Do I need to get out the soldering iron again? (2018) | Hacker News Reader

Do I need to get out the soldering iron again? (2018)

naughtycomputer.uk

145 pointscwillu125 comments

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People at the office will ask about my usb dac/amp and they don't seem to get it.

Yes, these devices are needed, because the audio outputs of all sorts of devices today simply are trash.

Topping DX3 Pro+[0] is my current recommendation, by the way.

As for headphones, Sennheiser HD600 really are solid.

0. https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/t...

The $199 is why most people will question if you really need it. My laptop costed me a little bit over that, so maybe there is something in the market that goes 80% of the way for about 20% of its price?

This exactly. As a former PA/recording engineer I like good audio quality too, but it is hard to know which devices are worth it when most lists are made by people that always like the $200 (or $2000) option better than the $2, $20 and $199 option. I know for a fact from actually using audio equipment where good quality is needed that the expensive options are often not worth it at all, but more often than not swap a tiny (if any) bit of extra quality for a monstrous price hike and worse hardiness.

Of course, I'm not saying it isn't worth it at all. That depends on one's budget and ears. But most lists see the expensive option as the best, while most peoples needs and ears have zero use for the expensive option.

I'd go so far as saying you could get 95% of the way for 10% of the price.

It's like the old story:

   - one high quality capacitor: $1
   - knowing where to put it: $799
   [dark timeline: “knowing it doesn't matter where you put it: $12999”]

The USB-C headphone adaptors sold by Google / Apple / Samsung / etc are DAC + headphone amps. They're inexpensive (under $20, some under $10) and can have better components in them than a phone, laptop, etc. These should also work on laptops / desktops.

Do some research first for your use case, but I suspect one can find one that will work for your machine + headphones.

Soundguys has a review from October up on this topic: https://www.soundguys.com/best-usb-c-headphone-adapter-10130...

My favorite part about these dongles is that for once, Apple actually has the best performance / price!

It compares favorably against equipment hundreds of dollars more (focus on SINAD & Output Impedance graphs): https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/r...

Does Apple not usually have the best performance / price? Looking at M- and A- series chip benchmarks, Apple is way ahead of the competition.

Apple prices are also way above the competition so they hamstring themselves somewhat.

Apple prices are comparable to the competition for comparable gear. If you don't want to spend much money, PC vendors will happily sell you garbage -- Apple won't.

For the same money I can get a better machine that what Apple will sell me.

Admittedly this calculus may have shifted in Apple's favor a bit when they rolled out their own silicon.

This is a myth, only supported by looking at nothing but spec sheets.

I admit, I was one of these people, but when you look at incidentals (ironically the DAC such as this thread, but also things like keyboard, calibrated display, the nebulous concept of “build quality”) Apple is comparable in price to contemporaries.

The issue is that Apple computers are built like higher end business laptops, and people dont typically buy those: they look at the spec sheet and try to buy the best bang for the buck which makes all of the quality run out the door.

Apples lowest end machines generally are priced cheaper than equivalent machines, but Apple price segments (read: gouges) on upgrades.

A high end Macbook pro 14” and a Dell XPS (55xx) are comparable in price.

I've had an Apple device from work until ~2 years ago. It laid on my desk most of the time, not even in use so wear and tear are at a minimum. A region of the touchscreen broke around the same time as the charging brick stopped charging (2-3 years after purchase; the brick was only plugged in when in use), the keyboard didn't support swyping or having a number row or any symbols on its face whatsoever, the browser is ancient and gives me headaches as a developer constantly (and you can't even tell users to install a proper browser - remind me, what did the EC think of that when Microsoft pulled this with MSIE?), the idle battery life was worse than an eight year old Samsung I've got, of course it needed a custom cable, it kept turning on things I had turned off such as Bluetooth (see the recent Bluetooth attack), and my device was the only one that had hard-to-reproduce issues with Wireguard VPN.

(I never had a charger or touchscreen break on me before, nor a battery wear so fast, so combined with the unusually low use, I'm pretty sure it's not my particular usage pattern that caused them to break way before due.)

Credits where they're due, though: it had a headphone jack and I loved the earphones that came with it! But what a piece of trash otherwise.

I'm sure there's good apple phones out there and our resident apple fanboy assured me I had an outlier, but I can attest that apple does in fact sell you garbage and not all the issues are hardware

Apple does not generally have the best performance / price: if we use passmark benchmarks[1], the 16-core M3 Max gets 10CPUMark/$, while the ASUS ROG Strix G17 gets 25CPUMark/$.

If we look at the low-end, it is much worse: the cheapest Macbook Pro ($1600) gets 12CPUMark/$, while the Dell Inspiron 15 3535 ($420) gets 45CPUMark/$.

I know there's much more to laptops than their CPUs, but I think my point is still valid.

[1]: https://www.cpubenchmark.net/laptop.html#cpumark

Yeah, we’d have to include display quality, battery life, etc. to get a really fair comparison.

Okay, go ahead. What does a good display cost? How many Joules per megaflop does the CPU draw from the battery? The claim is a bit baseless as-is; you seem to know the answer already but how?

Does the Apple usb-c version have the same issue as the lightning version where very slight movements will cause it to interrupt playback with various accessibility messages? This was an issue for both my last iphones making the cable entirely unusable in any situation where your phone might move. Frankly I'd say it is so bad that Apple's lightning to headphone adapters shouldn't be allowed to be sold.

I've only used mine for maybe about 8 hours on my Pixel 6a, but I never ran into that or any issues.

It's not really an issue with the cable, but with the iphone's use of the cable. If the iphone allowed you to just turn off the specific accessibility features so you would never be asked by this misinterpreted signal, the problem would go away.

I have one. I have used it pretty much every night on my phone at bedtime for a few years. If it is plugged in properly it works perfectly every time. I have a few others xduoo, moondrop etc. But I always use this one in my room.

Do you move the connector while it’s plugged in e.g. if you have the phone in your pocket plugged in and then connected to wired headphones? The lightning connector works fine when you don’t move it, but not when you do.

I have used the lightning headphone adapter on my iphone almost daily for a couple of years. Whenever I have problems like you describe it's because the lightning port has dirt/pocket lint in it. I have a plastic tool that I use to clean it out and it works fine again. The only other issue I have is that the thin wire does wear out over time.

I've used entirely new adapters in an entirely new phone and had the issue. Many I know have experienced the same (before giving up on using the adapter wile moving). But it's true I've also heard from people like you who haven't had issues so I can't personally say it's always a problem.

But really what I don't understand is how Apple can't just add an option to turn off the damn accessibility options entirely. Why does dirt or temporary bad connections cause this problem at all? They could just let you turn off the setting that it triggers so that it really doesn't matter. The fact that they don't care enough to do that tells me enough of how much they care about making their headphone adapter a good product. I never used to have to worry about issues like this with a regular headphone jack, but I certainly do with Apple's adapter. It's simply a poor product.

I must be missing something because that page doesn't have any reviews, it's just a list of 5 adapters with one sentence each about "why it's great" and giant Amazon referral links.

Although I must admit I did not expect the Apple USB-C to 3.5mm adapter to be so affordable. I don't have any Apple devices but I wonder if will work with Android/Linux.

I have used the USB-C apple adapter with linux and it works fine. I used it for a year hooked up to an older dell laptop (Xubuntu and later Manjaro) for my home sound system (spotify client on the laptop). Works great for the money. I eventually moved to a standalone dac. Not sure it sounds any better but is more versatile.

I'm partial to this Head-Fi review [1]. It's a really interesting read, just from the perspective of comparing a $9 USB DAC to ... pretty much anything else an "audiophile" might get.

> There is absolutely no reason at all to pay more for a USB DAC, at least when it comes to pure sound quality with headphones.

It does mention the possible desire for more features, of course. And it's possibly worth mentioning the power output is half of what you get from other DACs, but you should consider whether that means anything to your setup. I have a pair of Hifiman Edition XS connected to a Schiit Magni and the Apple USB C DAC, and I never put the Schiit volume above about 30%.

(As to the amp: I do hear a bit of an improvement connected to the amp vs just the DAC. It's not huge, though; mainly I like having a physical volume knob.)

1: https://www.head-fi.org/showcase/apple-usb-c-to-3-5-mm-headp...

If you need both good measurements that should by ample margin be audible transparent, as well as enough power for virtually any headphone save those that need a special amplifier (electrostats like STAX's), you'll find it hard to go under $200.

This device is actually a gem for the price, and most popular recommendations will go higher in price and give you less. I have been there and done the digging, you're welcome to repeat the process.

At some point, new devices or new prices will change this. But, as far as I am aware, this is how it is right now.

The Topping MX3 is also pretty good in my opinion and about half the price. That’s probably next down on the pareto frontier.

Not if you want decent sound quality. I think my absolute minimum recommendation would be the Fiio K3 dac-amp with a pair of headphones like the DT770 or the SHP9500 if you can find them cheap.

HD600>HD560s>SHP9500 according to budget.

If there's any money left, it can be allocated to a dac/amp combo, but priority to headphones, as they matter the most.

I bought $3 USB soundcard and it sounds better than onboard sound card. PC16046 V2.0 (just checked, it's $1.22 incl. shipping)

My google skills are letting me down - do you have a link for this?

PP probably refers to those very cheap USB soundcards, usually shaped like a dongle, with two mini jacks, sold pretty much everywhere. I tried a couple in the past (can't confirm if the chipset is the same) and they definitely sound better than expected from a device that cheap, however be aware that manufacturers often save on parts number or quality to reduce costs therefore it can be a hit and miss, with some of them making noises or offering inferior quality.

A few I would make about this:

* USB soundcards used to work on Android but in recent tests they failed again for some reason

* Avoid any dongle that supports "special effects", "gaming", etc. Even if they can be disabled, it's such a pain.

* Dynamically adding/removing soundcards can affect your computer's notion of "default microphone", particularly relevant for video chat. Some apps this takes effect immediately, some after quitting the app.

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4000598865391.html

Works out of box in ubuntu, this is how I use it: https://files.catbox.moe/755gbr.jpg

I bought a few of these (different brands) off Amazon a while back while trying to get my desk audio setup sorted and the audio output on them usually sounds okay. Some of them have noticeable background hiss at any volume.

The four-pin versions (with mic input) tend to fall down pretty hard, though. Either the volume is so low you have to yell to get anything into the PC at all, or there is severe cross-talk where any audio coming out gets induced into the input. (Turns out people on zoom are not fans of hearing echo of themselves with a 1-second delay!)

Where? I tried searching and not many hits. In fact, this comment was #4

I have some headphones with an in-line soundcard that you can reprogram with your choice of EQ or effects. Love em. But they were spendy and it lacks the hacker ethos that I respect in these posts.

I have mixed feelings about standalone USB dac/amps these days. Back in the early days of digital audio, they made a huge difference. For example, when the Cowon U2 portable audio player came out:

https://www.cnet.com/reviews/cowon-iaudio-u2-review/

The iPod basically couldn't output bass because their dac couldn't maintain anything close to a square wave. (There used to be online comparisons of this thing with the iPod, similar to what you linked.)

However, that was 20 years ago, and it hit -95db of hiss, 20-20khz frequency response, with way more power than is needed for in-ear monitors (which is my use case). Apple ended up shipping an iPod with a non-terrible DAC the next year (I think the touch was the first one? Can't remember).

Anyway, now you kind of have to go off the beaten path to find consumer stuff that's perceptibly worse than ideal. In particular, you can get a USB-C -> headphone dongle from apple that's actually a decent DAC for $9 (look at the THD graph. They use the $9 Apple as the cutoff between "yellow" and "green"):

https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/r...

These days, if you're getting noticeably bad performance out of your laptop DAC, it's probably a shielding or grounding issue. The standalone USB DAC will fix that, but only if it's externally powered + grounded (or if you get lucky with how your laptop is wired / shielded), but so would bluetooth (which even supports lossless audio as of 2021).

My ~2021 laptop is ok with noise but isn't powerful enough for my 32ohm headphones. My desktop's too noisy, especially for recording onto tape decks which I want to do sometimes. Also not entirely powerful enough from what I recall.

A usb/bluetooth dac for my laptop/phone (standard phone usb-3.5mm adapter's not powerful enough either) and a toslink dac for my desktop solved all my problems. Toslink's an awesome nuclear option to buzz/noise because it's 100% isolated by virtue of being light.

I also enjoy being able to boost the bass/mess with the EQ easily.

That makes sense, but it sounds like you’re really paying for the amp and the integrated dac is basically free / convenient.

Various kinds of noise have been problems too even on modern computers, like ground hum or interference. Often I can hear the interference on a desktop change with the screen's brightness. I think on laptops I've had the issue depending on if the charger is plugged in or not. Problem's eliminated with an external DAC/amp. Motherboard DAC's must be cheap/lazy because there's no technical reason this couldn't be done with an internal one.

> couldn't output bass because their dac couldn't maintain anything close to a square wave

Isn't the defining characteristic of a square wave the fact accurate reproduction of it requires the ability to produce high frequencies? Why would that be particularly problematic for bass?

Because bass is low frequencies I imagine.

I have a Topping MX3, initially loved how knob feels but it bothered me that the tactile feedback didn't actually line up with the adjustments... mostly use the remote now anyways, which is great

I like schiit:

https://www.schiit.com

I currently use a Hel day to day:

https://www.schiit.com/products/hel-plus

Lets me do work meetings with headphone+mic on one system via USB, or switch and listen to PCM audio via second input

hel is decent and portable.

If portable isn't needed, about the same money buys that topping, with digital encoder for volume, higher specs and better measurements... but no mic input.

> because the audio outputs of all sorts of devices today simply are trash

As a staunch objectivist audiophile, I empathise with this view. But there's also too much of an obsession with achieving levels of dynamic range precision far in excess of the best audio recordings. Not to mention far in excess of the best human ears — let alone the typical ears of an audiophile with time and cash to burn. Perhaps most damning of all, being far, far, far, far far in excess of the noise floor of most people's listening environments.

So long as your DAC/amp gives you a solid 100 dB of dynamic range, it's time to put down your wallet and enjoy the content.

> I DO NOT HAVE TO PAY A TAX TO APPLE TO LISTEN TO MY MUSIC

The author paid a significant tax, as documented in their blog post: they had to try several devices and eventually *build custom hardware* to do something so simple. Yes, it’s fun. Yes, it gets the job done. No, I don’t want to do that when I just wanna listen to music.

The apple tax is more than just easy access to music played through marginally higher quality DACs. It’s also a cost that I’m happy to pay to never have to do something like what the author of this article did.

My time is significantly more valuable to me than ideological objections to working technology.

you don't even have a decent web browser on your iphone and even with all your apple tax money you can't do nothing about it

It does everything I want. So much that I’m using the desktop version too.

My iPad is simply not capable of running uBlock Origin. Until this changes, switching my main mobile device to an iPhone is a complete non-option. I absolutely must be able to run software I choose, full stop.

I choose software that runs on the devices that I don’t have to mess around with. There are plenty of options that do work across the Apple ecosystem. ublock is not the only option, nor is it necessarily the best one.

The extremely minor inconvenience of finding a different adblocker is one time pain. Attempting to curate the “perfect” computing environment is pain that just doesn’t go away.

I ran many different distros. I ran LFS as my daily driver for several years. I played with all of the desktop environments. What did it get me? Nothing. There is no practical value in sinking the time into that. It’s fun, sure. But I don’t get paid to have fun. My business doesn’t run on fun.

The irritating thing is that the software I want to run works perfectly fine on my mac mini. That's in the Apple ecosystem and yet respects enough of my freedoms to not be a problem. But the iOS devices are entirely locked down.

The ad blocker thing one tiny example; what I actually want to run is Real(tm) Firefox and its rich extension ecosystem. There are dozens of little accessibility enhancements I run on top of just the content blocker. The iOS versions of Firefox are heavily gimped, aren't allowed to run the Gecko rendering engine (purely because Apple said so) and can't do the things I need. My iPad basically doesn't have a good browser, just a cheap plastic imitation of the Amulet of Mozilla. All of my other devices do, so it's the odd one out.

It's not just Firefox, but that's the example everyone's heard of, so it's what I tend to lead with. I'd also like to be able to run weird media software, background file syncing services that aren't iCloud, and (gasp!) retro game emulators on the devices I own. All disallowed by app store policy, and unlike Android which supports sideloading and alternate app stores, on iOS I have no recourse as an end user. So I choose not to be an end user; I won't purchase hardware that refuses to respect my wishes.

I mean, that's fine. My argument about adblockers applies to other software too: the Apple ecosystem has some of the basics (like sync, browsers, etc) figured out for me so that I don't need to fiddle with it. While I'd like to use Firefox, I don't need to, and the tradeoffs that come with accepting Safari instead are worth it for my specific situation. Forcing myself into a different ecosystem so that I can use different software that does the same thing isn't a good tradeoff for me. It sounds like that's not the case for you - glad you've found an ecosystem that works for you.

There are a couple of things you might want to be aware of though:

* AltStore exists and works pretty well: https://altstore.io

* iOS 17.2 allows users in some locales to side load apps: https://medium.com/@rmndrathna4/ios-17-2-sideload-apps-what-... . This was sparked by the Digital Markets Act, which could also force Apple to allow alternate browser engines. It went into effect May 2023, but I'm not a lawyer and idk how this will actually affect the Apple ecosystem. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Markets_Act

I’m in the same boat. I’m even thinking about switching to Edge on Windows machines. Stock browser are perfectly fine nowadays.

It’s funny how so many Apple users insist their Apple device does everything they want, until Apple releases a new update that does something more that other devices have had for years, and then they’re not just using it all the time but boasting about it.

One of the most classic examples was Copy/Paste or Apps. I remember so many Apple users telling me that Copy/Paste was unnecessary on an iPhone or that WebApps were good enough (something I completely disagreed with) only to see them change their tune completely once Apple released those functionalities.

I remember how 5G was supposed to be an albatross of a feature until Apple released their phones supporting 5G.

Or how digital pens weren’t needed at all, until Apple released an iPad with a digital pen and then it was just raves about how digital pens are awesome.

How can one forget larger screens! I remember how 3.5” was THE perfect phone screen size and now you can’t even buy a phone that size from Apple.

Multitasking!

I’ve tried switching to Android but never been successful. I simply don’t like it and enjoy iOS too much. That doesn’t mean I need to be blind to all the missing iOS functionality and pretend my I wouldnt be happier if they weren’t missing. I just find that the upsides are more than worth the downsides. That doesn’t mean I need to pretend those downsides don’t exist.

> It’s funny how so many Apple users insist their Apple device does everything they want, until Apple releases a new update that does something more that other devices have had for years, and then they’re not just using it all the time but boasting about it.

Isn't that normally the case? You have a device that does X you're happy with, and they add a new feature. You didn't know how useful it would be, so you're excited and show it off.

I'd imagine there are plenty of examples of his with Android, or your favourite car brand or all sorts of things.

About one year ago I purchased on Ebay this cheap Chinese player

https://www.jolike.com.cn/productinfo/534495.html

It's well built, sturdy, battery life is great and sound quality very good.

But...

After some use it appears crystal clear that they cobbled together parts without testing them properly, which is normal in cheap devices with no or minimal quality control. FM radio audio level is completely different from recorded music, and at minimum level (that is, 1) it is still too loud for relaxed listening in environment without loud ambient noise, and if you go from say mp3 to FM without adjusting levels be prepared to jump. Touchscreen is badly arranged: some functions are in the way (playing speed to name one) and could be activated by mistake when changing tracks. Navigation can be tedious in crowded directories because advancing by pages doesn't work as it should. Last but not least, as with many other cheap players, the preset based equalizer is a joke. That is not how a proper equalizer should work; just give me a damn graphic one but please stop that useless Jazz-Rock-Classic-Disco-etc. thing that never, ever works. Etc.

That device could have been a real gem if only they didn't ruin it with junk firmware with no way to upgrade it. Had they sent a couple free devices to the Rockbox folks plus enough technical information on the employed hardware, they would now have a real gem instead of a half assed mediocre toy.

For reference: https://www.rockbox.org/

that tends to be my issue with a lot of cheap chinese stuff. if you can replace the firmware it's great, if you can't it's a worthless brick. I hear it's an issue with vending machines you can buy off ali express and such, but I do wonder how hard they'd be to wire up an esp32 or something

If you want a ready-to-use solution: Fiio makes great MP3 players, and also nice USB- and Bluetooth-DACs.

A device like the Fiio Btr3k makes it possible to use good quality wired headphones with one of those modern smartphones without an audio jack. (And it sounds better than the devices that did have an audio jack.)

Oh, and Fiio also builds some nice IEMs :)

> If you want a ready-to-use solution: Fiio makes great MP3 players, and also nice USB- and Bluetooth-DACs.

Or get everything from Sony which supports LDAC 990k on both the audio sending and receiving sides of Bluetooth. I love my Walkman!

I also have non-LDAC "neckphones" to carry around: the Beyerdynamic "BLUE BYRD" gen2 are far more practical than Sony or Apple earbuds for one simple reason: you can't lose one since in the neckphone format, the earbuds hang around your neck with a cable (which also provides convenient buttons)

Originally, I got the Beyerdynamic for my Chinese eink device (which don't support LDAC anyway) but it's so practical I use it's now paired with my Walkman and computer too!

Neckphones are not easy to find in the lineup of popular brands, but I've heard great things about the latest Huawei Freelace Pro: it's the same neckphone design, but with magnets on the back of the earbuds and ANC.

I'm getting the Freelace Pro "soon" (3 days from now lol) to see if it's more comfortable than my Beyerdynamics

I use bone conduction Bluetooth earphones to listen to podcasts when I run. I notice a high pitched noise, occasionally accompanying the spoken "s" sound. I suppose it's some kind of aliasing and I don't know if it is introduced in the source material, player, Bluetooth or headset. Luckily it's only moderately irritating.

This is just called sibilance [0], it’s most likely in the source material but could be accentuated by a number of downstream factors.