Re: No Headphone Jack, No Sale
Not really stepping on the music industry. We don't use headphones in commercial studio control rooms, except to make sure the mix still sounds good when downgraded to consumer products. We do use them in the studio itself so the singers and musicians can hear without leakage to the microphones, but not having a headphone jack on a smartphone has zero impact on that.
The basic jack has been around since 1878, and was originally designed for telephone switchboard operators. It was adopted for audio use, and reduced in size for consumer products, but remains a very reliable connector. However, it can never be more than a passive analog connector when it comes to music. The jack can be used for a data pass-through, and can also be wired for simple power, but as a basic connector, it neither degrades or enhances the audio chain. USB C, on the other hand, can supply all those functions including analog audio passthrough from an internal DAC, plus many other functions including acting as a 10 gigabit data bus.
And this is where the HCC USonic comes into the picture. ALL music stored on a smartphone is digital, and that music is streamed digitally through the USB C port to the custom DAC in the USonic headphone plug, and the headphones actually use bidirectional data transfer to perform a real sonar scan of your ear canals, and saves the results to your audio profile on the phone. In addition to that, the sound environment is monitored by the microphone array in the phone, and the CPU processes that information to cancel the environment noise from the audio output to the ears. Active noise cancellation (ANC) is not new, but having it controlled by the phone CPU is.
So, what's the result of all this? Earbuds that sound better than my favorite Sennheiser open backs plugged into a studio SSL recording console. Earbuds that don't require batteries or charging. Earbuds with bass extension down to frequencies that most over-ear headphones can't match. If I can take a page from GSMArena, it's as if HTC figured out a way to deconstruct the music and recreate each individual instrument with unmatched detail and clarity. The soundstage has no walls and the spatial imaging is so well defined that you can close your eyes and point to instruments. Even on older classics like Roundabout by YES, you feel like you would bump your face into Steve Howe's left arm if you moved too much.
Anyways, to sum this up as an audio professional, HTC alone has a compelling reason to leave behind the consumer grade 3.5 jack because USonic is light years ahead in performance and function. I still use my Sennheisers and my Ghostek soDrop 2's, and they sound sweet through the hi-res certified external DAC that HTC gives you for free, but I would choose USonic over a built in jack any day. And if HCT comes up with a commercial grade USonic processor that will tie into the data bus of recording consoles, I would buy it.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
