Quickie: Apple iPhone Lightning Headphone Adapter

[SIY]

I know that Amir ran a review of a companion product, so I guess I shouldn't be too surprised. I was doing measurements on two interfaces meant to allow musicians to use the iPhone as a recording setup but with high quality external mics. While I was doing this, I thought it would be worth seeing what the baseline is. So I played a couple of .wav files through the iPhone and adapter and measured the results. Just a couple measurements, but enough to convince me that you don't lose much going to a bare-bones cheapie DAC and headphone amp. I still despise the Apple ecosystem (the machinations I had to do for simple file transfer tasks were infuriating compared to the ease of Windows) but I can't complain about this performance.

 

[tktran303]

Yes that’s a $9 dac on a cable...

Thanks for the measurements. Confirms what I thought. In fact Ken Rockwell that camera blogger took measurements of it a couple of years ago.
https://www.kenrockwell.com/apple/lightning-adapter-audio-quality.htm

He’a right when he says that crApple probably has a bigger R&D budget for their audio subdivision (and can afford to lure the most talented engineers) than many audio-only companies. So they know what they’re doing.

For instances, did you know that many speaker companies don’t have their own anechoic chamber, nor do Stereophile, Soundstage etc?
But Apple does. Just for their various Macs with the teeny tiny 2” twoofers, or to design that damn Apple Music-only playing Homepod?

I always had a dedicated digital audio player, but never an iPod. And then the iPhone 4 came out with a 1 ohm output impedance, solid 1V RMS output, a frequency response flat as a pancake and other parameters eg THD, IMD, crosstalk close enough to acoustic transparency for 16bit audio:

http://en.goldenears.net/7089

It was them I jumped on the smartphone bandwagon..

That was almost 9 years ago...and almost overnight Creative died, Microsoft Zune faultered, Iriver had to rebrand themselves, and go upmarket as Astell & Kern...

 

[Veri]

That multi-tone though. That's 130dB of free range performance between IMD and peak signal very good!
I guess there might be a handicap because it's not outputting 2V like the other DACs measured?

 

[Frank Dernie]

I still despise the Apple ecosystem (the machinations I had to do for simple file transfer tasks were infuriating compared to the ease of Windows)

I know what you mean but I ran both Mac and PC systems from 1985 and felt that the inconveniences were because Microsoft who were crap - MS-DOS was pathetic, even compared to CP/M. It was always easier for a Mac system to read Microsoft format files than the other way round.
Don't want to get into a standard Microsoft v Apple slagging match though - I used both.

 

[SIY]

I used both as well, but Apple has decided that doing simple things like file transfer ought to be difficult. Trying to get music files from my phone to my laptops (I have a PC and a MacBook Pro) or be able to transfer my ripped CDs onto my iPhone become massive headaches. On my PC, it's just drag and drop.

At some point I'll break down and buy a third party music player for my phone- iTunes seems to be at the root of many of my problems. It is absolutely dreadful software.

 

[Frank Dernie]

I used both as well, but Apple has decided that doing simple things like file transfer ought to be difficult. Trying to get music files from my phone to my laptops (I have a PC and a MacBook Pro) or be able to transfer my ripped CDs onto my iPhone become massive headaches. On my PC, it's just drag and drop.

At some point I'll break down and buy a third party music player for my phone- iTunes seems to be at the root of many of my problems. It is absolutely dreadful software.

The PC version of iTunes is indeed rubbish.
I believe the difficulty in moving music files was introduced to pacify the music industry people in order to get them to sell music through iTunes, drag and drop means theft is easy and they were very sensitive to that back those Napster days.

 

[SIY]

Yeah, for people like me who have zero music purchased through iTunes, it's evident that they want me to be punished.

I find the iPhone, MacBook, and PC versions of iTunes to be equally horrible.

 

[tktran303]

They make it difficult to drag and drop, but easy to buy. Hmm, coincidence?

Luckily for all of us, iTunes is soon going the way of the dodo...

 

[Frank Dernie]

Yeah, for people like me who have zero music purchased through iTunes, it's evident that they want me to be punished.

I find the iPhone, MacBook, and PC versions of iTunes to be equally horrible.

They make it difficult to drag and drop, but easy to buy. Hmm, coincidence?

Luckily for all of us, iTunes is soon going the way of the dodo...

I have used iTunes to rip CDs on a Mac since the iPod came out and it never crashed and always worked. I do not buy music from iTunes or use their streaming service.
I use it to sync my phone too, though that side has got steadily worse since they want me to use the "cloud".
It used to be the best thing about having an iPhone rather than Android IMO.
I don't recall it ever crashing on a Mac.
iTunes is being still further ruined, in terms of keeping my own data on my own hard drive rather than their Cloud by being split in three in its next release, PC users will be delighted to find it lives on in the PC world

 

[SIY]

I have used iTunes to rip CDs on a Mac

Of course, my Mac doesn't have a CD drive... They really really want to prevent me from controlling my own files. I was just testing a recording interface made for iOS, and in order to be able to play the files from my iPhone, I had to record them, email them to myself, then play them from the email. Could not get iTunes to see them or play them. That's how I got the measurements shown in this post.

 

[GrimSurfer]

Apple doesn't care what you do with your files. They're in the money making business.

You can buy a Mac USB CD drive.

 

[SIY]

Apple doesn't care what you do with your files. They're in the money making business.

You can buy a Mac USB CD drive.

They apparently DO care if it involves me doing things that will not make them money. Like moving my WAV files from computer to phone or vice versa, changing computers and transferring files that I did not purchase from them to or from my phone...

 

[GrimSurfer]

I have used iTunes to rip CDs on a Mac since the iPod came out and it never crashed and always worked. I do not buy music from iTunes or use their streaming service.
I use it to sync my phone too, though that side has got steadily worse since they want me to use the "cloud".
It used to be the best thing about having an iPhone rather than Android IMO.
I don't recall it ever crashing on a Mac.
iTunes is being still further ruined, in terms of keeping my own data on my own hard drive rather than their Cloud by being split in three in its next release, PC users will be delighted to find it lives on in the PC world

There is a strong bias towards the cloud with Mac products. I can't figure out whether the company wants to make money selling its cloud services, enhance security by taking data off devices, or facilitating its access to data for a third party. Likely all three.

I exclusively rip CDs to disk and have never had a problem with using iTunes. The software split has the potential of improving the music player and services... but Apple has never taken an active interest in high fidelity sound so the best we'll likely see is the status quo.

 

[GrimSurfer]

They apparently DO care if it involves me doing things that will not make them money. Like moving my WAV files from computer to phone or vice versa, changing computers and transferring files that I did not purchase from them to or from my phone...

I think we're saying the same thing... it's about the money. Apple is not going to spend money to give you things that it doesn't care about. Nor will it spend money simply to rob you of pleasure.

Apple spends money to develop solutions that are either marketable of have the potential to generate revenue. That's how it got to be one of the most profitable companies in the world.

This is business, not charity for audio buffs, as irritating as that may be...

 

[SIY]

I exclusively rip CDs to disk and have never had a problem with using iTunes. T

Neither have I except when I want to start moving things around between devices. Or change computers. Or generate test signals and files for playback. All of which I routinely do, and it's easy with Windows -unless my iPhone is involved...

 

[Biblob]

What is the output voltage of the lightning dongle?

 

[SIY]

About 1V.

 

[Biblob]

A bit to low for most amps, I assume?

 

[SIY]

A bit to low for most amps, I assume?

Sure. But it will, of course, depend on the amp, how loud you play music, and whether or not there's any other amplification. In my system, for example, I have a choice of a Didden-modified DCX2496 or a miniDSP 2x4HD. The former can be driven to full output with the 1V, the latter will fall 6dB short. I have never found that I couldn't get things uncomfortably loud with the latter, so for me, it's not a dig deal.

 

[tktran303]

6dB less than 2V, or the difference between 2 speakers and 1 speaker...