| I'll mention since I didn't see a /s, there are certainly environments and use cases when self-powered headphones would be convenient. But there are also many many circumstances where the last thing you want is self-powered, radio-driven, digital headphones. Some of the concerns that would make this not work for me, personally:
- integrated rechargeable batteries (nonremovable)
- radio interference with sensitive recording paths
- de facto compression
- the necessity of integrating your amp into a miniature form factor Sound recording and review and critical listening in environments where you don't have plug-in ('mains') power on hand, possibly for months at a time, and need absolutely uncolored access to your recordings, often with high quality amps... ...these are very different from consumer convenience listening e.g. while commuting or sitting at a desk. There's room for both in the marketplace happily... ...and need for both. So I am among those who think a trend towards dropping analog microjacks is truly terrible. The case for phones is 'OK' but the more they become both a model e.g. for light-weight laptops, or laptop replacements themselves (e.g. in 'phablet' or pad format) the more risk there is of innovating us into a very limited corner (in which a lot of battery life is spent on mandatory DRM no less...) |
And DRM is irrelevant as long as an analog adapter exists.