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A comment on MacBook Pro 14-inch and MacBook Pro 16-inch. Parent comment

Re:MacBook Pro 14-inch and MacBook Pro 16-inch by astrange on Tuesday October 19, 2021 @06:40AM (#28916702)
The $9 iPhone headphone dongle is a better DAC than most audiophile products, and has a bigger R&D budget than the entire industry. Headphone amps are real for electrical reasons, headphone DACs are a scam by the gold plated cable people.

(The Google equivalent dongle is also good.)

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Re:MacBook Pro 14-inch and MacBook Pro 16-inch by can16358p on Tuesday October 19, 2021 @06:51AM (#28916755)
Don't think the same. I remember when they removed the jack I was using iPhone with a pair of wired CX 880i's. On old iPhone they sounded great (of course not a true audiophile setup, just a comparison). After I got my iPhone 7 which removed the jack and gave the dongle instead, they sounded absolutely terrible through that DAC. The change might not be noticeable for average EarPods user, but those Sennheisers which were great earbuds for its time was literally sounding worse than back-then-not-so-good Bluetooth headphones through that DAC. With all the world moving to Bluetooth/wireless (speaking of casual use, not pro setups), I doubt this will ever change.
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Re:MacBook Pro 14-inch and MacBook Pro 16-inch by astrange on Tuesday October 19, 2021 @07:48AM (#28917079)
https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/q...

You certainly shouldn't be able to hear DAC differences through earbuds, but they shouldn't have issues being driven either unless they're really exotic. If I had to guess, I'd say the plug wasn't seated properly, or there was an issue with the in-line microphone.

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