this post was submitted on 04 Jan 2026
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Admittedly, I could be smarter and/or less sleep deprived, then maybe I wouldn't be having trouble taking in all the technical information. So I'm not saying this is a bad article. But is there a thesis hidden somewhere (even a tl;dr, as the cool kids say)? I made it about half-way through without knowing what the actual problem is before I gave up (see above lack of smarts and sleep). I THINK it's suboptimal audio quality? (Which, admittedly again, probability says it is, given this is about headphones)
tl;dr: me no brain good but me interested, eli5?
The observation is that most USB-C to 3.5mm ("aux jack") audio dongles are supporting high quality audio but only support the USB Full Speed (FS) data rate which is not enough for the high quality audio. This causes problems.
"High Quality Audio" in terms of the sample rate and bit depth, but considering the quality of most of these DAC/ADCs you get integrated in cables like this, I somehow doubt the data rate is actually the limiting factor on quality.
Personally I can't tell the difference between 192kHz and 96kHz samples rates, or 16bit and 24 bit either (maybe a young kid with perfect ears could, but they'll probably also notice background noise due to most of these using unfiltered USB power). The dongle manufacturers seem to care more about the marketing value of bigger numbers than actual usability.
Ironically, the conclusion is that the stupidly high claimed sample rates are a good indicator that these dongles won't be afflicted by this bandwidth-scheduling problem. Though they can have various other issues.