I would happily make do with the dongle, but the Apple dongle's built-in DAC is noticeably poor. And, the iPhone having a lightning connector instead of a USB one, there really aren't a lot of alternatives on the market, especially if you're looking for a reasonable price point.

It's really frustrating. I use my phone to listen to music at work, and while I'm far from being an audiophile, things like a tinny high end are still annoying. Where Apple has spent so much time marketing to creatives, you'd think they would pay more attention to something like this. My impression, though, is that they're so caught up with the cash cow that is AirPods and wireless Beats headphones that they just don't care anymore.

This person finds the DAC to be extremely high quality: https://www.kenrockwell.com/apple/lightning-adapter-audio-qu... . Perhaps it’s a placebo. Perhaps the performance has degraded. Or perhaps his measurements are wrong.

Or perhaps there's a manufacturing error or some cable damage in the one I listened to? Or, for that matter, I have no idea what the impedance was on the headphones I was using; it was a pair of cans that could well have been more than 100ohm.

In any case, thanks for sharing. These test results are definitely reassuring.

Well he tests at 35Ω and 200kΩ so probably not resistance, and the output impedance is very low.

It may be that you’re used to hearing certain artefacts from other sources (eg you get totally different harmonics near the upper limit of a valve amp compared to a solid state one), or that the headphones could not be driven at a sufficiently high voltage. But the dac in the dongle is either the same as or better than all the dacs in iPhones with 3.5mm jacks so having a headphone jack wouldn’t help there.

Yes, I agree. I personally find the dac in the lightning connector to be pretty solid. Not as good as the interior one with headphone jack, but pretty solid overall.

I'm just going to buy 2 old SEs on Ebay and swap units when my current SE finally dies. No way am I paying $400 for a bunch of features I don't need (better camera) plus a bunch of anti-features I want to avoid (no audio jack, still too big).

I guess you must be frequently switching your headphones between the phone and some other device and so it is not sufficient to keep the $10 dongle attached to your headphone cable

No, I really just use the standard 3.5 mm EarPods to talk on the phone with family. But the conversations are long and it's much more comfortable to listen with the EarPods than to 'use the phone'. The conversations always begin with 'lemme rig up.'

But if you got a new phone it would come with EarPods with a lightning cable so it’s only different if your phone conversations last long enough that battery life is a concern

I did not know that. So that's probably good enough for me which pushes the new SE into the picture.