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Comment by rvense | Hacker News Reader

I honestly believe that the headphone jack is done.

Done as in, we can just keep using it. It perfectly solves the problem of moving audio and similar from a device on or near my person to my ears. There's no need for any such device to be smaller in any dimension than the minijack allows. Wires are fine, they're so easy to understand. There is absolutely no need to keep working on this, it's fine as it is.

They should still be making headphones with minijacks in a 1000 years - because maybe in time we would learn to make devices that lasted that long. In general I really wish our culture would become used to the idea of solved problems.

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The minijack is essentially perfect, which I know is a word that shouldn't be used lightly. It's intuitive, durable, reliable, inexpensive and compact.

In the 4-pole incarnation, it handles the addition of a microphone with backwards compatibility. A headphone-only plug works without issues in a 4-pole socket, and a 4-pole plug works equally without issues in a headphone-only 3-pole socket. Obviously you won't be able to use the microphone, but it will not mess up anything, only give you sound in one ear or something similarly weird and unexpected.

There was a small issue with TRRS standards, OMTP on one side and CTIA on the other, where the mic and ground pins were switched in relation to each other. Everyone seems to have agreed on using the CTIA standard now, though. And a lot of headsets are able to accomodate both automatically.

The minijack has stood the test of time.

While I do love the 3.5mm jack (along with the 1/4", XLR, and pretty much any other analog audio connector known to man) it seems like it's redundant on modern smartphones and in the near future possibly laptops.

If everything is already going to have a USB C port, and USB C can handle audio transmission, then I see no reason to keep the 3.5mm around. Sure, there's an argument to be made about keeping the DAC inside the smartphone, but once we are out of the transition period, any pair of headphones you want will either be wireless, come with a dongle, or forgo the 3.5mm entirely and just have a USB C cable.

It would be nice if Apple would join the rest of the world (and their own Macbooks) by replacing lightning with USB C, but I think that will happen eventually.

> … once we are out of the transition period, any pair of headphones you want will either be wireless, come with a dongle, or forgo the 3.5mm entirely and just have a USB C cable.

Any pair of headphones I would want will be analogue, because I dislike audio delay & expense and I like audio quality.

Adding DACs & dongles is just adding needless complexity. The analogue headphone is basically perfect: it doesn't need improving, and it can't be improved. Wireless headphones add expense, waste, complexity and quality/delay problems.

I mean, wireless headphone by definition lack a wire which is a huge improvement to many people. Just because the improvement doesn't favor audio fidelity doesn't mean it isn't an improvement.

People have been buying external DAC's for years because they are higher quality than the ones inside phones and computers. Audio professionals don't use the soundcard in their computer - they buy an external one that probably uses USB, firewire, or thunderbolt.

The headphone jack and DAC in a smartphone is convenient and often high enough quality for most people, but it is in no way a perfect solution. People who care a lot about audio quality in particular should not be sad to see it go, because they should be using USB or lightning already anyways.

By going to all-digital connections, we also allow content rights owners to force DRM on us. It will be a matter of time before streaming services will be forced to implement DRM, and only approved headphones or other devices will be able to receive audio. Yes, you can always cut an analog hole later in the chain, but for the average customer, it will only bring annoyance.

I like the good old-fashioned analog connections because there's no way to add stupid DRM. You get the analog signal, without the issues associated with technologies such as HDCP/DPCP.

I agree that we should be concerned about DRM. I think that the ship has already sailed on that, though.

Most people that I know use a streaming service for their music. Spotify, Apple Music, or Google Play Music mostly. They already don't own the music they're listening to, and even when they download it to their phone it's encrypted and can't be easily transferred anywhere else.

The experience is convenient and cheap enough that they just don't care.

They don't even need to get rid of the headphone jack to only allow specific headphones. Nothing was stopping Apple from only allowing people who own Beats with a lightning cable from listening to Apple music, even when the phones had a headphone jack. I imagine a similar scheme could be cooked up using the microphone input to the phone. Have the headphones transfer some kind of key through that to the phone, and only allow certain analog headphones to listen to music. Sure, it's probably easier to crack than USB C/lightning based DRM but still possible.

The difference is that the DRM on Spotify and other streaming services isn't intrusive, it's not annoying and it's not something people notice at all. Steam does the same thing. Plenty of DRM, but you don't really notice it in normal use.

But I bet that's not good enough for the RIAA/MPAA. They want everything DRMed out the wazoo. Including the output devices. If they can require digital-only connections with heavy DRM and all analog parts potted in epoxy, they will do it.

Not to forget that wireless connections are less reliable, esp with a lot of devices or other sources nearby. Switching headphones off with cable is much faster than with bluetooth (just unplug it) and quality is about as good as it gets.

Except when you break all of your headphones while cycling ... And then your phone.

You can still break wireless headphones, your phone, and pretty much anything with you (including you) while cycling, so I fail to see how your point is relevant.

Im a fan of wired headphones with the exception of excercise.

If youve ever skateboarded, popped a trick, had the wire get caught on your knee, violently tug the headphones out of your ears, and get caught up in your wheels, then you know this pain.

I managed to cut the cord on two pairs of headphones gardening before I decided to get a wireless pair - don't think I'd ever go back to wired headphones.

Keep phone in front pocket, with wire under clothes

Even that can get annoying. Movement is still limited.

The wire sticks to you when you start sweating and pulls out of the headphone jack. And wearing extra layers is not a great soltion

Yup. Unless you can replace it with something which requires no power and costs £10 then I'm not interested in moving to a new technology.

The Apple dongle is just an external DAC(someone put the circuit in a phone) and costs $10US.

It also seems to be unforgivably low quality: https://www.apple.com/shop/reviews/MMX62AM/A/lightning-to-35...

Yes, however there are several issues in having it in a dongle instead of inside the phone

You're needlessly converting to 'lightning protocol' and back. DAC will be lower quality than an internal one (because of size and power constraints and the fact that you need one internal and one external)

In reality those constraints don't have any humanly discernable impact on the quality. Plus the part about the lightning protocol makes no sense whatsoever.

Here's an idea: Try blind testing 10 songs or so and see if you can figure out which one is played from the adapter and which one isn't. I bet you won't hear the difference.

The real issue is the extra item to carry and plug.

Headphones -> headphone jack in device is sensible. A dongle isn't.

I have an iPhone 7. In reality even that isn't an issue. You can keep the dongle attached to your headphones and it will stick safely to it.

I would really like to know how many people who find issue with the dongle have day-to-day experience with a headphone jack-less device. My bigger concern is that headphone jacks will vanish from headphones.

Because I have broken all my headphones and then my phone's audio jack I am trying out the dongly life. So far it hasn't been that bad, but I suspect that there will be situations in which I'll want to charge and have an audio device connected.

I dislike Apples love for dongles, but the headphone donglegate is mainly a constructed problem by people that just want to rage about something. Sure, it sucks that you can't use your headphones while charging but in reality I had this problem exactly once in a year of usage. There are actual problems with modern smartphones and iPhones in particular but the headphone jack is a ridiculously propped up issue.

> Plus the part about the lightning protocol makes no sense whatsoever.

Yes it does, unless the port has an analog audio channel

It's extra hardware that has to be on the dongle (at the expense of everything else) - for Audio I'm gessing it's USB https://www.chipworks.com/about-chipworks/overview/blog/syst...

> Try blind testing 10 songs or so and see if you can figure out which one is played from the adapter

Would be an interesting test, I would begin by checking the max volume allowed

> Yes it does, unless the port has an analog audio channel

Then you'd have an internal DAC. Apple is extremely greedy with space, but a DAC/amp isn't large. The dongle has more available space. The sound is digital before being converted either way, the "lighting protocol" won't hurt the quality unless they lossily compress, which I doubt.

An external DAC can be of the same quality as the internal one, worse, or better.

According to this site, http://www.kenrockwell.com/apple/lightning-adapter-audio-qua..., Apple's dongle is roughly the same as the internal DACs on iPads and iPhones.

Generic dongles purchased from Amazon can be expected to have lower quality DAC's, but most people that want to cheap out on something that only costs 9 dollars probably aren't using good enough headphones or speakers to care.

People that really care about audio quality can purchase something like this, https://www.amazon.com/AudioQuest-DragonFly-Red-Headphone-Am..., which is higher quality than what you will find in any smartphone.

Thanks, that was surprising!

I was using something similiar for my Siemens SX1. Who would have though that this 15 years old phone was equipped with such next-gen technology.

Except minijacks on every devices (smartphones and portable media player) I have ever owned have become useless after some time because the plug starts working randomly.

I am so much happier with a bluetooth headphones: free movement \o/. Software problems but you know what they say: software eats the world.

Too bad good Bluetooth earphones are still ridiculously expensive and the cheap ones (Taotronics ) keep breaking. I'll consider them again when the extra cost for the Bluetooth hardware (it shouldn't be more than 5€) gets to a manageable level.

well said. That stupid apple dongle on iPhone. Amazing that I can't charge AND use my urban ears. Wtf.

Or apple abandoning that cool magnetic charger! My mbp 2010 had that skinny one, and I never came off.

Now we have usbc or whatever it is called, but waaaaay longer battery life, so that might be the answer there.

Come to think of it, is there wireless charging for laptops yet?

> Come to think of it, is there wireless charging for laptops yet?

Amazon has a few Qi receivers with USB-C plugs outputting 1A - that's probably enough to (slowly) charge the 12" Macbook.

>Come to think of it, is there wireless charging for laptops yet?

A docking station serves that purpose already, and it allows much faster charging than a Qi pad.

> Amazing that I can't charge AND use my urban ears.

I think Apple must have fired all of their UX engineers. That's the only thing that can explain the inability to charge & use headphones and the inability to charge & use a mouse[0].

[0] https://www.geek.com/apple/design-before-function-apple-magi...

I get the simplicity, but 1) I hate tangled wires 2) wire break, I take care of them but very often a minute crack will happen and your cable is now a random silence generator.

Maybe there's a middle ground solution.

There is - it's called providing both Bluetooth and minijack.

I meant something else but anyway.

What are you imagining? A dongle that runs over Bluetooth? Strapping the phone to your ear directly? Cables through your body?

Something better.

An analog connector doesn't necessarily seem perfect since sound can degrade undetectably.

I think what would be perfect would be something carrying both power and a lossless digital signal.

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