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Comment by inferiorhuman | Hacker News Reader

Perhaps, but I was comparing Apple ear buds with the 3.5mm jack vs lightning ones. Presumably the drivers and whatnot would be similar. In general I don't think audio quality has ever been particularly important to Apple. The iPhone (and all smartphones really) is a jack of all trades gizmo not a device for high quality audio playback.

I remember when I had a first gen iPhone and the call quality was atrocious with AT&T compared to my RAZR on Verizon. You get used to it over time but back to back it was pretty dramatic.

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If you have an iPhone and you care about its audio quality there are some DAC dongles, see also

https://www.whathifi.com/advice/how-to-play-hi-res-music-you...

Quoting the article:

"Next, you need a decent DAC such as the Audioquest DragonFly Cobalt, Cyrus soundKey or Chord Mojo 2 and a good pair of headphones, such as the Grado SR325x, Shure Aonic 3 or Austrian Audio Hi-X55.

This is just a starting point, of course. Don’t be afraid to build up to a more revealing system. You could combine the Chord Hugo 2 DAC with a pair of Beyerdynamic T1 (3rd Generation) headphones for a more premium set-up. That might be a touch overkill and punishingly transparent for an iPhone, but these are hi-res files, after all."

The Audioquest DragonFly Cobalt is not very good: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/a... The Apple USB-C dongle is better: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/r...

Oh I don't particularly care about audio quality from the iPhone, most of the time I'm using it in a noisy environment. I've a decent pair of proper headphones but there's no way I'd wear them in public.

More to the point I don't want dongles for my phone either. These are all solutions for Apple cheapening the product.

Not so sure about that.

I’ve got a decent quality pro audio interface and monitor headphones. I’ve also got airpod pros. The AirPods sound much much better and I prefer listening to anything with them.

It’s all subjective.

That's most likely due to monitor headphones not being made for an enjoyable listening experience, but for transparency while mixing/mastering.

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