V-Moda’s new Lightning to headphone cable has a premium DAC and amp, but it costs $101

V-Moda has come out with a new Lightning to 3.5mm cable that costs $101. This may look like yet one more costly penalty for Apple’s choice to take away the audio jack from its iPhones, but the value is on par with different corporations’ Lightning to 3.5mm cables, like Grasp & Dynamic’s for $69 and Shure’s for $100. Belkin affords one on the low finish for $35, but it lacks a few of the technical benefits that V-Moda says it’s providing. Bundled inside the 17.5-gram cable is a 24-bit digital-to-analog converter (DAC), a headphone amp with 31mW of energy, and a three-button management with a microphone for utilizing Siri voice, navigating via music, making calls, and extra. V-Moda says it will work with “most manufacturers” of headphones with removable 3.5mm ports, together with fashions from Beats, Philips, Hyper X, Audio Technica, and extra. The cable is 53 inches lengthy (practically 4.5 ft), and it comes with a one-year guarantee. Past that window, V-Moda additionally has an “Immortal Life Program” with no expiry date, entitling you to 50 p.c off a substitute in case your cable ever dies. All of those cables are being ushered in as a result of when Apple acquired rid the audio jack on the iPhone, it additionally acquired rid the digital-to-analog converter. DACs now have to be positioned in dongles, cables, or headphones. Apple’s $9 Lightning to 3.5mm dongle does comprise a DAC and amp, in accordance to iFixit, but V-Moda’s cable is a approach to skip the dongle life and get parts that, understanding V-Moda, are seemingly to produce nice audio. Is it well worth the huge value soar to improve from V-Moda’s common cable (or every other) and Apple’s Lightning to 3.5mm dongle to V-Moda’s new all-in-one providing? Nicely, that’s up to you. Is the comfort of plugging straight in and not worrying about dropping dongles a precedence? But irrespective of if you happen to stick to cheaper choices and stay the dongle life or resolve to chunk the bullet on a $100 cable, one factor is for certain: the way forward for headphone cables appears costly. https://www.theverge.com/2018/11/28/18116164/v-moda-lightning-to-headphone-cable-premium-dac-amp