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Great points, and reminds me of how Apple treated those who invested heavily in Final Cut Pro 'server farms' (so to speak) for professional production, only to see FCPX and nearly pick up torches and pitchforks. Actively slicing away utility and, well, consideration for professionals at the expense of greater revenues from consumers seems to be ingrained in the Apple business model. I don't like it but I can see it with these kinds of decisions.

Although your points are completely valid for your demographic I think Apple's focus is on mass audience. Additionally, they have not yet announced the ipads and macbooks are divorcing with 3.5. So its possible you still have hope, just not on your iphone.

Either way I feel your pain and hate this decision.

> Although your points are completely valid for your demographic I think Apple's focus is on mass audience.

How many times you can ignore 1% of your audience until you have none?

It is being interesting to watch and discover.

>> "3) Removing the 3.5mm pretty much means Apple is exiting professional audio because it's now incompatible with 100% of everything."

They removed it from the phone, nothing else. In what scenario are you using an iPhone with custom IEM's in a professional audio setting?

I think Apple seriously underestimates its appeal towards creatives. I've been buying Apple products for 10 years because of their ease-of-use with creative software. As they slowly move away from PC's and professional media standards I see their market share diminishing.

They are heading down the path of lowest common denominator just like Microsoft in the early 2000's. I expect the same fate awaits them as someone else fills that role.

What have they specifically done that has made your creative work more difficult? I'm a creative using a MacBook Pro and it's just as good for me doing audio work as it was 5 years ago. They've also been doing a good job with Logic Pro, with some big updates of the last couple of years. Even if they removed the headphone input from their laptops (which I don't ever see happening) it's not going to effect creative professionals because they don't use it anyway.

  What have they specifically done that has made your creative work more difficult?

Final Cut Pro X is now unusable due to them engineering the UX for beginners (it's basically an iMovie Pro) and similar moves to cater to the lowest common denominator. After installing Little Snitch, I noticed my mac was calling home to apple servers for basically any action which slows processing/rendering.

> Anything over 2ms is not acceptable for live music. That's the difference between a band sounding "in-time" to "needs practice"

Obviously you want your in-ear sound to be as exact as possible, but a 2 ms difference will not make a band sound bad. I remember hearing 9 ms was the threshold for live music, but I can't find any references. If it truly is lower I would love to read some source material.

There are very few people in the world that would be capable of playing within a 2 ms tolerance (but maybe you're just holding you in-ear reference to a higher standard to allow for human error).

Edit: here's an interesting resource, not much data but they did find problems start between 10-20ms. http://blog.highfidelity.com/blog/2013/05/how-much-latency-c...

The problem is Bluetooth audio, from all sources, is far higher than 2ms latency. The best codecs seem to be (per sources like this -- http://stereos.about.com/od/glossary/fl/What-is-aptX.htm) 40ms or so. "Typical" Bluetooth audio seems to have a latency of 150ms-200ms.

Musicians can compensate to some degree of latency, but not when your audio is delayed by approx. an 1/8th note at 140bpm. (1/8th note at 140bpm = 214ms). Even 40ms isn't terribly tight.

So rule Bluetooth audio out for this.

The dongle is an option, of course, but it probably is not as robust as a soldered-in 3.5mm jack.

I'm sure in-ear monitoring with an iPhone is unfortunately too much of a niche application for Apple to care much, though...

+-2ms is with unpredictable jitter, you can go up to 6ms-8ms with predictable latency, anything over 10ms it gets difficult.

Source: personal experience in the field with various in-ear and stage monitor systems, and lots and tons of research over the years

So use the dongle?

Hello 2007. https://i.imgur.com/NqxYlb0.jpg

What is this a photo of? Looks like some sort of barrel jack to AC mains adapter?

That looks like a Sony Ericsson proprietary connector (called FastPort)[1] to 3.5mm audio jack to me.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FastPort

It's a custom edge connector to 3.5mm audio dongle.

The dongle: probably has a poor quality DAC, gets lost easily, and prevents the phone from being charged or tethered to a computer.

Does it actually have a DAC, or does it just provide a physical interface to one of the Lightning pins which gets connected to a DAC inside the phone?

I assumed it had a DAC, but can't find a source that says either way.

The dongle is a passive converter the lightning interface has a pinout for analog audio.

Do you have a source saying that the analog over lightning is being used here? Because the slide I posted in my other reply says it is "digital audio" over lightning, which I assume to be true for both lightning earpods and this adapter (though I very well could be wrong).

The size of it plus the spec has lanes for analog audio.

Wait for a tear down but it isn't a DAC.

Articles about the Lightning headphone spec from a couple of years ago suggest that it only includes digital audio. They even specify a DAC that should be used.

https://9to5mac.com/2014/06/03/apple-introduces-mfi-specs-fo...

Isn't it the exact same size as the lightning earpods though? The spec does has analog audio, but I've yet to see it used (by apple or a third party)

I have doubts that the EarPods are digital also it's not stated anywhere. Some of the lightning docks had some circuitry in them but no DACs. The lightning to 30pin converter works with older DAC-less audio setups/docks.

Overall my hunch is that it's not digital only yet.

>I have doubts that the EarPods are digital also it's not stated anywhere.

They specifically said in the announcement that the earpods are digital not analog: https://youtu.be/G6I-IKYEVMI?t=21045

Hmm not sure most of the "digital" stuff was not about the earpods but about the wireless ones AKA the "AirPods" The ones that come with the iPhone 7 in the box are the regular earpods we have now just with a lightning connector, there have also been a few videos going back to july about the 3.5mm connector some of them taken it apart it doesn't seem to have anything in it.

o.0 Did you click the link? It goes to right when he starts explaining Earpods switching to lightning, with "digital audio" written in the slide, and reiterating "digital audio" multiple times.

I imagine it doesn't have any DAC. The DAC is still inside the phone, just like on previous iphone, the dongle is just a physical adapter to the 3.5mm standard.

I had assumed it had a DAC since I haven't seen apple use lightning for analog audio yet. I could be wrong, but couldn't find any source for clarification (upon googling). This slide from yesterday seems to suggest lightning is being used for digital out: https://cdn0.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/ghvFaov2v5hQ-mZ8y-r6VM5oTWI...

Then the lightning dock.

Yeah, use the dongle unless you need to charge it at the same time.

Wait a month, or maybe even a week (manufacturers are pretty quick these days). There will be an adapter that lets you do both.

If there's one thing to be said about Apple products, it's that there's no shortage of doohickeys that connect to them.

Does the dongle add latency?

Unlikely; the audio had to be converted from digital to analog on the phone previously so now that's being moved to a dongle so it's still the same process (roughly). If it does add latency I would bet it's very unnoticeable (like sub milliseconds when compared to the built-in solution).

Entirely possible. Onboard DACs use I2S which adds basically zero latency; one of the ways of getting audio out over Lightning is to use USB which requires additional latency-causing buffering. It's possible that there's another lower-latency way of getting audio out over Lighting but only Apple knows.

Fair enough. Now I'm interested in this topic but am not an electrical engineer so I've skimmed through about 5 wikipedia articles semi related heh

An Android phone costs less than the dongle.

The dongle comes for free in the box[0].

> In the Box

>> Lightning to 3.5 mm Headphone Jack Adapter

[0]: http://www.apple.com/iphone-7/specs/

I know you're joking, and I'm not agreeing with the headphone jack decision, but the dongle is $9.

http://www.apple.com/shop/product/MMX62AM/A/lightning-to-35-...

I have four android phones. None of them cost me a dime. They all have headphone jacks.

> None of them cost me a dime

How so? If they were through carriers, you probably still paid for part of it through your monthly bill, and part of it was subsidized by your carrier.

Either way cmdrfred's

> An Android phone costs less than the dongle.

is incorrect. Most people are paying for their phones in some way, whether Android or iOS, whether directly or via their carrier, and the dongle is free with the phone.

Unless these were gifts, you paid for them. If the phones were "free" or just a penny from a mobile carrier, the real price of the phone was hidden in the monthly service charge. That's why you had to sign a long-term service contract to get the "free" phone.

Thank goodness the carriers have been moving away from that kind of deceptive pricing.

I think you are overstating things. 3.5mm isn't really the standard for professional audio. Much more common is 6.35mm, RCA, S/PDIF, XLR, and USB. All of which would already need an adaptor for the 3.5mm. But I doubt I'm saying anything you don't already know.

Yes it's annoying if you already are set-up for 3.5mm, and yes I can see why you wouldn't want to use a consumer wireless audio standard for live music performance, but it hardly equates to Apple "exiting professional audio".