Review: Apple vs Google USB-C Headphone Adapters

[cassist]

Does anyone have information about performance of the Apple adapters on an Android device (i.e. Pixel 3)? I've heard about volume being an issue.

Has anyone run power consumption tests as well?

 

[amirm]

Has anyone run power consumption tests as well?

I can run that but we need to decide what load resistance to test with.

 

[maxxevv]

The most commonly seen being 16, 32, 150, 300. So, its probably one or all of these ?

 

[amirm]

Certainly not all of it. I have to install and drive each one separately and then measure power. It is a lot of work to run a full matrix. I can do one value so you all pick one. Maybe it will be representative of the rest.

 

[derp1n]

AtomicBob would do them all.

 

[cassist]

32 is probably more real-world indicative compared to 300, but if there were two reference loads maybe you can determine quiescent power draw as well.

Personally, I would give up a little SNR for half the power consumption on the go, so this information would be really useful to know.

 

[Blumlein 88]

32 is probably more real-world indicative compared to 300, but if there were two reference loads maybe you can determine quiescent power draw as well.

Personally, I would give up a little SNR for half the power consumption on the go, so this information would be really useful to know.

Yes for on the go phones I'd say 32 ohms is a good choice.

 

[Dana reed]

Makes sense since these are single chip devices so they had to use one with lightning support or one that could work with a lightning interface chip.

So has anyone figured out how to connect a lightning DAC to a PC? Is there lightning interfaces you can add that work plug and play?

I think the easiest would be to try to get ahold of an iphone and then just drive it as a Roon endpoint as someone else suggested. I've gotten that to work with mine, but I don't have an audio analyzer...

 

[amirm]

Sounds good and will do....

 

[vert]

I'll try it with USB Audio Player Pro next week if I can and report. UAPP comes with a special driver for audio which supersedes the Android driver, so the issue shouldn't appear, as long as UAPP "sees" the dongle as a DAC.

So I got to test the Apple dongle on Android with USB Audio Player Pro. It doesn't work, UAPP doesn't recognize it and only electronic noise is heard. First time the UAPP driver failed me, had so far it had worked flawlessly with two DACs and two USB mics.
The dongle worked fine, sounding very good, I would say a bit better than the headphone out, with the default Android driver, but volume was reduced by 20-25% compared to an already not very powerful output on my Xperia phone, so it isn't going to be very useful.

 

[ripvw]

Recently upgraded my iPhone SE (which has a conventional headphone jack) to the iPhone 8 Plus which of course uses the lightning jack for headphone use. The lightning dongle works great with my 22 ohm Etymotic ER3SE earphones. Guess I can still use the Topping NX4 DSD with my 6th gen iPad and its headphone jack...

note the lightning dongle was tested here:

https://www.kenrockwell.com/apple/lightning-adapter-audio-quality.htm

 

[Roen]

Recently upgraded my iPhone SE (which has a conventional headphone jack) to the iPhone 8 Plus which of course uses the lightning jack for headphone use. The lightning dongle works great with my 22 ohm Etymotic ER3SE earphones. Guess I can still use the Topping NX4 DSD with my 6th gen iPad and its headphone jack...

note the lightning dongle was tested here:

https://www.kenrockwell.com/apple/lightning-adapter-audio-quality.htm

Uh......
USB 3 CCK + USB-A to USB 2.0 Micro-B cable means you can still use the DAC of the NX4 as well with your iPad.

 

[Roen]

USB-C Dongles are such a crapshoot in interoperability.

 

[bakker_be]

USB-C Dongles are such a crapshoot in interoperability.

That's because the standard is anything but ...

 

[wiggum]

That's because the standard is anything but ...

The standard is fine. There are 2 options for audio through USB-C socket. One is analog(separate pins for that) and digital audio as usual. Not all smartphones support both of them.

 

[bakker_be]

The standard is fine. There are 2 options for audio through USB-C socket. One is analog(separate pins for that) and digital audio as usual. Not all smartphones support both of them.

Indeed, but the standard doesn't include a way for the consumer to identify what option has been implemented, other than trial and error after the purchase.

 

[tomli747]

I can confirm that this Apple dongle will not work with Onkyo HF player.
But my Sony Xperia XZ premium can recognize it, not bit perfect tho.

 

[yue]

Lightening dongle performs similarly compared to the USB-C. The chips they use are different, but this is due to different port logic (usb-c vs lightening). The audio pipelines are similar.

On the other hand, iPhones with a headphone jack (such as my iPhone 5C) performs even better than the dongles. but with SINAD better than -100db, it's already fully transparent, and you won't hear the difference between the two.

 

[JJB70]

I have just bought a DAP again. My Sony smartphone won't last forever and I am resigned to the fact that when it needs to be replaced whatever comes next probably won't have a headphone jack. My work issue IPhone 8 has a dongle and it's a pain in the backside. I had an old Pioneer DAP but when I dusted it off and charged it up the screen had died. I saw a dealer off loading the Shanling m3s and bought one. Very nicely made, compact device and the volume goes way higher than my Sony smartphone. However its a bit of a backwards step really.

 

[vitalii427]

Archimago also measured it: http://archimago.blogspot.com/2018/01/measurements-apples-lightning-to-35mm.html

note the lightning dongle was tested here:

https://www.kenrockwell.com/apple/lightning-adapter-audio-quality.htm