Yes an adapter in the pocket sounds frail, depends upon the pocket. Atop jacket pocket may suit it better and yes a 90° one could help as there will be less fulcrum force on the USB C socket.
I use a Spectra X DAC with 7Hz Timeless IEM’s
One warning with this combination: Don’t have the volume more than about 50%. The Spectra X DAC puts out a lot of power.
Sound quality is way better than any crap I’d get with bluetooth.
Hi,
I’ve bought this model:
USB C auf 3,5 mm Adapter from MOSWAG.
I can’t recommend. The Sound is very flat, like an very old radio.
Hello, (almost) 1 year later … 
I treated myself to the Sharkoon Mobile and I have to say, it’s worlds better than the corroded apple part. 
Much louder and you can hear the different sound modes well. What’s not so good, I’ve already read, is that the LED sometimes jumps back to some setting. But the sound setting (acoustic) is retained. 
I also found out that this is probably related to the resolution/quality of the audio. With audio in Signal, for example, the LED jumps to 48, the same piece saved in the phone jumps to 44.
As I said, it doesn’t matter acoustically, so it’s a bug or a feature. 
I’m happy and satisfied with the Sharkoon (k not c 
) device.
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Hi
I have a headset with minijack connector I would like to use with my FP4. As the phone does not have a jack connection, I bought a USB-C to minijack converter that’s supposed to work for exactly this purpose (this one: Køb USB-C til 3.5 mm adapter - Med opladning - Sort på Av-Cables.dk)
Unfortunately it does not work. The phone does not seem to recognise that an audio device has been plugged in, so it keeps playing sounds through the normal speaker rather than the headset.
Does anyone have experience with making something like this work?
Thanks
Welcome to the Fairphone community.
There are different devices on the market, some are just mechanical adapters, those work only with some Huawei phones for example, which do have a DAC already on board. For most phones, like the FP4 you need an adapter with a built in DAC.
You can find a list of tested devices here:
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I don’t know if this could help or not: I do use often an old wired headset, which I connect to my FP4 using the USB-to-Jack adapter Fairphone sells.
Sometimes, when I get a call and plug in the adapter, my phone doesn’t recognize it fully, meaning that the microphone works all right, but I don’t hear anything through the headphones. In this case I just need to switch the (loud)speaker on/off (on the phone) and that fixes it each time.
USB adapter is quirky, but it works, my headset is actually an old gaming headphone/mike combo, but it works just fine for hands free calls…
I Had a similar issue and it turned out to be the headphones, have you tried with another headphones?
I would strongly suspect, given the size of that adapter, that it is not actually a USB-C to analog audio adapter, but is instead using audio adapter accessory mode. If that’s the case, then it won’t actually work with many, possibly most, phones, including the FP4. It’s really unfortunate that this mode was both created and not required: USB-C would arguably be better, and certainly less at risk of not working, if the mode didn’t exist, or if it was required for devices supporting audio.
On the other hand, it is arguably also the fault of the vendor for not describing the item properly. If you do an image search with the product image, most AliExpress sellers of what appears to be that adapter do specify, at least, that it only works with certain (mostly Huawei and Xaomi) phones. The listings aggravatingly don’t specify that it uses audio accessory mode (and some claim to support phones that I recall as not supporting audio accessory mode), but given that none of them say anything about a DAC or amp, it seems most likely that it is using that mode, and thus largely not useful.
As a not entirely pedantic point, I’d like to note that the FP4, like essentially every phone, does, of course, have an internal DAC and an amplifier (and an ADC), as it needs those for its speakers (and microphones). Instead, it doesn’t have a way to output analog audio over USB-C, or an analog jack.
I bought this one:
For me this works and has the advantage, that you can charge the phone while listening to music.
To not have a parellel discussion about audio Jack adapter I moved your post to this existing topic.
2 Likes
Hi folks,
I’m very new here, but have a lot of experience with using audio adapters on my USB-C phone socket.
For simple use you need an OTG adapter. Available with/without extra charging port.
For listening to serious music there are two options:
(1) BT 5+
FP4 Bluetooth supports the AptX codec. That means FLAC (cd quality) streams. Best listened to by a reasonably good Bluetooth headphone (over ear closed when used outside the house or in a house with many noises)
(2) a DAC dongle with at least a (single ended) 3.5mm jack headphone socket. Also works on a laptop or pc
- For standard use with low-medium impedance headphones (read about this on the Internet) you could go for the FiiO DAC dongle series KA1, KA2, KA3 USB-C type (price ranges from 50-90 euros). I use the 90 euro KA3 which also supports a 4.4mm balanced connection.
- One step up, and a very light dongle is the THX Onyx (approx. 200 euros) 3.5mm and also for higher impedance headphones up to 200 Ohm+. Works best with the Android USB Audio Player PRO app (one time purchase of approx 8 euros).
- For those who own Beyer Dynamic type headphones with an impedance around 500 Ohm you really need a dongle with a powerfull amp like the iFi Audio GoBar approx 330 euros.
The more expensive dongles are really for HiRes listeners using streams above CD format) 24 bit and up to 192Khz (Qobuz streaming service) or MQA files (Tidal streaming service)
Sorry for all the audio tekkie stuff, but if you are a music lover and want to listen properly on the go this is the way to go.
Regards!
5 Likes
I had thought one of the points of Type C was not needing OTG adapters; are you referring to something else here? The OTG adapters I remember were typically micro-B male to A female. Unless you want a split to provide power separately, there shouldn’t be a need to have an adapter other than a DAC+amp Type-C-to-3.5mm dongle.
AptX is a proprietary, lossy codec; it is neither FLAC, nor similar to FLAC, a lossless, open format; it is also not similar to CDDA CD audio. The FP4 does nominally have support for aptX, aptX HD, and aptX adaptive, but software support has been regressed recently, and it may not work for many users, even after the update that attempted to fix it, but fixed only aptX HD.
Another, flexible option, for people who like wired headphones, is that the FiiO bluetooth amplifiers will also work as USB audio interfaces, so using them, you can switch between wireless and wired use.
1 Like
Great to hear that you know everything better 
What would this community do without you.
Hi all,
I’m interested in a Fairphone 4. I can live with most of the technical trade-offs vs. other devices, but the main hurdle left for me to overcome is the lack of 3.5mm headphone port. I have some quality IEMs, and so have no interest in wireless buds/phones.
I know a lot of people have complained about FF’s decision to drop this, but it does seem a highly questionable one. So my question is: what’s your experience of using wired earphones with the FF4, via some adapter? Which adapter do you use, and do you find that it breaks and you have to replace it?
I was reading up on USBC-to-3.5mm adapters and it seems it’s not straightforward which you need, plus they often seem to break. It’s another moving part in the chain, after all.
Many thanks in advance!
You better get used to it. The whole industry is heading wireless, let’s face it.
Best wishes,
Thomas
Hello and welcome to the forum. Take a look at:
From my exprience it’s completely fine and the adapter (a cheap one from AliExpress) still works fine, but I don’t use it that often.
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In my limited experience, the adapter sold by Fairphone is quite good, as good as an adapter can be (it works and is quite solid, that’s all I ask for).
Note I mostly use that adapter for the old office headset I use when I need my hands on the mouse & keyboard while being on the phone (yes, I could use the earbuds, but the wired headset doesn’t use batteries…).
I have not yet figured out the best USB-C option for my phone, but I wanted to share some thoughts based on what I have researched.
First, a lot of the adapters with a built in DAC (which is what you need with a FP4, while some phones can send an analog signal over their USB-C port, in which case a simple passive adapter is all you need, but won’t work here with FP), and thankfully so many of the USB-C adapters have decent to great sounding DACs built into them. People usually throw around the Apple and also Samsung adapters as the best sounding cheap dongles.
However, there are a bunch of technical quirks and details that make it a lot harder to find a perfect adapter. First, I don’t remember all the technical details and terminology, and some of it probably is already covered here on this thread (because I remember reading through this thread at some point when researching). Basically, there was something about the Apple and Samsung adapters that didn’t completely follow the procedure and standards of how sound delivery over USB-C is supposed to be done, which results in a total max volume drop on many phones (maybe a 20% reduction or so?), and I think FP4 is one of these phones. Second, if you live in Europe, these adapters are further affected by some regulations in EU, which means that the European versions of the adapter have a reduced power draw that results in an even larger reduction in volume compared to the adapter sold in the US.
I used the Samsung adapter for about 3-4 months, because I read it was a bit less affected by these factors, while the European version of the Apple dongle would have as much as 50% drop in volume it could produce. Still, I noticed that when with my older phone with a headphone jack I found comfortable listening level to be just around the mid point of the volume scale, with the Samsung adapter on FP4 the same level was around 3/4th of the scale.
I largely stopped using the adapter because it became so sensitive to any sort of touch or nudges that it would constantly cut the music playback, and I think it’s due to something in the adapter itself being wonky or starting to break, because I still don’t get any disconnects with the phone when charging or moving data via USB cable and heavily shaking the cable (meaning, it’s probably not due to the USB port in the phone, nor is it due to the plug tightness of the adapter as I did tighten the grip of the plug with some pliers).
Otherwise I thought the adapter sounded wonderful and pretty neutral (no strong coloration in the voice, clear bass, mid range and treble), it also supported the mic/handsfree button of my headphones if I wanted to pause a song or skip it. The volume level wasn’t an issue for the most part, but some music with much wider dynamic range was just barely at comfortable volume levels when maxing the volume scale. Unfortunately, if I wanted to touch up the sound even a little bit with EQ, there just wasn’t enough headroom in the volume scale.
I have understood that you can get the best results weirdly enough with some Chinese brand adapters that use a specific type of DAC chip that’s very widely used by many generic adapters. Get one that seems to have a sturdy build, and since they are made by some random small brand, they apparently do skirt around some of the regulatory factors that have affected these big brand adapters.
Don’t know about the policies on this forum about linking stuff, so I’ll just say that some of the more technical information about DAC chips I found on audiosciencereview forums.
I’m not currently using any USB-C adapters since I’m still trying to figure out what adapter to get and where (in Europe) I should buy one. I’m just using some old Nokia handsfree Bluetooth receiver to connect my IEMs for casual listening.