[Currawong]

Isn't there now a new, reversible USB connector anyway?
 
The usage case for an amp inside headphones is primarily wireless ones IMO. I think Jason's misgivings about the idea cover any device sold as being "portable". 

 

[CJG888]

But people will still want to be able to use their cans on aeroplanes, won't they?

 

[x838nwy]

Humm, I typically always nod in agreement with Jason's posts but I am not quite as dismissive about apple move to feed ear-/headphones with digital rather than good old analog.

To me, there are many potential advances that could be made by having the D/A conversion , amplification and transduction developed as a system. Maybe not for the high end but more for the low and especiallly midrange products.

For instance, noise cancellation is one obvious item where it's silly to start from analog signal for the music feed since it then has to go through A/D stage in order to feed the DSP.

You could argue that one could simply let the phone access the microphones signal and take care of the ANC but that still forces you to a single microphone / limited sensing mechanisms if you're stick to the old 4 lines analog connector.

Another aspect is using digital EQ in place of traditional passive tuning (screens / some of the pads characteristics...). Passive tuning or even active analog eq is so limited in comparison to what can be done in the digital domain. There again, digital eq can be just as nasty as analog one in terms of artifacts but it isn't inherently bad.

One interesting patent from Apple a year ago or so: an active bass equalization based on the effective seal of universal in ear (the earpod comes to mind as there really is no such thing as universal fit - dispite the marketing done at launch - at least not an optimal fit).

Maybe Jason's point is about the compromises of having the electronics packaged into the headphone. I can imagine the lightning connector being used in a different manner: it already has D/A built in converter now. What prevents apple from having A/D in there as well so that they can feed various sensors data back to the audio processing unit? Certainly, phone battery and horsepower is getting better by the minute, it's only a matter of time we get a lightning based Earpod with active equalization and noise cancellation.

My 2 cts. that is

.

Arnaud

Ps: about using the standard mic/stereo jack for ANC, it makes no sense anyhow. Phone recognizes the device as a headset, how can he decide to perform EQ. Conversely, one plugs a headset with in line mic (e.g closer to mouth than ear), phone tries to do anc and goes nowhere because it just does not work the way. Silly idea... Digital and a standard (lightning) connector is the way to go!

 
Hi Arnaud,
 
There's a lot to be said for DSP, but if one were to look at wireless headphones, it seems that since there are so few companies who actually have the expertise that covers the design and manufacture of transducers, DAC's and amplifiers that attempts have not yielded satisfying results. I understand that most wireless audio devices have to deal with protocols that may not have been conceived for the purposes of delivering high fidelity audio, but even in examples where audio-sepecific protocols are used (Senn RS220, aptX) results are less than pleasing and certainly do not come close to the performance of similarly priced wired headphones. The reason I compare lightning headphones to wireless ones is because they appear to differ only in the medium through which they obtain the digital data stream. This also brings us to a point that if one only aims only for mid/lo fi, then why not just go with bluetooth or even airplay? Any technology one cares to mention can be applied to these as well as lightning headphones (including DSP and ANC). Introducing a wired digital connection may yield some stability advantages, but one remains stuck with all other limitations of size, weight and integration of all the above.
 
The scope offered by integrating the conversion from a digital stream to diaphragm movement is quite an interesting one. I can see great potential in this approach at least in theory, more so than I do in acoustic wools and some vents. But in practice, results seem to be mostly agglomerations of individually designed modules presided over by some sort of corrective DSP in an effort to make everything okay. What they end up making is something that sound really odd.
 
So I guess my point is that potential for integration exists, but if it can be done, there'd be no reason to bother with the lighting (or any other) cable.
 
C

 

[arnaud]

Safari in ios ate my response, second time I get a screen freeze this week in the reply box. Talk about bleeding edge of technology, can't even handle that lol

 

[x838nwy]

Safari in ios ate my response, second time I get a screen freeze this week in the reply box. Talk about bleeding edge of technology, can't even handle that lol

Same here. Everytime i write a really good reply, Safari knows it and suicides itself from sheer awesomeness of the post.

 

[JohnnyCanuck]

Safari in ios ate my response, second time I get a screen freeze this week in the reply box. Talk about bleeding edge of technology, can't even handle that lol

 
I've had similar problems with Chrome.  I've always blamed the website, though.

 

[Zojokkeli]

   
I've had similar problems with Chrome.  I've always blamed the website, though.

 
I occasionally get all sorts of problems with Opera and Chrome too, it's the website.

 

[valiant66]

Quote:

 

The reason I compare lightning headphones to wireless ones is because they appear to differ only in the medium through which they obtain the digital data stream. This also brings us to a point that if one only aims only for mid/lo fi, then why not just go with bluetooth or even airplay? 

 
FWIW AptX (bluetooth) is still a lossy format. Airplay is capable of delivering full, uncompressed ALF or WAV data. Or Dolby/DTS 5.1 for that matter.

 

[valiant66]

IMHO, dropping of a 1/8" jack on an iPhone is inevitable, whether it will be within a year or a decade. For a lighting port? Maybe, as an interim step, especially if they want to get sensors on your head for their HealthKit/iWatch/etc. But the long-term goal is wireless. Wireless charging, wireless syncing, wireless payments, and... wireless headphones.

 
Hmm. Good point. The HealthKit aspect of headphones hadn't occurred to me. You stick earbuds into a place where they can accurately measure temperature, blood pressure and more. An even more compelling reason than "surround" sound to use a Lightning cable - there isn't much room in earbuds to fit a wireless radio, DSP chip, amp, etc. along with sensors. Put transducers and sensors in the earbuds, connect them to your iPhone with a Lightning cable, and do the heavy lifting there.
 
I think I'll withdraw my "Lightning for surround headphones" hypothesis. But I guess we won't have to wait long to find out...

 

[valiant66]

 

   
I've had similar problems with Chrome.  I've always blamed the website, though.

 
I occasionally get all sorts of problems with Opera and Chrome too, it's the website.

 
I use a Chrome extension called Lazarus. It's saved my deathless prose more than a couple of times. It may be available for other browsers too.
 
EDIT: Ah. Reading over the original post, it's Safari in iOS. I got nothin'… it happens to me too.

 

[Mach-X]

I have similar problems with Android. It won't let me space things out nor can I position the cursor to fix mistakes. Before you say get a better device, it's a nexus 7. However on my windows phone it works just like a desktop browser. Go figure.

 

[Baldr]

Yggdrasil, the Back Story Part 4 – The Home Theater Detour
 
So, in the early nineties I was trying to figure out what I wanted to be when I grew up again. DAC design had become unrewarding as the good building blocks were disappearing from the chip makers, new DACs were beginning to appear as elementary school science projects, due to the cookbook approach of the new “audio DACs”, and I was looking for a virgin territory for the high-end.
 
Home Theater – Perfect! The competition was produced from companies whose priorities were to produce equipment which adhered to Dolby technical standards – not to sound priorities which I had been honing over the last fifteen years or so at that time. At that time videophiles had laser disc based systems (DVDs had not yet appeared). Dolby pro-logic was the encode/decode standard of the day. The competing products were principally analog designs, and all had terrible UIs which required considerable attention to learn. So, I produced the Angstrom 200 HED (Home Entertainment Director) all digital surround sound decoder/stereo D/A converter. It had such an easy to use UI that you could set up the unit intuitively, all digital pro-logic decoding, and was by far and away the best sounding unit on the market. It won design awards, was amazingly well reviewed, and was ready for sale. The problem was that even though I had ponied my licensing fees , I had to await the appropriate licensor test and blessing; I was in a queue and it took a while to get through it. Lesson #1 was that licensed products are never released on my time, regardless of how much I have invested in the parts and how soon I need to turn my inventory. Not to mention how much my customers want it.
 
Lesson #2 was that high end audio dealers were almost never equipped to handle home theater customer support issues, other than take the equipment to the house, hook it up whether set up properly or not, collect the money, and leave. That left us to do the customer support. Bummer.
 
Lesson #3 was that there was a whole new crop of installers who had their own trade show who were really the main players in home theater. The customers would give a budget to the installer, and the installer would select and install the equipment. Totally changed the to whom marketing vector. The show was CEDIA, by the way, and I was the first of the old high end guard exhibitiing there.
 
So, AC-3 laser discs began to appear – the laser disc solution was to rf modulate a carrier - the first step of the Dolby Digital process was to demodulate the signal. There was a special purpose demodulator chip available to do just that. The problem was that there was no channel through which to buy them in the US. The only way was to send develop our own grey market channel for the parts (Japan or Hong Kong) that was quite an endeavor in the pre-internet era of telexes, and pre-phone deregulation era of very expensive overseas phone calls. Lesson #4 was that this whole home theater deal is really a big corporation's arena. I got the parts (some 6 months after all of the giants) – and came out with an AC-3 (Now Dolby Digital) adapter for the Angstrom 200 – then waited for Dolby to approve the product (Repeat Lesson #1) I was a year late, and my customers were pissed. Lesson #4 again. Somewhere along the way, DTS capability was added to the Angstrom 200 – I still cared about industry firsts.
 
About that time, DVDs and DVD players appeared. No more need for demodulators. Cheaper software. Time to come out with a cheaper model. The Angstrom 100 HED appeared, based on a Crystal Semiconductor Codec and a Zoran DSP engine. I now had a big HED and a little HED. (“So I got a little HED and it totally changed my perspective on home theater” - He'll never admit it but that was totally Jason's idea.)
 
Months later, Dolby approved the Angstrom 100 and it was released to a user base that largely already purchased other gear.
 
Shortly after that, the sold Angstrom 100s began to return – with blown up Crystal Semiconductor codecs. I called their engineering support. They insisted that my power supplies were improperly designed. I countered that they were the same power supplies I had used in several other Crystal Semiconductor designs. The returns continued to pile up. I continued to replace the parts until they called me admitting that the codecs they had already shipped me did not work well with my improperly designed power supplies and they were going to replace them with a different date code of parts. I kept on going with the new parts finally fixing the failing in the field units. Lesson #5 – If you can't afford a lawsuit, you are screwed. Lesson #6 – If you can afford a lawsuit, you are still screwed. It was too late – I was doomed. I shut it down. I lost a lot of money – but along the way I had still made more.
 
Let me count the ways why manufacturing to someone's licensed technologies suck.
 
a. You are doing all of the heavy lifting and taking all of the risk for your licensor.
 
b. You are entering into a crony based association where the licensor will always do what is best for him in his time.
 
c. You surrender certain freedoms – inability to ship pending licensor's approval, subject to licensor's priorities and other relationships.
 
Not to mention lessons #1 through 6 above.
 
So is Schiit going to do home theater??
 
Over my dead body.
 
When hell freezes over.
 
When shrimps learn to whistle.
 
I know, but just in case I was vague, NO.
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

[BirdManOfCT]

  Oh, and Yggy's digital filter? 18,000+ taps, running a proprietary algorithm based on a 1917 Western Electric paper on time-domain optimization (yes, nine-teen seven-teen, 1917), perfected by a Professor Emeritus of Mathematics at Iowa State (to get around the divide-by-zero problem) and implemented by a RAND Corp mathematician. 
 
The result? The biggest, baddest digital filter in the world. The only true closed-form digital filter that retains the original samples. 
 
Combine this with PCM and a ladder DAC, and forget "add the music to the noise, then filter out the noise" SDM approaches. 
 
In our opinion, of course...

Hopefully patented. Unless it's considered prior art.

 

[45longcolt]

Does anybody buying home theater these days care about sound? Other than having the boomiest sub? Thought the overarching goal was to hide the speakers in the walls/ceiling/under the carpet...
 
And, didn't know Baldr was a Leo Kottke fan...

 

[Currawong]

This is why Apple refused to have Flash on the iPhone and why they do everything themselves instead of use other people's tech. They learned their lesson the hard way in the '90s too.