Gadgetory

pocket now's iPhone 7 coverage is brought to you by D brand to buy the best fitting skin for your phone or tablet please visit D brand calm I mean I haven't even finished my copy yet so if you remember back a couple days ago we produced a video about the iPhone 7 audio and I was all full of piss and vinegar about the headphone quality and the lightning connector and how this isn't progress well we got one major thing wrong now all of the numbers and graphs that we showed off from our testing those are still legit but our explanation of the signal processing on the iPhone 7 is maybe not quite accurate ok so here's where we went wrong and this is kind of cool and kind of frustrating all at the same time so on our iPhone 7 testing the numbers that we generated were so similar to the iPhone 6s through the Lightning 2 3.5 millimeter connector that we made an assumption and our assumption was that the onboard audio processing hardware was being passed through the Lightning connector and that the extra pins on the Lightning connector were serving as an analog bridge to the headphone jack and that assumption wasn't made in some kind of vacuum there is actually a process documented where you can take the additional pins on a USBC connector to send out an analog audio signal well just this morning the folks at 9 to 5 Mac published a video teardown from a site called tint a Vienna probably butchered that name where they take apart and I don't know they managed to just kind of cut this thing to pieces but they take apart a lightening - 3.5 millimeter adapter and wouldn't you know it buried in this plastic right here is a tiny little DAC and a little serious logic audio processor it would seem that even though there is onboard audio processing hardware that's only being used to power the speaker's the Lightning port itself really is only putting out a digital audio signal first of all I just want to apologize to our audience because we work really hard to try and make sure we're feeding you guys accurate information and so that signal processing chain that we detailed in that first video a little inaccurate okay a lot a bit inaccurate and there is something really impressive about the engineering involved in making such a tiny signal processor but there's also something frustrating about this manufacturing process - that every single adapter every pair headphones has to supply their own digital-to-analog conversion hardware and this also explains why we saw slightly poorer performance on the iPhone 7 over the iPhone 6s they really aren't using the same DAC I don't have to hold my notes here because I can't remember all these numbers the iPhone 6s and the iPhone 7 both have an internal Cirrus Logic 3 3 8 s 0 0 1 0 5 audio processor the DAC built into the adapter is the 3 3 8 s 0 0 1 0 4 audio processor which is obviously one whole number less quality than 105 obviously I don't know how Apple and cirrus logic rate their individual components and whether that numbering scheme really means anything but it is a different part number so we can't expect that there is some difference in performance between those two units and that this just echos some of the concerns we had in that original video that the quality of your audio is going to be dictated by how much you spend on accessories on the adapters on the headphones whether you decide to move to a wireless solution the phone actually isn't providing any of that quality to the peripheral that you're attaching to it after spending six hundred and fifty dollars on a phone to really maximize what you can get out of that digital signal so if you still got to buy a pair of headphones that will only work with this phone well folks this assumption that I made was an opportunity to engage in another level of discussion and nuance so I'm glad that we've at least been able to address where I went wrong we had all the right data it just led us to the wrong conclusion pocket now is iPhone coverage is brought to you by D brand check out D brand comm to customize your iPhone with a real-time preview D brand skins are designed to add grip texture and kill those jet-black iPhone fingerprints they ship worldwide and iPhone skins start at under 10 bucks if you're interested links are in the description below I want to thank all the people who sent in the video and the story from 9 to 5 Mac for keeping us on our toes keeping us honest as always folks thanks so much for watching be sure to subscribe to this channel for more correction videos like these I'm sure I'll probably make more mistakes in the future for pocket now I'm Juan Carlos bag now some gadget guy on Twitter and Instagram and I will catch you all on the next video