Good Riddance, Headphone Jack?? - Audeze Sine Review
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2017-05-06
·
1,720 words · ~8 min read
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We find ourselves in the midst of a revolution, an audio revolution. Well,
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more of a controversy really. So, in light then of the rumors about Apple's
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abandonment of the de facto standard 3
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and 1/2 mm audio jack in favor of their
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proprietary reversible USB implementation. Here is my review of the
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Odyssey Sign, one of the first Lightning
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headphones on the market. And woven into
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my thoughts on this product are going to be my thoughts on the shift towards
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lightning and I guess USB type-C for that matter as an audio jack. Because in
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some ways, the advantages and drawbacks of this product will be a look into the
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future of mobile audio in general.
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Tunnel Bear is the simple VPN app that makes it easy to browse privately and
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enjoy a more open internet. To try Tunnel Bear for free, check out the link
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in the video description. All right, so if you've
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seen a pair of headphones before, you've seen something that's functionally, you
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know, pretty much like this, but probably with less BMW Design Works
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influence. Those guys really get around, hey, not that I'm criticizing BMW
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group's offshoot industrial design and consultancy houses efforts here. The
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signs are a rare audio file headset that
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just oozes style. Starting from the top,
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the shiny stitched natural leather headband contrasts wonderfully with the
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matte aluminum end caps that house the smooth stepless frictional size
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adjustment mechanism. I wish it had a bit more padding, but since the strong
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clamping pressure of the ear cups is most of what keeps it on your head, I
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won't take off any marks here. On that subject though, the same mix of leather
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and aluminum is present in the ear cups and makes the signs a little heavier
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than your typical out andabout one-ear headphone like the Sennheiser Momentum
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Onear. But thanks to the way the load is distributed, I never felt like they were
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at risk of falling off. With that said, the clamping force out of the box is
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stronger than I'd like, causing my ears to get sore after about an hour of
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listening, even with my earrings removed. Okay, then the next big
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question is, is it worth it then for these shockingly compact planer magnetic
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cans? This is a technology that sacrifices some weight, design
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complexity, and sometimes treble performance to deliver a sound with
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minimal distortion and rich, smooth,
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accurate bass. And that only a few short years ago was basically only found in
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expensive, difficult to power products or from obscure brands like, well,
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Odyssey. Though I guess the way that they've stormed into the mainstream is a
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testament to what they've done with a technology that was introduced to North
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America by Yamaha back in the 70s then basically faded into obscurity. The
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short answer then is maybe. After some
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break-in the ear pressure was much more tolerable for me, although I still don't
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prefer onar headphones. And the signs sound great. They don't isolate ambient
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noise particularly well, but they image astonishingly well and sound very
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natural for a closedback design. It's safe to say these are the best on ears
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I've ever heard. And in my opinion, this
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is, how do I describe it? It's beats generation sound done right. Listening
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to my usual mix of trashy popular songs on Apple Music, the impressions I came
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away with are that the highs are detailed enough without being fatiguing
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to listen to. A common complaint for me personally with audio file grade
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headphones, and bass performance is fantastic as long as you don't mind the
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somewhat heavy-handed approach. It's tight, dynamic, and just a blast to
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listen to, but without doing anything to obscure the crystal clear mids that let
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vocalists, guitar solos, and the like really pop. But why do they sound good?
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Is it the planer magnetic drivers, or is
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it the fancy lightning connector at the other end? Let's talk about the cipher
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cable because on some of the more mainstream sites and blogs that I've
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read, there seems to be some confusion about it. For starters, while it's true
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that you cannot play back 24-bit 96 kHz
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HD audio files, which Apple is allegedly planning to make available shortly on
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iTunes, out of the headphone jack on your iPhone today, the mini stereo
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connector itself has nothing to do with that limitation. It actually has to do
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with the audio processing electronics, the DAC or digital to analog converter,
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the DSP or digital sound processor, and to a lesser degree, the amplifier that
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are inside the iPhone. That is what's
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not able to process files encoded in this manner. Something that isn't
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actually the case even with other competing smartphones. So, sorry,
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there's no such thing as digital headphones, and the conversion to an
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analog signal is still taking place. It's just doing so at a later stage in
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the chain with more advanced hardware than Apple pre-installed in their phone.
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So, the bump right here that contains the microphone and the inline controls
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is what's so special about the cable because it has all of that hardware. So,
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then the advantages to this approach are as follows.
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One, removing the jack saves some space
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inside the chassis of the phone. This image from iFixit shows you about how
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much. Two, isolating audio gear from
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processors and wireless antennas is widely regarded as a good thing. Three,
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functionality like volume control, track skipping, etc. can work more
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consistently or even be enhanced in the future. Leading to number four, the
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ability to update the firmware or store settings within your headphones
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themselves. Something that we're already seeing with the Cipher, including the
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ability to set EQ settings with their app. Five, being able to power your
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headphones off the phone could mean RGB
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lighting, active noise cancellation, or other features without the need for
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batteries. And six, back to where we
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started, the ability to bypass Apple's
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decidedly mediocre audio implementation in favor of something that's hopefully
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better. But all of this comes with some disadvantages, too. Number one,
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headphones with this functionality will be more complex to design and
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manufacture, which contributes directly to the price you can expect to find on
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the sticker. Two, the lightning cable combined with the circuitry for audio
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processing will make the cable and/or the headphone itself bulkier and
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heavier. Three, and this is such a killer for me, you will require an
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adapter. Apple is rumored to be providing one in the box if you just
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want to use your onboard audio. And
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four, you will require a separate, likely more expensive adapter if you
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want to charge your iPhone and use your lightning headphones at the same time. A
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common occurrence for mobile gamers. I think this commenter on 9to5 Mac
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probably put it better than I ever could. Because what this really boils
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down to for me, while I understand the
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desire to eliminate a potential opening for water, dirt, and pocket lint, unless
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Apple and other manufacturers for this matter, because Type-C audio is
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functionally similar, though it's a bit more of a quagmire in terms of the spec,
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unless Apple uses this opportunity to introduce industry-leading water
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resistance to their products or anything else that people are actually asking
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them for, They'll have sacrificed functionality
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for perceived elegance yet again. Just
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like with the 2013 Mac Pro and the 2015 MacBook whose dimminitive size and few
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ugly ports look beautiful until you have
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to attach an octopus of adapters just to plug in the you need to get anything
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done. Back to the conclusion for the sign
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headphones, though. With the Cipher Lightning cable and some EQ fine-tuning,
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I'm confident anyone would love their sound. And quite frankly, they sound
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pretty damn good even without it. Even better with a higher quality source file
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and better upstream gear. This is a very solid product as long as your ears
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tolerate on your headphones a little better than mine do. Speaking of solid
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products, i ifixit.com is not a product, it's a
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website, but they sell products. So, to go along with their 19,000 step-by-step
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repair guides, they have a huge inventory of replacement parts as well
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as tools with lifetime warranties on them so that you can repair your stuff
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instead of junking it and replacing it or paying someone, often as much as it
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would have cost to get all the parts and tools that you needed in order to do it
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for you. The big one that we're featuring today is the ProTek Toolkit,
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which includes the new 64-bit driver kit, which has 10 more bits than the
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former 54-bit driver kit, as well as
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their magnetic casing, their newly designed swivel top precision driver,
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their precision ESD safe tweezers, their wider variety of plastic opening tools
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and picks, their suction cup for display removal, their ESD safety strap to make
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sure you don't destroy your stuff with static shock while you're working on it,
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and the best part of it is that it's only
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$69.95. And what's even better than that is you guys can save five bucks on any
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purchase of $10 or more over at
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ifixit.com/inus. We'll have that linked in the video description. So, thanks for watching,
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guys. If this video sucked, you know what to do. But if it was awesome, get
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subscribed, hit that like button, or check out the link to where to buy the stuff we featured at Amazon in the video
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description. Also linked in the description is our merch store, which has cool shirts like this one, and our
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community forum, which you should totally join. Now that you're done doing all that stuff, you're probably
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wondering what to watch next. So, click that little button in the top right corner to check out our latest video
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over on Channel Super Fun.