Apple - headphones and portable devices

[Dave2002]

Apple has removed headphone jacks from most of its products, including even portable devices such as iPads. This is perhaps a (IMO a disastrous..) abandonment of a level of technology which has in the past proved very useful. For desktop machines this is not a complete catastrophe, as it should still be possible to connect speakers and headphones via DACs connected by USB interfaces, but are there now units which will connect to the newer Apple tablet devices which enable wired headphones to be connected, and which are compact enough and light enough to be of use to mobile users who would like to maintain higher quality, and also not to be limited to the power constraints of earbuds and the like?

Advice and suggestions in this area would be much welcomed.

[Dave2002]

Further investigation suggests that perhaps all that is required is a fairly simple wired adapter, depending on whether the newer iPads have Lightning connectors or USB C ones.

Hopefully those fairly cheap adapters are good enough for most practical purposes.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201869

Also, are there similar wired adapters for desktops? I think our new iMac has USB A sockets, and it would be useful to output audio via those if its possible, though I probably have a DAC which would do the job more effectively.

[AmpH]

I recently received the new iPad Air as a present. This has a USB - C socket which allows me to use my Audioquest Dragonfly Cobalt ( Dac/Headamp ) with its accompanying USB-C / USB-A connecting cable and a wide range of headphones such as Meze 99's which are a favourite. There are other ( much ) cheaper DAC's from Audioquest and others. I use this set up with a smartphone as well and it works very well with Qobuz etc.

I usually use Sony WH1000XM3 noise-cancelling headphones when travelling on public transport and see no reason why these will not be able to be paired with the iPad via Bluetooth, but I haven't got around to trying them yet.

[Dave2002]

Thanks - that’s helpful to know. Bluetooth headphones and earbuds should generally work with iPads, but they often don’t provide the quality of wired units, and are constrained re charging. Also, they do seem to need re pairing from time to time, or perhaps if a software update is done on the tablet. I’m not quite as anti those as Bryn (thread re mobile phones), but for serious listening I much prefer wired headphones, even in public, such as on trains - which of course we barely use at all now.