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Comment by nabwodahs | Hacker News Reader

The best Lightning audio adapter is Apple's Lightning-to-30-pin-iPod adapter. It provides line-level audio out, as the 30-pin port always did. So you don't have to dick around with two volume levels; it's fixed coming out of the phone, and you only adjust your amp.

I built one into a dock in my car that charged the phone and delivered audio to my car radio.

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There’s no analogue audio over Lightning, so if the 30-pin adapter is disabling volume level on the phone, it’s just picking a fixed gain for its internal DAC—perhaps because the DAC is only good within a certain gain range. The Apple USB-C to 3.5mm adapters are widely regarded as having excellent DACs irrespective of their size and price. I’m not as familiar with the reputation of the Lightning to 3.5mm adapters, but I would consider the ability to configure the DAC volume an indicator of superior quality DAC compared to the 30-pin adapter.

I'm pretty sure it's the same DAC since the signal is digital whether over Lightning or over USB-C until it hits the DAC.

They earned their reputation when new phones came packaged with the adapter for the first few generations (circa iPhone 7/8?) after the 3.5 mm jack was removed.

The Lightning-3.5mm adapter has a quite good DAC for its size, I remember seeing a teardown article from when it was first launched, quite impressive engineering going on in a such a small piece of electronics.

This is how any generic 5 Euro USB-C-to-TRS 3.5mm jack adapter works on Android. Didn't know this was a big issue in Apple-land.

It's an issue if you don't want to buy AirPods, or whatever the Pixel or Samsung equivalents are. Each realized there's money to be made this way, cause people will just buy.

Or in my case I've got an audio receiver with flaky Bluetooth. Guess it's "my fault" for not replacing it with an Apple TV, better yet Homepods.

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