GeekNights Monday - Headphone Jacks and iPhones

MrPeriod

Tonight on GeekNights, in light of the most recent rumor of Apple dropping the old TRS 1/8" headphone jack (the pursuit of which being not without precedent), we talk about headphone jacks (or phone jacks), the importance and history of analog signalling on the universally adopted TRS/TRRS/TRRRS/TRRetc... standards, and the nuances of where to place the smart parts of your devices.

In other news, we're both looking into new HTPCs, Amazon delivery drones are more real than you realize, Formula E drops the humans, and corporations are trying to add advertisements to Unicode.

Don't forget to check out our Patreon, and be sure to listen to the show after the credits. I'll be waiting in... Rym's corner.

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MATATAT

I have Bluetooth Bose headphones so this doesn't really affect me much, and really I only ever use the packaged Apple headphones when I ever use wired headphones. But it does kinda suck that it would randomly segregate a large number of headphones or require an adapter.

okeefe

I would consider a move to bluetooth if this happens. It's not like I have expensive headphones, but who wants a converter sticking out of their phone? And maybe someone (Apple?) will step up with decent bt headphones.

Matt

The Formula E development is exciting. This is not only a way to perfect the algorithms, as pointed out during the show, but this also provides an industry that can keep the super-high speed, yet deadly, car technology safe. Then once the algorithms are perfect, we can create the 200mph lane on the highway.

Josh Bytes

Luke Burrage

So if headphones plug into the Lightning port, they could suck as much power as they wanted. Now there is just a little button thing for volume, play/pause, and a microphone on the cable. With unlimited power, you could have fun things like:

- More powerful headphones, or speakers that can draw power to be much louder, without needing extra batteries.
- Bright LEDs built into the earpods, that pulse along with the music you are listening to. You could set different color pulses depending on what kind of thing you are listening to, to communicate your music taste to other people without them hearing.
- Headphones with Google Glass-like display that could swing down in front of your eyes.
- Headphones with touch-sensitive surfaces on the headband, like on the side of Google Glass.
- LED displays on the cable switches, to show what track is playing, or what is up next.

Of course, these could all be possible using the existing Lightning port, but removing the TRRS port would force people to buy Lighting heaphones/earpods, and then these extra features would be used by the third party sellers to sell to this new market.

Along with inductive charging (which I'm LOVING with my Apple Watch), this could make the iPhone 7 a compelling product.

Apreche

Good ideas!

SuperPichu

Luke Burrage said:

So if headphones plug into the Lightning port, they could suck as much power as they wanted. Now there is just a little button thing for volume, play/pause, and a microphone on the cable. With unlimited power, you could have fun things like:

- More powerful headphones, or speakers that can draw power to be much louder, without needing extra batteries.
- Bright LEDs built into the earpods, that pulse along with the music you are listening to. You could set different color pulses depending on what kind of thing you are listening to, to communicate your music taste to other people without them hearing.
- Headphones with Google Glass-like display that could swing down in front of your eyes.
- Headphones with touch-sensitive surfaces on the headband, like on the side of Google Glass.
- LED displays on the cable switches, to show what track is playing, or what is up next.

Of course, these could all be possible using the existing Lightning port, but removing the TRRS port would force people to buy Lighting heaphones/earpods, and then these extra features would be used by the third party sellers to sell to this new market.

Along with inductive charging (which I'm LOVING with my Apple Watch), this could make the iPhone 7 a compelling product.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but couldn't you do the pulsing LEDs and touch sensitive thing now with TRRS? If you can add buttons to the headphone then all that is necessary to do anything else (bandwidth permitting) is clever programming.

Luke Burrage

You are wrong

The problem with TRRS is simply the lack of pins or channels. You can get power out of the headphone jack (plug in power) but then you can't get stereo sound. Or you can get the power, but then the mic won't work. All kinds of things like that.

The signal you send back to the iphone from the mic/switch is always an analogue signal, which is then converted back into digital inside the phone. It's really finicky, and there is no way to signal "We have a microphone"... you have to rely on the phone itself testing the resistance between the ground and mic contacts (the second R and the S) and deciding if that "feels" like a mic or nothing or something else.

It takes more than just clever programming. And even if it did just take being clever, that doesn't lead to loads of companies making really complex products. It needs to be a standard, and a cheap and easy standard to implement.

With Lightning (or USB C) you can draw as much power as you need or is available, AND get stereo sound, and mic input, and data out for a display, and data back in from the controls. USB C will be free, Lightning will cost money. But if Apple requires Lightning headphones, there will be a big market to tap into, so the non-free will be worth it. Once all Android phones have USB C, there will be a market for "Smart Headphone", which will probably work with Lightning ports with an adapter, a swappable cable, or just have a Lightning version and a USB C version.

muppet

I switched back to iPhone when I went back to Mac. It's a convenience when syncing, but I hate everything else about it. Too locked down. Looking forward to a new Galaxy when upgrade time comes.

I like everything about iPhone except the stubbornly vanilla interface that pretends adding groupings to sequential icons counts as user customizability.

The potential neat stuff over the Lightning port sounds nice and all, but mostly cosmetic. I don't mind the "streamlined" experience on desktop OS X and far prefer it to Windows especially since Microsoft went insane around 8.1, but on a handheld I really should be able to tailor the interface for maximum utility, which is a personal thing.

But that's a tangent. :-)

Really this is yet another iteration of Apple's "Look at the cool stuff we can do when we lock you in!" market strategy. Meh.

SuperPichu

Luke Burrage said:

You are wrong

The problem with TRRS is simply the lack of pins or channels. You can get power out of the headphone jack (plug in power) but then you can't get stereo sound. Or you can get the power, but then the mic won't work. All kinds of things like that.

The signal you send back to the iphone from the mic/switch is always an analogue signal, which is then converted back into digital inside the phone. It's really finicky, and there is no way to signal "We have a microphone"... you have to rely on the phone itself testing the resistance between the ground and mic contacts (the second R and the S) and deciding if that "feels" like a mic or nothing or something else.

It takes more than just clever programming. And even if it did just take being clever, that doesn't lead to loads of companies making really complex products. It needs to be a standard, and a cheap and easy standard to implement.

With Lightning (or USB C) you can draw as much power as you need or is available, AND get stereo sound, and mic input, and data out for a display, and data back in from the controls. USB C will be free, Lightning will cost money. But if Apple requires Lightning headphones, there will be a big market to tap into, so the non-free will be worth it. Once all Android phones have USB C, there will be a market for "Smart Headphone", which will probably work with Lightning ports with an adapter, a swappable cable, or just have a Lightning version and a USB C version.

Interesting, I kind of figured there was an issue like that

InvaderREN

Nice.

Headphones that displayed the album art of the song you are listening to could be interesting. Finally putting to rest the age old question 'What are you listening to?'

But done in a cool way. The LCD display would at least have to be circular.

Ikatono

If you had a separate power source on the headphones you could probably do a lot of that stuff. Active circuitry on the headphone side would allow for a lot. You could send digital info through an audio and mic line at frequencies above ~25kHz and just lowpass it out if you cared. With some really good engineering work you could possibly send power by raising the voltage on one line, but using that for power while simultaneously extracting the audio would almost certainly not be worth the effort. Plus you'd need to be absolutely certain that the headphones had this feature or you'd fry shit left and right.

Luke Burrage

I don't think the motivating factor for Apple is locking people in. That's a side effect of them not waiting for standards to catch up.

Lightning ports ar far superior to the 30 pin standard they had before (in my life) and is way better than USB has been up until, maybe, USB C, even if that is coming out now. Apple jut isn't interested in waiting for a connector to become a standard first, and then start using it. They just want the better connection in their defies ASAP, and that normally means people who buy Apple stuff get the benefits three years early.

Which is fine for me! Better connectors now? Sign me up!

I only use Apple ear pods anyway. If my next phone used Lighting not TRRS headphone jack, it wouldn't impact my life at all (as long as I can still charge and listen via headphones t the same time) and the benefits could come long in all sorts of cool eyes I don't yet know.

muppet

I can't edit now but I realized I said I hate everything about iPhone but the synching and then contradicted myself in the next paragraph. That was just unconsidered hyperbole. Bleh. The only thing I dislike is the lack of customizability in the interface.

I don't think the majority of Apple's proprietary connectors have been adopted in other products that aren't Apple accessories, have they? FireWire, but not Thunderbolt, etc?

Rym

Thunderbolt is a general standard. Intel PCs will support it.

SWATrous

Scott is right that Bluetooth headphones are somewhat subpar in terms of audio (or a lot subpar depending on level of audioanality) but the convenience is often so worth the hit. A Bluetooth headset with noise cancelling is the best thing I've bought in terms of audio in a long time, and makes not having to deal with humans at work fucking amazing, good thing to have while working alone in the shop with loud equipment where you can block the annoyingly loud, sustained, whirring of spindles and dust collectors; and it even makes commercial air travel pretty painless with the tuning out of jet engines mixed with no wires getting tangled mixed with keeping your phone in your pocket (except when your un-tetherd phone gets left in the seatback and it takes 2 hours to get a phone out of a lockbox that you watched the gate clerk put it into.)

So I'm a bit pro-bluetooth nowadays, and I imagine that in due time the quality will improve with the explosions of wireless speakers.

That said, when I do use the Level Overs with the audio jack to my phone or whatever, the sound is worse! It's got lots of noise! If I'm bluetooth and with active cancellation, I don't hear any white noise or anything unless its othewise already dead silent in the room then it kicks in regardless of ANC or not, from just being 'on'

So I'm wondering if running little amps and other gizmos on the headphones will really be that much better than a good bluetooth setup (especially if the standard improves over time) or if it just introduces similar points of potential noise or other interference with the sound. If say I'm going to a digital signal to the phones and relying on my headphones to do the translating (like a BT one does now) you'll likely need to spend a lot more for equivalent 'pure, clean' sound that's been well designed, than you would with a simple analogue set with great drivers and no-nonsense. Right?

'Beacuase' at that point I'd just rock BT and go wireless over wired.

Luke Burrage

Bluetooth sucks so bad. Even if the audio quality is good enough, the latency kills me! In my car, it lags almost a second. That's waaaaay too slow. When I hit pause or play or skip and nothing happens immediately, it just feels broken or wrong.

Wired headphones would always be immediate. And they could draw power for noise cancelling too. And everything else.

Matt

My wife got a set of LG Tone bluetooth earbuds for Christmas 2 years ago - http://amzn.to/1PuTKw6. She never touched them, so I started using them after a few months, and I really do like them. I can see some people complaining about putting something around your neck, but I don't mind it at all.

There does seem to be a wide array of cool new features you could put into wired headphones, as Luke pointed out. Lights on headphones could help with basic safety features like running or biking at night. This is much more useful than my previous experience with lights on headphones: I remember when StarCraft 2 launched and a company marketed a headset with tri-color LEDs that would change color based on what was happening in the game. Such useful information to stick on the side of your head where you can't see it!

muppet

I use Bluetooth at work because the cord aggravates me in my workflow. It doesn't have any latency and only a few songs seem to suffer a slight quality drop. I know the specs say otherwise but I can't hear enough difference for it to bother me. I need to keep more batteries around though and it drains my tablet.

SuperPichu

muppet said:

I use Bluetooth at work because the cord aggravates me in my workflow. It doesn't have any latency and only a few songs seem to suffer a slight quality drop. I know the specs say otherwise but I can't hear enough difference for it to bother me. I need to keep more batteries around though and it drains my tablet.

I agree wholeheartedly, as long as your headphones use aptX quality isn't really a problem.

Matt

Oh and let's not forget using the phone at the gym. The bluetooth is infinitely useful! I like to listen to music and use an app to track workouts when lifting weights, and also watch Netflix while on cardio machines. These are all situations where you really don't want a cord. It's a recipe for your phone hitting the floor, which I only avoided for many years by taking great care.

muppet

I have a very similar set to what Matt has. Mine are unbranded but say "aptX" on them.

muppet

I just realized they're USB chargeable so my batteries claim was nonsense. I'm going senile.

MATATAT

I've read a lot of reviews of bluetooth headphones when I was first looking at them and there was a lot about the latency. But I've literally never had an issue with that. So I'm not sure how it ends up occurring.

muppet

I think it may depend on the "host" device. I've never experienced any noticeable control or audio latency from my Galaxy Tab 4, but it's also possible that others are just more sensitive to it than I am.

I have noticed that sometimes the controls seem to "sleep" if I don't use them for an extended period, and then I may have to, for example, hit "pause" twice. That's rare, though.

Coldguy

Tek syndicate did a great series on headphones and how to make them work well.



This is one part of a series of videos if anyone was interested.

sK0pe

The extra power will be great for headphones which require more power for the drivers. My current headphones require a 6.35mm jack.
If and when the old school headphone makers change over to a widely accepted digital jack, I'll look forward to grabbing them (remove the need to buy specialised sound card).

okeefe said:

I would consider a move to bluetooth if this happens. It's not like I have expensive headphones, but who wants a converter sticking out of their phone? And maybe someone (Apple?) will step up with decent bt headphones.

Unlikely as Apple stock earbuds sound like trash, they bought Beats which produces shitty sounding headphones that are sold as premium quality overears.

Rym said:

Thunderbolt is a general standard. Intel PCs will support it.

You've been able to get Asus motherboards with Thunderbolt ports since the Z77 chipset (2011).

Thunderbolt connected headphones will pretty much just inherit all the current USB headphone technology and then start iterating upon that (i.e. buttons which can be programmed to do any task beyond just volume and microphone manipulation, lights that change colours and are linked to what is happening on the connected computer).

I don't know about Etymotics being too fragile, mine go in a bag or pocket every day, the worst that's happened is someone knocked my phone out of my hand while I was listening on the Etymotics, the ear plugs stayed in my ears but the connectors to the phones detached, all I had to do was plug them back in. The benefit of the ER 4 series is each part can be detached and replaced if required.

Apreche

sK0pe said:

I don't know about Etymotics being too fragile, mine go in a bag or pocket every day, the worst that's happened is someone knocked my phone out of my hand while I was listening on the Etymotics, the ear plugs stayed in my ears but the connectors to the phones detached, all I had to do was plug them back in. The benefit of the ER 4 series is each part can be detached and replaced if required.

I have had a lot of etyomotics, starting with the 6i, then then hf2 and the hf3. Why have I had so many? Shouldn't those original, expensive, 6i still work just fine? I actually have them, and they do. But you know what? Either the cord or the jack broke from every day wear and tear. There was no way to replace it since inside the cable it was pretty much just one strand of wire. If it was a serious cable I could have repaired it with a soldering iron.

This is one positive of beats, they all have replaceable cables. I have a whole bunch of very nice headphones and earbuds of incredibly high quality, but all of them are unusable due to broken cables. It's complete bullshit.

I never heard of the ER4 having a replaceable cable. It doesn't appear that way from the etyomotic web site.

Also, while all cables should be replaceable for all devices, there's no reason to make shitty ones either. Cables that see extensive use like lighting cables, mouse cables, headphone cables, should all be reinforced to ridiculous levels. I bought this cable awhile back

http://amzn.to/1Pwsxcm

It's basically invincible as far as every day normal usage is concerned. Why isn't the official Apple cable this strong?

sK0pe

Apreche said:

This is one positive of beats, they all have replaceable cables. I have a whole bunch of very nice headphones and earbuds of incredibly high quality, but all of them are unusable due to broken cables. It's complete bullshit.

Well this is more of a difference between canal phones and head phones. Even the beats ear buds need soldering to replace the cable.
The plug replacement can only be done on the big headphones (this option is also available on many headphones).

Apreche said:

I never heard of the ER4 having a replaceable cable. It doesn't appear that way from the etyomotic web site.

If the jack or wire were to be compromised, you can send your phones back and they will replace whatever is broken so its as good as new.
I haven't needed to use it yet (4 or 5 years now).

The wire on the ER 4 series have a super tough wire from the stem to the jack, it's almost 3 times the thickness of the ER 6i. The more "fragile portion" never seem to be in danger. The stem is also very sturdy and thick compared to the ER 6i.

The HF5 series which replaced the 6i have kevlar reinforced cables as your complaint was common.

Apreche

sK0pe said:

Apreche said:

This is one positive of beats, they all have replaceable cables. I have a whole bunch of very nice headphones and earbuds of incredibly high quality, but all of them are unusable due to broken cables. It's complete bullshit.

Well this is more of a difference between canal phones and head phones. Even the beats ear buds need soldering to replace the cable.
The plug replacement can only be done on the big headphones (this option is also available on many headphones).

Apreche said:

I never heard of the ER4 having a replaceable cable. It doesn't appear that way from the etyomotic web site.

If the jack or wire were to be compromised, you can send your phones back and they will replace whatever is broken so its as good as new.
I haven't needed to use it yet (4 or 5 years now).

The wire on the ER 4 series have a super tough wire from the stem to the jack, it's almost 3 times the thickness of the ER 6i. The more "fragile portion" never seem to be in danger. The stem is also very sturdy and thick compared to the ER 6i.

The HF5 series which replaced the 6i have kevlar reinforced cables as your complaint was common.

I've replaced a lot of HF cables. I've used their replacement a few times, but other times they wouldn't because the warranty was so many years past. Despite owning many pairs, I've only paid for maybe 2. Three at most.

The kevlar reinforced cable is bullshit. It breaks. Put a phone in your pocket and walk around a city. Every single day. That bit of cable and the jack that are in your pants pocket are going to wear out.

It's defniitely possible to make a cable for earbuds that is replaceable. It's the part of the cable far away from the earbud that is breaking. Worst case you just make the cable coming out of the earbud very tiny and have it go into a connector for the replaceable cable to snap into.