cnocbui

This is exactly where I think Apple have been heading with project Titan.  I have never thought for minute that anyone would actually be able to buy and drive an Apple car.  I think Apple will just let you hail one and ride in it, for a fee.  Why make 5 M vehicles when you can make more money from 50 K of them.

wozwoz said:

melgross said:

Well, you can make the case either way, depending on your proclivities. Both have advantages. The big advantage to digital is that the signal doesn't deteriorate while moving between steps, or going down the wire. Really, the best case is that the signal remains in digital form until the last amplification step. The closer that last step is to the transducer, the better.

so, digital to an on headphone amp is the best we can hope for in the present.

Too funny. For the last 100 years, audio quality has improved with technology and time ... that is, until the advent of the iPod and iPhone ... Digital playback over iPods and iPhones etc using low quality lossy mp3s have given rise to the biggest downgrading and reversal in audio quality ever. Cable length is the least of your worries. If you are serious about audio quality, get yourself an SACD player, delete anything wireless in your house, and some quality headphones with a wired 3.5mm plug. 

An iPod or iPhone is as good as a dedicated CD player if you play back reasonably high bit rate AAC or MP3 tracks.  Apple's Airplay streams losslessly, so you can send bits through the air with no possible performance hit vs sending them down a wire.  There is also the aptX bluetooth codec - which Apple don't use in i devices - which also is lossless.

The problem with SACD and all such supposedly high-end sources is that 99% of the music in the world will never be distributed on them, so if you delude yourself into thinking they sound sonically superior, you will have to limit and surrender your musical taste to only the tiny catalog available, or suffer the never-ending angst of listening to stuff you actually do like, but never really enjoying it because of the nagging belief it could have sounded Soooooo much better, if only....

Listening to the content is ultimately far more rewarding than listening to the medium.

clemynx said:

Why did Apple make lightning proprietary? It's superior to USB type C and it would be great if more people used it!

So they could make money by licensing it to 3rd parties.

joe28753 said:

melgross said:

Well, you can make the case either way, depending on your proclivities. Both have advantages. The big advantage to digital is that the signal doesn't deteriorate while moving between steps, or going down the wire. Really, the best case is that the signal remains in digital form until the last amplification step. The closer that last step is to the transducer, the better.

so, digital to an on headphone amp is the best we can hope for in the present.

And to expand on this, an analog signal going down 3 feet of headphone wire will only have a negligible effect on the sound. You probably won't notice. The noticeable change is the DAC. Right now it's converted to analog inside the iPhone and you have to do the best you can with that signal. If you plug in really high-end headphones to the analog headphone jack on the iPhone, it won't sound optimal. If the output is digital, then the headphones or device you plug in will be in charge of taking those 1's and 0's and converting them to what you end up hearing. So you could potentially have phenomenally better sound than currently possible.

Total and complete garbage.

melgross said:

eightzero said:

I call bullshit on "better sound." It's digital. 1s and 0s going down that wire.

Well, you can make the case either way, depending on your proclivities. Both have advantages. The big advantage to digital is that the signal doesn't deteriorate while moving between steps, or going down the wire. Really, the best case is that the signal remains in digital form until the last amplification step. The closer that last step is to the transducer, the better.

so, digital to an on headphone amp is the best we can hope for in the present.

You would have to get to several tens of meters for there to be any practical advantage, over the 0.5 - 2m cable lengths normally employed with cables with 3.5mm plugs on the end.

There would be no audible benefit whatsoever.   Have iPods and iPhones actually had lousy audio quality all these years and people have been lying about it all this time?