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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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For recreational use only.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 12 2018, @06:19PM (3 children)
i prefer cabled 3.5 mm ear buds.
however, sometimes i want to watcha movie on the big TV and not be bothgered by surroundings -or- bother the surrounding.
for this i cannot use a 3.5mm because the distance (>2m) is just too long.
nowadays, everything comes with a Bluetooth emitter. my intel (kodi) NUC has it and it works fine.
however, my "smart" phone also has bluetooth AND a 3.5mm jack.
so, why can the NUC not send the audio signal to the mobile phone which then sits beside me and transfers the audio to the 3.5mm jack and thru my 1.5m long cabled headphones?
thus for "short distance sources" i use 3.5mm and for anything further ... *sigh* / alas ... bluetooth-battery powered headphones.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Wednesday September 12 2018, @07:57PM
>the distance (>2m) is just too long
What do you mean? That's why they make extension cables - you can even get nice heavy-gauge well-shielded ones relatively cheaply. You may lose a tiny amount of power and introduce a tiny amount of noise, but not much. And you can virtually eliminate that if your headphones have a built-in volume control - just send the signal at high volume, and then crank it down at the headphones - line noise is unaffected by signal amplitude, so you can just drown it out with a louder signal.
The only reason to go cordless is if you're in a situation where cords are likely to get tangled or cut. Or, you know, "style".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 12 2018, @11:39PM (1 child)
It can, in principle. I have tried such a thing with Bluez on a laptop sitting next to me (rather than the phone), and latency is a bitch. I'm afraid the same situation is likely to apply to a phone. Could be okay for movies, just dial in the audio delay to make it work, but it's terrible for games, which is what I had in mind.
Whether the bluetooth stack on your phone bothers to support it is another question. Android up through and including 4.1 used Bluez, which supports it, but you had to do your own plumbing to get it from the bluetooth stack to the headphone jack. Later versions use a different bluetooth stack, which (through Kit-Kat) doesn't implement it at all. I understand as of Lollipop the bluetooth stack finally does support it, but it's apparently meant for some sort of automotive in-dash system, and not compiled into normal phone roms -- not sure if there's a low-hacking way to make it work on normal phones.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday September 13 2018, @03:11AM
How about skipping Bluetooth and its patchy support entirely? Just connect your phone to wifi and use a proper full-fledged network streaming protocol. Not always applicable, but if we're taking about a nearby NUC...