![]() We all saw that video and knew that frustration, and that’s why they were able to far surpass their Kickstarter goal so easily. Elevation Lab made a great video on Kickstarter demonstrating how frustrating other docks were, and showing how easily the iPhone lifted out of their heavy base with their custom, low-friction connector. Apple’s crappy little docks were so lightweight that you’d need to annoyingly hold them down while removing the phone, often requiring two hands. The primary appeal of the original Elevation Dock was the ease of removing your iPhone from it. I could justify $59 on Kickstarter, but now it’s almost twice that. For the pre-adapted Dock and a Lightning cable from Apple, new buyers need to pay $108.99 plus shipping and tax as needed. This brought my total cost to $97.40 per adapted Dock. It’s just a metal clamp that holds an Apple Lightning cable (not included, $19.99 from Apple) securely at the required angle. The instructions are terse, vague, and printed in dark blue ink on black paper, but installation is still easy. The adapter works: the iPhone 5 can mount in the Elevation Dock with it. To cope with the Lightning port, Elevation Lab just released a $15 adapter that replaces most of the guts in the original Dock, and they now offer an $89 “iPhone 5” Dock with the adapter preinstalled. The Elevation Dock with the iPhone 4S is great and a pleasure to use. I’m not sure how much blame falls on Elevation Lab for the delays, but they had remarkably bad luck with the timing of the Dock connector’s retirement. The docks (designed for the iPhone 4S) cost $59 each on Kickstarter in February but didn’t arrive until September, shortly before the release of the iPhone 5, due to significant production delays. My wife and I have been using a pair of these in our Elevation Docks for about a week and have come to the same conclusions. As an example, thanks to Apple’s adapters, I was able to use the latest iPhone and iPods with Logitech’s mm50 speaker system, an old favorite from 2005.A programmer, writer, podcaster, geek, and coffee enthusiast.Ībout Elevation Dock with Lightning adapter In other words, the adapter is converting the iPhone or iPod’s digital-audio output to an analog signal and then sending that analog signal to the appropriate pins in the 30-pin connector. ![]() The solution (and likely part of the reason that Apple’s adapters aren’t cheap) is an actual DAC built into each adapter. ![]() The challenge here is that the Lightning connector doesn’t offer analog-audio pins-the new connector is all digital. These speakers connect to dedicated analog-audio pins in the 30-pin connector, relying on the iPhone or iPod to handle the digital-to-analog conversion. This includes newer speakers and audio docks that grab your player’s digital-audio (specifically, USB-audio) output and then use a digital-to-analog converter (DAC) in the speaker or dock itself to produce an analog signal.īut the adapters also work with speakers and docks-generally older models-that require an analog-audio signal. For playing audio, the adapters worked perfectly with every speaker dock and audio dock I tested, both old and new. Speakers and audio docks: I tested both adapters with a range of dock-cradle speakers and audio-focused standalone docks using the iPhone 5 and the latest iPod touch and nano models. ![]() Thanks for that link - the speculation re a DAC in the adapter was correct.
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