Couple of years back above title wouldn’t have made lot of sense but thanks to Apple nixing headphone jack in 2016 and we are in a situation where inclusion of headphone jack in a device seen as a feature. Sure, Apple doesn’t use USB-C yet in phones (probably 2019?) but it was a turning-point that made other smartphone makers realize that there is money to be made here if they start selling their own “proprietary” headphones or Bluetooth headsets. And by 2019 every smartphone maker (barring few) started removing 3.5mm headphone jack from their phones.
Situation was so bad in 2018 that when Google came out with their Pixel 2 phones – their first phones without headphone jack – they didn’t bundle any headphones in their retail box. Either you use the dongle and embrace #dongleLife or buy a Bluetooth headset. Good luck if you want to buy PixelBuds and you reside outside of US. Thankfully situation is a bit better in 2019, One Plus has come out with their own nominally priced USB – C headphones and Google has started to bundle USB-C headphones inside their retail box.
While I am firmly in headphone jack camp, let us unbiasedly analyze if having USB-C audio bring any enhancement in audio quality. USB-C (which also sometimes referred as USB Type-C) is a 24-pin, two-fold rotationally-symmetrical connector. The standard was first finalized in August 2014 and has since seen few versions upgrade latest being version 3.2. Some features are mandatory to implement (adhering to data transfer throughputs) some aren’t (USB Power Delivery). As you may have guessed, USB-C is sort of swiss army knife of connectors. From providing interface, to delivering power to outputting music for you – you just need one port! So far so good. But things are not so magical in USB-C universe yet as Google engineer pointed out in his blog post. Sure, that was 2015 post and we are in 2018, things have improved today, reliability has gone up but there are few inherent for using one port for everything. Allow me to list them:
1. You won’t able to use my existing headphones while charging my device.
2. Dongle/adapter is a tiny little hack and you’ll probably lose the moment to take it out of the box
3. USB port is one of the most fragile part of the device, extra wear and tear of headphone may damage the assembly
Does so much compromise bring any bump in the audio quality after all we are talking about replacing a legacy port with something innovated as recently as this decade?
Probably not.
Sure, technology is digital but our ears perceive analog audio so modulating analog signal to digital to analog doesn’t bring any significant improvements. Moreover, we have been listening to digital audio for at least a decade now. CDs are a digital source. Does that mean audio quality of, say, cassettes are same as CDs? Answer lies somewhere in between. For one dynamic range of a CD player (96dB) is higher than even the best of audio cassette player so is frequency response and S/N ratio. Net result is CD player sounds better than magnetic media (audio cassettes). We can interpolate the same reasoning to 3.5mm audio output and output through USB-C ports. Crucial difference being in case of USB-C audio output from phone (most of the time) is digital and after that we may need DAC (digital to analog converter) to convert the digital signals back to analog so that our ears may perceive the way it should be. Some phones have DAC embedded inside main chassis and we need an adapter just to connect our 3.5mm headphone. But in most phones (Pixels, One Plus 6Ts etc.) have DAC embedded in the adapters. Thumb rule of sound engineering says that the more you convert a signal the more you lose out chance of faithful reproduction because there are losses in every circuitry. That is why the best CD players do only one thing – PLAY audio CDs. Add DVD compatibility, add more features and you lose the pristine nature of sound.
As far as trend of removing 3.5mm ports goes it points only one things – device makers want to gouge us out for even more money because so far we have not seen an appreciable increase in battery backup or a bump in audio quality.
