[pls2halp]

The Apple dongle is just an external DAC(someone put the circuit in a phone) and costs $10US.

[syrgian]

It also seems to be unforgivably low quality: https://www.apple.com/shop/reviews/MMX62AM/A/lightning-to-35...

[raverbashing]

Yes, however there are several issues in having it in a dongle instead of inside the phone

You're needlessly converting to 'lightning protocol' and back. DAC will be lower quality than an internal one (because of size and power constraints and the fact that you need one internal and one external)

[wilsonnb]

An external DAC can be of the same quality as the internal one, worse, or better.

According to this site, http://www.kenrockwell.com/apple/lightning-adapter-audio-qua..., Apple's dongle is roughly the same as the internal DACs on iPads and iPhones.

Generic dongles purchased from Amazon can be expected to have lower quality DAC's, but most people that want to cheap out on something that only costs 9 dollars probably aren't using good enough headphones or speakers to care.

People that really care about audio quality can purchase something like this, https://www.amazon.com/AudioQuest-DragonFly-Red-Headphone-Am..., which is higher quality than what you will find in any smartphone.

[raverbashing]

Thanks, that was surprising!

[emsy]

In reality those constraints don't have any humanly discernable impact on the quality. Plus the part about the lightning protocol makes no sense whatsoever.

Here's an idea: Try blind testing 10 songs or so and see if you can figure out which one is played from the adapter and which one isn't. I bet you won't hear the difference.

[snvzz]

The real issue is the extra item to carry and plug.

Headphones -> headphone jack in device is sensible. A dongle isn't.

[emsy]

I have an iPhone 7. In reality even that isn't an issue. You can keep the dongle attached to your headphones and it will stick safely to it.

I would really like to know how many people who find issue with the dongle have day-to-day experience with a headphone jack-less device. My bigger concern is that headphone jacks will vanish from headphones.

[solarkraft]

Because I have broken all my headphones and then my phone's audio jack I am trying out the dongly life. So far it hasn't been that bad, but I suspect that there will be situations in which I'll want to charge and have an audio device connected.

[emsy]

I dislike Apples love for dongles, but the headphone donglegate is mainly a constructed problem by people that just want to rage about something. Sure, it sucks that you can't use your headphones while charging but in reality I had this problem exactly once in a year of usage. There are actual problems with modern smartphones and iPhones in particular but the headphone jack is a ridiculously propped up issue.

[raverbashing]

> Plus the part about the lightning protocol makes no sense whatsoever.

Yes it does, unless the port has an analog audio channel

It's extra hardware that has to be on the dongle (at the expense of everything else) - for Audio I'm gessing it's USB https://www.chipworks.com/about-chipworks/overview/blog/syst...

> Try blind testing 10 songs or so and see if you can figure out which one is played from the adapter

Would be an interesting test, I would begin by checking the max volume allowed

[solarkraft]

> Yes it does, unless the port has an analog audio channel

Then you'd have an internal DAC. Apple is extremely greedy with space, but a DAC/amp isn't large. The dongle has more available space. The sound is digital before being converted either way, the "lighting protocol" won't hurt the quality unless they lossily compress, which I doubt.

[krzat]

I was using something similiar for my Siemens SX1. Who would have though that this 15 years old phone was equipped with such next-gen technology.