Innovation or e-waste? Apple rumored to ditch headphone jack

[Shane R]

Originally Posted by Solitaire1

I wonder if they've considered what would happen if the manufacturers simply did not support the move away from the 3.5mm connector, one supported by everyone else.

A reporter did.

The people who don't seem to be particularly perturbed by this potential development are headphone makers themselves. I've spoken with many of them during this year's CES and none feel threatened by or unprepared for Apple's rumored removal of the headphone jack.

[Katsunami]

Of course headphone manufacturer's don't care. Maybe, just maybe, it'll impact the market of IEM's a tiny little bit.

The iPhone is a very insignificant device in this market. Headphone manufacturer's existed before the iPhone existed. They existed almost 50 years before Steve Jobs was born.

It's not as if the entire world of headphone makers will go down burning if Apple removes the headphone jack. Apple, or someone else, will make an adapter, or the Apple fans will stick to Apple earpods and Beats headphones, convincing themselves that nothing better exists.

[GlennD]

Audiophiles don't tend to lean on Apple devices for high quality music in the first place. Apple has received criticism for years for the subpar sound processors in their devices. (Believe it or not it was one of the talking points between the Zune and ipod back when the Zune existed. The high end audio forums often leaned towards the Zune as a better device because of the better sound hardware.) The very high end headphones will continue to be sold to same same market segment that they are today and will be used to listen to uncompressed music. Those who listen primarily to music on the go won't be impacted a whole lot. (I do share the disdain for Beats headphones though. Even casual listeners can make a better sound choice.... )

[Shane R]

Originally Posted by GlennD

Audiophiles don't tend to lean on Apple devices for high quality music in the first place.

...or any other cellular device, for that matter.

[John F]

Originally Posted by Shane R

A reporter did.

Another quote from the article:

... Apple's dispatch of the headphone jack makes things interesting for these companies, but only in the sense that it could spur more sales. ...

[Josieb1]

Considering how the iPad and iPhone sales are slowing down it does seem obsurd for Apple to be thinking of this kind of major change. If anything it might put customers off upgrading if like me they have expensive wired headphones they wish to use.

[pwalker8]

The point to keep in mind is all of this is simply rumors right now, so it's just speculation. If Apple does that, then the market will let them know if it's a good idea or not. Personally, I wouldn't like it. On the other hand, my nephew wanted a pair of bluetooth ear buds for Christmas this year. Different strokes for different folks.

Sometime Apple (and every other company out there) does things I don't like. I have an older iTouch running an older version of iOS that I use to listen to audio books in the car because new versions of iOS don't recognize playlists with audio books in them. Apparently, it's much less of an issue for most people than it is for me.

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by GlennD

(I do share the disdain for Beats headphones though. Even casual listeners can make a better sound choice.... )

LOL, Beats....

Do you know what "dynamic compression" and the "loudness war" is?

There has been an ongoing trend to make CD's louder and louder.

If I remember this correctly, the loudest a CD can become is 96 dB, and the default for the average loudness is 89 dB. So, if a piece of music equally goes up and down in loudness, a typical piece would run from 82 to 96 dB (average 89 dB), and have a dynamic range of 14 dB.

Now, if you raise the average, the CD obviously gets louder, but your dynamic range compresses. If you put the average at 92 dB, and you still want loud and soft parts to be equally distributed, you now only have 4 dB up and down, for a dynamic range of 8 dB.

With some tricks, CD's can be made to go up to 100 dB even. I've seen CD's hitting 100 dB and still have a dynamic range of only 5 or 6 dB. That means they average a huge 97 dB of loudness.

(PS: Those dB-levels are measured when a reference speaker system is set to a reference volume setting. This setting would yield 89 dB when playing a reference CD having a 89 dB reference test tone. After verifying that, you play the normal CD and measure how loud it is. Obviously you can lower the volume on your own device. The dynamic compression will still be there, of course.)

The problem is that louder and softer parts are closer and closer together (thus the term 'dynamic compression'). The bass will get dull, the drums loose power, and rhythm suffers.

Beats tries to remedy this with boosting things like bass, and the frequencies in which drums and such operates; so a heavily compressed piece sounds okayish on Beats headphones. Effectively, they try to uncrap crappily mastered music.

So, you get this situation.

I tell a colleague that his Beats headphones/earbuds are basically... not as good as he hoped, and he should look into other products. He disagrees, so I told him to listen to his music using my Shures. His conclusion was: your Shures are crap. All bass and drums are gone.

So I tell him: No, they're not gone. They were never there. You are now hearing the music as it was recorded. That music was badly recorded, and the Beats earbuds try to 'fix' it. They actually almost succeed making a right out of two wrongs.

'So YOU have music that is much better recorded, eh?', he sneers. I tell him yes, and let him listen to it on my player, with my Shures. He admits that the Shures have plenty of power behind the bass and drums and that the music sounds very good. (Although. it's not his genre; which I can understand. His genres are not mine either.)

After that, he wanted to hear that well recorded music on his Beats. I warned him not to do that. He still did, and the bass/drum boost of the Beats almost blew his head to smithereens.

So if your Beats headphones sound good, your music is probably recorded with huge dynamic compression.

[robko]

This reminds me of the page turn buttons on an e-reader debate. Are there people who think buttons are an absolute necessity and if the device doesn't have them it's worthless and every device should have them. They aren't wrong, THEY do need them. Unfortunately (for them) they are in the minority. It's the same for high quality audio. Is there a difference depending what you play it on? I have no doubt there is (full disclosure: I'm mot much of a music person and my hearing is far from perfect so I'm not sure I could tell the difference). Unfortunately (at least for the audiophiles) these days their numbers are probably slipping into a more and more minority position. Perception of how music should sound is changing and more are happy/willing to accept what might sound terrible to an audiophile (not passing judgement on that one way or the other, that's just reality). The hardware manufacturers are following what will sell the most product for them (BT compatibility) or make the most money (reducing cost by removing 3.5mm jack) --unfortunate for the audiophiles. As someone else said, the market will determine if they made the right decision (if they go ahead with this), and, sorry audiophiles, my guess is that you're the minority and are going to get screwed in this change.
Having said all that, I curse changes like the removal of a 3.5mm jack that reduces compatibility across devices. Sure you can maybe get an adapter, but that's just a pain.

[Katsunami]

Fortunately, I'm not an audiophile I'm just someone who tries to future-proof digital purchases. I can't hear the difference between a CD / FLAC-file and a 320 Kbps MP3. I only start to hear differences if the MP3 drops below 192 kbps.

I use FLAC however, so I can convert to another lossless format without losing (more) quality, should the need arise, and I won't willingly degrade quality by connecting my headphones (which are entry-level high-end cans) through weird adapters that 'do stuff' that wasn't necessary before.

Equally, I don't really care if an LCD-display is connected by DVI, HDMI, or DisplayPort. Even if they use an adapter there is no difference, as the adapters are passive. However, if an LCD-display is connected to a VGA-output, or worse, if there is an active HDMI->VGA adapter or something, I can EASILY see the lower quality compared to a direct digital connection.

[DuckieTigger]

@Katsunami: that is interesting. I have not bought a CD in forever. Just dug out an old CD from 1996 and it sounded quite good on flat. If new CDs nowadays are not recorded like that any more then I don't want it. Didn't want to even try to artificially boost bass. (No, I didn't use Beats either, just some old DCM monitors and a sub to help out below 80hz).

[Jack Torrance]

Personally I like the Apple headphones. They stay in your ear well enough, have controls and a mic, and sound fine to me. I can listen in my truck while driving and still hear the ambient noise if needed. I have a pair of Bose Quiet Comforts but they just sit around.

The jack itself I like as I use it to hard wire my phone into the sound system of my XJ6. If they did away with it I would just get an adapter and move on as it would be less of a hassle than changng out the stereo in the car.

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by DuckieTigger

@Katsunami: that is interesting. I have not bought a CD in forever. Just dug out an old CD from 1996 and it sounded quite good on flat. If new CDs nowadays are not recorded like that any more then I don't want it. Didn't want to even try to artificially boost bass. (No, I didn't use Beats either, just some old DCM monitors and a sub to help out below 80hz).

Demonstration of what loudness does to the music:





Listen with good headphones, and you'll notice the lost punch of the bass and drums in the compressed music.

Also, this is not just CD's. People *think* that high-resolution music (24 bits, 192 kHz) sounds better than music on CD (16 bits, 44.1 kHz). That is bullshit. Why? Because the number of bits determines how loud music can become. If the full 24 bits of dynamic range would be used, a 24-bit song would blow your head to kingdom come. The maximum recordable frequency is the half of the sample rate. A CD has a 44.1 kHz sample rate, so it can record up to +/- 22 kHz. That is more than enough, because even humans with the best ears ever can only hear up to 20 kHz; and only in their teen years. Therefore, being able to record up to 96 kHz is utterly useless.

Conclusion: 24 bits, 192 kHz music wastes a HUGE amount of space and doesn't bring you any advantages. Then, why does it often sound better? The reason is that these files are often taken directly from the original master, and are *NOT COMPRESSED* (= made extra loud). If you take such a file, and then downsample it to 16 bits, 44.1 kHz, it will sound exactly the same. This is because of the the reason given earlier: you can't use the full 24-bit dynamic range, because it's too loud, and using more than 44.1 kHz is a waste because no-one can ever hear it.

(edit: DuckieTigger reminded me by PM that 24 bit / 192 kHz is not useless as a format while recording, mastering and editing. That is absolutely true, as you have more data to work with, similar to shooting and editing pictures in RAW-format instead of JPG. What I mean to say is that actually *listening* to 24 bit / 192 kHz gains you nothing as compared to 16 bit / 44.1 kHz.)

So yes, 24-bit/192 kHz music often sounds better, but it's not for the reason people think. It's not because of the higher resolution or sample rates, but because it's often not compressed.

(If someone would not accept this from this post: You're invited to read the article under this link, written by a Ph.D. in audio research. I assume he knows his stuff.)

That 24-bit/192 kHz can be compressed however, and it'll sound just as bad as compressed 16-bit/44.1 kHz CD-music; the end result will just be a huge amount of wasted space.

PS: A low dynamic range is not always automatically an indication of badly recorded music. A lot of new age music with soundscapes in them, and no drums/rhythm have the same volume throughout. Even if not compressed, that sort of music will have a low dynamic range while still being well-recorded. Such music can easily be made louder without hurting it, but who wants to listen to new age/zen music at 100 dB...?

[Conan46]

I have noticed the difference with the "loudness wars". When CDs first came out some of them were not very loud but had the full range of the music, same on radio, some songs were louder than others, and musicians wanted their songs loud so they could be heard 'better' than other musician's songs. So we end up with crappy quality sound recordings. Rush Vapor Trails was released both ways, and with crappy little ear buds the 'loud' version is probably fine, some reviewers even preferred that version, but on good audio equipment the dynamic version sounds better. I like Skillet, but their Rise album is so distorted from loudness I can barely listen to it. I think Apple, for all their supposed quality, has gotten people used to listening to lousy sounding music on ear buds, and some people may even prefer it at this point. So I expect Apple would hardly think twice about getting rid of the 3.5 plug.

[Shane R]

Originally Posted by robko

Having said all that, I curse changes like the removal of a 3.5mm jack that reduces compatibility across devices. Sure you can maybe get an adapter, but that's just a pain.

I wish they'd use a connector that was compatible across all different types of devices - like USB-C.

But in the end it's moot. I think 3-5 years from now the idea of physically inserting a cable into a device to listen to audio will be as quaint as plugging a cable into a device to access the Internet is to most of us.

Sure, some do it, but wifi (wireless) is the way for most.