Battle of Google Pixel Headphone Dongles

[amirm]

Great! So how many new dongles will you have in for testing now? 3?

Correct.

 

[siluah]

Correct.

I'm excited for this. Since the Apple one will be so easy to get a hold of (BestBuy etc.) I am hoping the quality will be better than the Pixel v2 dangle.

 

[derp1n]

I'm excited for this. Since the Apple one will be so easy to get a hold of (BestBuy etc.) I am hoping the quality will be better than the Pixel v2 dangle.

Apple care a lot more about quality than most Android vendors... so I'm expecting good things.

 

[amirm]

The Apple one is supposed to arrive today....

 

[Timbo2]

The Apple one is supposed to arrive today....

If you try it let us know what sample rates it supports.

Thanks in advance!

 

[amirm]

Will do.

 

[duo8]

Curious about the Apple dongle as well.
Do you also plan to test the Razer THX dongle?

 

[amirm]

Do you also plan to test the Razer THX dongle?

Yes, that is another one I got.

 

[ILovePhonon]

That's good to know as the Air 1 is much cheaper....

Also works on my old iPhone 5S, but if you can get a used iPod Touch, that will be even cheaper

 

[holtmann]

Bought the new Apple USB C to 3.5mm adapter today (meant for the new iPad pro, but do not own one).
For testing I plugged it into my Android Phone (MI 5s). Some first observations:
1) Dongle is detected as USB audio device
2) Using standard Android Audio (e.g. Spotify) maximum volume is very very low. Much lower than using the Google Pixel Adapter.
3) Using a dedicated USB Audio Player (e.g. Neutron) there is only distorted noise as output.
Supported frequencies displayed in the Neutron Hardware settings are 44.1 and 48khz.
I assume the dongle works correct on an iPad Pro (regarding maximum volume) and a low digital gain is set/used on Android. The distorted noise output when using USB audio directly however it's strange.

 

[Timbo2]

Bought the new Apple USB C to 3.5mm adapter today (meant for the new iPad pro, but do not own one).
For testing I plugged it into my Android Phone (MI 5s). Some first observations:
1) Dongle is detected as USB audio device
2) Using standard Android Audio (e.g. Spotify) maximum volume is very very low. Much lower than using the Google Pixel Adapter.
3) Using a dedicated USB Audio Player (e.g. Neutron) there is only distorted noise as output.
Supported frequencies displayed in the Neutron Hardware settings are 44.1 and 48khz.
I assume the dongle works correct on an iPad Pro (regarding maximum volume) and a low digital gain is set/used on Android. The distorted noise output when using USB audio directly however it's strange.

You can try HibyMusic which also provides a native USB implementation and see if that works any better. It is free, but when I last tried it a little bit buggy. I settled on paying for Onkyo HF Player.

It's disappointing that the Apple product may not work well on Android devices.

 

[holtmann]

Thanks for pointing out HibyMusic. It works with low maximum volume in standard mode. Turning on direct USB access (HQ USB Audio) results in the same distorted sound/noise as using the others apps.
I am really wondering what kind of "trickery" apple is using here. To my knowledge an USB device can not query the host info by standard (so it can't now if it's plugged into an iPad or Android device). So I suspect the dongle needs a cooperating driver on the host, which is only on iOS devices.

 

[holtmann]

Someone at XDA measured the max output voltage. It's 80mV on Android - so low output volume is no suprise. here is the post on xda:
#254

 

[wiggum]

The Apple one is supposed to arrive today....

Did you receive the Apple dongle?

 

[amirm]

Did you receive the Apple dongle?

I did. I will review it very soon.