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PC World has an article on why USB-C has not been a viable alternative for the 3.5mm audio jack. Problems with USB-C include variable handling of digital to audio conversion, incompatible SOCs inside the cable, and non-standard analog-passthrough. In short, the cables which contain computers themselves are not standardized in behavior and the author's conclusion is that mobile devices must have 3.5mm jacks until the USB-C cable technology gets sorted out enough that they become usable.
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Bring Back the Headphone Jack: Why USB-C Audio Still Doesn't Work
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Can anyone remember when the times were not hard, and money not scarce?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 12 2018, @06:47AM (9 children)
Audio interfaces were basically figured out in the 1970s.
Analog for the win here. The headphone jack is the most straightforward solution to the problem of sending an audio signal a few feet. It's elegant. It can't fail. Obviously, we CAN'T LET THIS STAND. How much of tech industry consists of selling solutions to problems it created in the first place? It all feels like some carnival game to rip off the rubes at this point.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Subsentient on Wednesday September 12 2018, @06:58AM (2 children)
Agreed, analog audio works just fine. In the end, all speakers are analog at the end where you solder the two wires to the speaker connectors, so why bother with a digital interface? You're just degrading the audio quality by digitizing it into a compressed format and then converting it back to analog...
Oh, I know the answer why they're doing this. Money.
That's literally it. It has no advantages, and they know it.
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." -Jiddu Krishnamurti
(Score: 2) by Mykl on Thursday September 13 2018, @05:16AM (1 child)
To be fair, you'll always be dealing with a digital signal coming out of your phone. Whether you convert to analog before the 3.5mm jack or within your headphones is a bit moot.
That said, I much prefer having a headphone jack, as there are far fewer things that can go wrong with the headphones themselves.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday September 13 2018, @10:55AM
Plus, universality of the connector means you could totally connect your phone's audio output up to anything that takes sound input made in the past fifty years and it will bloody well work.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by KilroySmith on Wednesday September 12 2018, @07:15AM (5 children)
In a world where the signal in the phone is digital, there's no downside (and a lot of advantages) to transferring the signal to the headphones digitally.
Now, the problem is that everyone chooses a digital transmission protocol (Bluetooth) that doesn't have sufficient bandwidth to transfer the digital music losslessly. And, in many cases, doesn't fully support MP3 transmission over A2DP so your nicely compressed music on the phone gets decompressed, and recompressed with a horrible codec in order to transfer to your Bluetooth headset.
If the world would pull their collective heads out of their collective keisters and choose or create a better solution capable of 1.5 Mbps error-corrected audio streaming, wireless would be great. Oh, and make it connect easily, and every time, and require compatibility testing before it can be sold.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 12 2018, @10:32AM
so make the phone send either analog audio, or digital audio via the standard audio cable. and then you can decode the high bitrate signal in your headphones, if that's what you want.
I don't see why that should be a problem (coaxial cables are still being used for network connections, right?), and modern headphones will just do different things to the signal that is given to them.
my argument for analog headphones is that the headphones should last 20 years at a minimum if they're good quality. I already have good headphones.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 12 2018, @12:51PM
Parent said:
"In a world where the signal in the phone is digital, there's no downside (and a lot of advantages) to transferring the signal to the headphones digitally."
The rest of your post contradicted your first paragraph in a detailed manner!
Also, Bluetooth is a WIRELESS protocol. For a WIRED protocol extending a few feet, nothing is better than analog.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Wednesday September 12 2018, @02:05PM (2 children)
Sure there's a downside, based in the fact that the signal to your ears MUST be analog, ears don't speak digital.
So, at some point you need to turn that digital signal to analog, and a high quality DAC is moderately bulky and expensive - it requires non-miniaturizable analog components and has all sorts of electrical sensitivities that simply aren't relevant to pure-digital electronics. So where do you put that piece of moderately expensive electronics? Your choices are:
1) In your generally expensive music device, where a high-end DAC will increase the overall cost by a percent or two, or
2) In your generally cheap headphones, where even a mediocre DAC (plus supporting electronics) can easily double the price, while introducing tons of analog noise due to its comparatively low quality?
I'll pick (1) every time for corded applications, especially since minimal cheap cable shielding can almost completely prevent the accumulation of radio noise over the short distances involved.
(Score: 2) by KilroySmith on Thursday September 13 2018, @12:36AM (1 child)
In a world that drives the cost of cell phone components to zero, you will never get analog audio out of the phone that meets the quality standards of the golden-eared audiophile. Analog audio from the phone will be subject to the lowest-bid pressures of building 50,000,000 phones a year. As long as the phone can transfer your FLAC files digitally to your headset unmodified, it allows the golder-eared to pay for the headsets that meet their needs, while those with tin ears can get by with $20 headsets.
But, today, Bluetooth doesn't have the bandwidth to send FLAC to a headset.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 13 2018, @05:42PM
Your lowest cost audio amp argument doesn't apply to nice (expensive) phones like the iPhone.
They sell on a perception of quality.
And you hold hope that by buying expensive headphones you can have a quality signal... why not just buy a quality phone.
You have to pay for quality one way or another...