Libratone Debuts Battery-Free Noise Cancelling Headphones With Lightning Connector Ahead of iPhone 7

This is why we need to ditch the 3.5mm

This kind of simplicity for Active NC headphones is simply impossible for 3.5mm jack based solutions.

Also, because it's straight digital, the engineers can take full control of everything.

Currently, iPhones convert the digital sound to analog, then the ANC circuits converts the signal back to digital, does the ANC, and converts it back to analog. With a digital interface, this digital / analog / digital conversion is eliminated.

This is why we need to ditch the 3.5mm

This kind of simplicity for Active NC is simply impossible for 3.5mm jack based solutions.

How do you charge your iPhone and listen with these at the same time? $200 for headphones that ONLY work for one device? You're joking right? Nothing is gained by removing the headphone jack. NOTHING!

So you can't use these headphones with your Macbook, on an airplane, with your friends phone or anywhere else?! No thanks, these belong in the trash with the old outdated iPhone 7.

Great, another way to drain my iPhone battery.

My cheap in-ear buds from Sennheiser already have some noice-cancellation because they seal your ears with the rubber tips (like they all do). Is a 140$ premium for ANC worth it? Doubt it.

Blocking out sound is called noise isolation, not cancellation. You need to read up on this so that you can understand why the later is more complex and costly.

This is why we need to ditch the 3.5mm

This kind of simplicity for Active NC is simply impossible for 3.5mm jack based solutions.

Fully agree. I think digital connection for audio is definitely the way forward. I have a headphone pair with active noice cancellation that works great with 3.5mm but they require a battery to power this and need charging after 4 hours of active use.

How do you charge your iPhone and listen with these at the same time? $200 for headphones that ONLY work for one device? You're joking right? Nothing is gained by removing the headphone jack. NOTHING!

Was NOTHING gained from removing the Floppy Disc drive? Was NOTHING gained from removing the Mac's serial port? Was NOTHING gained by removing the DVD-R drive? Was NOTHING gained by removing FireWire ports? NOTHING?

Removing legacy ports forces the technological march forward. That's how standards are adopted. Of course, Macs could have accumulated all of these ports and drives over the years since there would have been people who have wanted to use them, but then new more advanced ports and formats would have never been widely adopted.

We'll see in a week, but I'm convinced that Apple will be pushing for wireless headphones. Future wearable products will rely on not having cables of any kind. Right now, that's the Apple Watch but in some distant future, Apple glasses might join in. In the more immediate future, having wireless AirPods in your ears with Always On Siri connected to all of your devices (not just one) is a major advancement from the standard we have today.

Yes, bluetooth headphones have been around forever, but when they become a priority, technology will push forward and it'll become the standard. Then, we'll look back and wonder why we ever put up with dangling cables from our ears.

If Apple does include lightning earbuds, one aspect that I am concerned about is I tend to break my lightning cable quite often - maybe I'm clumsy, or maybe careless. So, I'll be breaking quite a lot of earphones!

I'm afraid that's user error. In the future unplug it by gripping the Lightning plug and not the cable.

This is great, I hope Bose follows suit, I don't like the brick in the middle of my in ear noise cancelling headphones today and would pick up a set with the iPhone 7 if available.

If Apple does include lightning earbuds, one aspect that I am concerned about is I tend to break my lightning cable quite often - maybe I'm clumsy, or maybe careless. So, I'll be breaking quite a lot of earphones!

Wow. How are you managing to break them like that? I'm still using some of the original ones that I received with the iPhone 5s and my first iPad Mini 2 and they're holding up quite well.