[k-mcgrady]

Makes sense if it's for the exclusive content opportunities. I remember seeing a report when Kanye made his new album a Tidal exclusive and the number of users they got from that deal alone was staggering. The problem is that a lot of those users will cancel after their free trial but if they keep coming back for exclusives they'll a) want to stick around b) have no free trial so will pay for a month anyway and might stick around. Tidal also obviously has rights to high quality audio files - maybe Apple doesn't have that and it's something they want to do once they bring out the iPhone with lightning headphones.

[semi-extrinsic]

> high quality audio (...) once they bring out the iPhone with lightning headphones

... and you've lost me. I mean, the 3.5 mm jack solution is used by audiophiles for connecting headphones costing several iPhones to equipment costing dozens of iPhones. If it was in any way a problem for audio fidelity, these people would've gone for a new solution long ago.

[k-mcgrady]

I didn't say it was a problem but one of the theories for why they would make this change is audio quality. I believe it would allow you to build pre-amps and things into headphones.

[madeofpalk]

Removing the headphone jack doesn't magically make the lighting port more capable.

There already exists a range of audio equipment and headphones that use the lightning port on existing iOS devices.

[semi-extrinsic]

Yes, you would need at least a D/A converter and a preamp in the headphone. But why would you want to do this? Good headphone DACs/amps are relatively big and heavy and they run on batteries (yet another thing to charge). The Fiio E5 is a small headphone amp (no DAC), and it's still the size of an iPod Shuffle.

[wlesieutre]

And if your headphones are getting a digital signal instead of a 3.5mm jack, you can put the relatively big and heavy DAC in the headphones instead of using the dinky one built into the phone. The lightning port will also deliver more power than the 3.5mm jack.

A pair of headphones has space for something the size of a Fiio E5 (potentially several times that size), but there's no way Apple or anybody else is going to built that quality internal to a phone.

Earbuds won't have the space for that hardware, so I expect the phone will still have an onboard DAC and an analog output mode over the lightning connector for use with cheap/small lightning earbuds and to allow a passive lightning/3.5mm adapter.

EDIT: As an addendum, I'm expecting we'll see a lot of bluetooth headphones with the iPhone 7, following in the Apple Pencil's "plug into lightning to pair and charge" setup. Hopefully also using the wire for data while they're connected.

[k-mcgrady]

>> "they run on batteries"

I think that's the point of lightning - they can derive power through the port. As for size I think there's already a few products out there that manage it. I saw one reviewed a few weeks ago.

[dogecoinbase]

Audiophilia has nothing to do with actual sound quality.

[semi-extrinsic]

OK, substitute "audiophiles" with "recording engineers" then. The music you listen to will have passed through a bunch of 1/4" analog stereo jacks at the studio where it was recorded.

[tedmiston]

> ... Kanye made his new album a Tidal exclusive and the number of users they got from that deal alone was staggering. The problem is that a lot of those users will cancel after their free trial ...

Exactly. If. I tried it and canceled once the The Life of Pablo was on Spotify a little over a month later. Their "growth hacking" is not sustainable and their user base is fragile. Jay is smart to flip while Tidal hits a peak from the chain of major releases from its biggest artists.

Also, the average music fan doesn't care about audiophile-level sound quality. I think they're just trying to emphasizing that point for differentiation since Spotify has a stronger catalog in general.

[kstrauser]

If the headphone jack rumors are true, I'd bet it has nothing to do with audio quality and is more about the limited usefulness of the old jack. It plays music fine, but has no support for microphones or controls (like the fast forward / pause button on Apple earbuds) without weird nonstandard hacks (like the extra ring on the jack of Apple earbuds).

[sjwright]

If the headphone jack rumors are true, it will come down to reclaiming space inside the phone and possibly also waterproofing.

As long as Apple ships a small adapter with the phone, I have no problem with it.