless. (Though more and more headphone companies already have a digital team, it does raise the bar for new entrants.)
5. The AUX jack is pretty damn good. Replacing it with a digital jack isn't really needed. Even with a huge industry push, it'll be many many years before USB-C is everywhere, and if you count the professional markets, it will likely be decades, if ever. (This isn't helped by Apple pushing a competing standard!) Digital means software, which means things can and will go wrong. With an analog plug the quality of the signal is the quality of the physical connection and the wiring going between them, and as a species we have almost over a century of knowledge about analog signals. With digital, ideally quality never degrades, but with firmware/software bugs it can degrade, and to get optimal quality it'll require every device in a chain not have any bugs related to sound quality.
> All the new connectors are for digital connections.
USB-C headphones might disagree with you, as the other comment has pointed out (USB-C supports analog audio on data pins in order to create the one-connector-to-rule-them-all).
That's not really a better alternative, now is it.
Now your headphones must come with all the electronics required for USB-C and their own seperate DACs. This means they're going to be slightly more expensive without any actual improvement over your 3.5mm headphones. Not to mention all of those threats of DRM and whatnot looming around. So with that in mind, why would I possibly want to make the move to USB-C?
I'm aware, but it's just one more thing to carry, keep track of, break, lose, etc.
Except in the case of USB-C headphones, but I like to be able to use my headphones with _any_ device, and not just a USB-C device. Plus, it turns out that headphones like my bluetooth Sony...XM3 or whatever...they _have_ USB-C for charging, but you can't actually use that interface for anything but charging. In fact, they don't even support BT while plugged in.
Plus, given I like to use analog headphones for my PC and home receiver, it's frustrating the way that the ecosystem has been bifurcated according to all these lines. E.g. if the headphones I want to buy are USB-C only, now I need a USB-C -> analog adapter as well in order to plug them into my stereo.
> get an adapter, with the additional downside that you can no longer charge the phone while using those headphones.
Shouldn't such an adapter have a female USB-C connector and pass that through to the male one, with the headphone jack being branched off? Do those not exist, or are they prohibitively expensive? Did the Apple "dongle" mentioned in sibling comments do it that way? (Sure oughta, IMO.)
As described in the above PCWorld link, the problem is that the standard is open ended and the ecosystem didn't all agree on how to deal with analog vs digital audio signals and devices. Some USB-C headphones or adapters will be happy with whatever. Others will not.
Since some phones can output an analog audio signal over the USB-C connector (and ship dongles without a DAC), while others output digital only and rely on the dongle including its own DAC, the argument absolutely does not go the other way. Any lightning headphones or lighting to 3.5mm dongle will work on any phone with a lightning port.
EDIT: Here's a separate complaint - if you want to charge an iPhone while you have headphones plugged in, there are at least splitter/dongle accessories for that. USB-C Android phone? Good luck.
>Android Police reported that Google quietly pulled the listing for the one adapter it had in its online store without ever selling it. The product is also unavailable on the manufacturer’s website. According to Android Police, a few units did ship from Amazon, but the reviews were so bad that the product was quickly pulled.
> you now can't charge your phone and listen to music at the same time, unless you have some weird Y-splitter-type cable
Rather than have a splitter cable, couldn't you have an additional USB-C port on the headphones which could be used to power the smartphone indirectly?
If that's not possible I reckon some manufacturers will start putting small batteries in USB-C headphones.
If you don't want cheap, shitty USB-C headphones... don't get them? I really don't get your point.
3.5mm to USB-C adapters are tiny and can include a much higher quality DAC than most phones reasonably will. Into those, you can then plug any headphone your heart or ears desire.
Audiophiles are such a niche market all things considered, and on top of that they seem to prefer their own DACs and/or headphone pre-amplifiers anyway – why waste space and money for a headphone jack that most users wouldn't use, and the ones that do would augment with external dongles anyway?
And for users that just don't want to deal with charging and pairing Bluetooth headphones, cheap headphones and adapters do just fine as well.
To answer (3), there are a lot more uses for headphones than listening to music on one's phone. Switching to USB-C means asking all those device makers to switch from relatively simple analog hardware to a new connector with an established protocol, which means more (unnecessary) logic, which means more costs. I suspect it will be a long time before this stuff become ubiquitous for the low-end.
"So what happens if I want to charge my phone (e.g. from an external battery) and listen to headphones at the same time? Do I have to use some sort of ... dongle? That’s going to get silly."
What happens if you want to charge your new 12" macbook and you also need to use your cellular dongle ? They've shown total contempt for even this common, necessary use-case - why would they not show the same contempt for your use-case ?
"Admittedly, analog headphone jacks will go away at some point"
There is no reason to assume that. Only a childish contempt for "old things" and a desire to fix things that aren't broken would lead to that outcome.
My understanding is that many USB-C adapters limit voltage, which screws over good headphones. Also from experience of using a DAC via USB-C everyday for many years, they're really really unreliable.
3.5mm on the other hand just works and is (was? ) ubiquitous.
Another thing that is really obnoxious is how there is now an inconsistency with how it's implemented.
Some phones use a pass-through system so USB-C headphones connect directly to the phone's amplifier / DAC (digital-to-analog converter); other cables might contain a DAC / amp themselves, while the last small percentage just transfer a digital signal.
Phones with speakers already have a dedicated DAC and amp. The headphone jack was just a way to interface with the amplifier. Manufacturers turned a small size issue into a giant consistency problem that didn't need to exist.
> The 3.5 mm jack still delivers the absolute best sound quality compared to the other options available on a smart phone.
That's only true because the only headphones that exist for smartphones are headphone jack or Bluetooth.
You can build a USB-C or Lightning headset with much higher impedance and use a digital signal to a higher quality DAC than the one built into the phone.
The industry seems to have settled on USB-C dongles as the solution for wired headphones. They’re a little clunkier, but they do work pretty well, and you get options for the DAC.
Headphone jacks were a major wear item on older smartphones, and waterproofing them is very annoying as well, requiring a ton of adhesives. I had to take the back glass off my old Xperia Z2C three times over its life to replace the headphone jack, and the waterproofing was totally shot after doing so. At the end of the day, I honestly don’t mind the trade off, although I can see how it can be annoying for others.
USB-C is a nice connector, and for digital headsets it is pretty nice, but it has some disadvantages (and advantages!) compared to standard headphone jack:
1. Portable devices tend to only have 1, so no listening to music while charging. Common in car scenarios, not all cars have BT audio, and BT audio implementations in cars can vary in quality by large factors.
2. Sound degradation over BT is a problem. Recompressing an already compressed file (e.g. MP3) is going to result in a loss of quality. Since a lot of music is streamed at a bitrate that is "just above noticeable loss", further compression will result in a sound quality decrease.
3. It moves the DAC to outside the phone. This is mostly a good thing, assuming the dongle uses a good DAC, and eventually we'll see third party high quality USB-C DACs (as are already present on desktops for traditional USB)
4. Pure USB-C headphones require more engineering, and they require a type of engineering that headphone companies are not traditionally familiar with. Headphone companies are experts in making high quality analog sound systems, shoehorning the need for digital expertise is needless. (Though more and more headphone companies already have a digital team, it does raise the bar for new entrants.)
5. The AUX jack is pretty damn good. Replacing it with a digital jack isn't really needed. Even with a huge industry push, it'll be many many years before USB-C is everywhere, and if you count the professional markets, it will likely be decades, if ever. (This isn't helped by Apple pushing a competing standard!) Digital means software, which means things can and will go wrong. With an analog plug the quality of the signal is the quality of the physical connection and the wiring going between them, and as a species we have almost over a century of knowledge about analog signals. With digital, ideally quality never degrades, but with firmware/software bugs it can degrade, and to get optimal quality it'll require every device in a chain not have any bugs related to sound quality.
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