Fastmac joins the iPhone headphone adapter race

Every time I listen to something on my iPhone, I have to decide whether to use Apple’s stock headphones (which include a microphone and track controls but make music almost inaudible when I’m walking down the street or on the train) or my fancy, custom-molded ear pieces (which seal out background noise and sound great, but don’t give me any control over the iPhone — and require an adapter to even work with the iPhone’s recessed jack to boot).

So I was excited to see that Fastmac today announced its Universal Headphone Adapter for the iPhone. The adapter lets you use any 3.5 mm headphones, and comes in three models: an in-line audio adapter with flexible cable & gold plated connector port ($5); one that adds a shirt clip, built-in microphone and a music playback and phone control button ($10); and finally one that adds to that an adjustable volume slider and noise suppression microphone ($20).

Now I’m not sure how the volume slider will work (can you even control the volume through the headphone port?), but that top-of-the-line adapter is half the price of Shure’s $40 Music Phone Adapter, so I’m definitely going to give it a try.

Category: Accessories, Hardware

Posted by Jonathan Seff on Nov 2 2007, 6:46 PM ET

Comments (9)

It's called an amplifier and it's a really simple chip. Think pluging the headphone jack into your stereo and turning the volume up on the stereo (noisier than turning the volume up on the iPhone).

Posted by Dave-O | November 2, 2007 11:25 PM

stock headphones have track controls? how so?

Posted by lucabrazi | November 3, 2007 10:40 AM

The $20 adaptor looks good but the $7 shipping looks excessive for such a small item. Any other cheaper ways of getting this by either buying locally or via vendors with cheaper shipping costs.

Posted by Grahame Perry | November 4, 2007 9:18 AM

Where'd you get the picture from?

Posted by CF | November 4, 2007 1:28 PM

Surely the volume slide will work the way these devices always have, by varying the impedence (or resistance or whatever) to the headphones themselves - ie the volume change would be independent of the iPhone controls.

Posted by Ronster | November 4, 2007 5:56 PM

@lucabrazi: Squeeze the microphone twice to skip to the next track, once to pause/play. RTFM.

Posted by CF | November 4, 2007 7:27 PM

luca: "Track controls" may be overstating it just a bit, but there is a squeeze control on the stock headphones.

Just single-squeeze to play/pause; double-squeeze to skip to the next track.

Posted by Paul Howard | November 4, 2007 10:42 PM

"Where'd you get the picture from?"

From the shopping page for the $20 version $20 version. The others seem to be smaller.

Posted by jonseff | November 5, 2007 2:30 PM

I called Fastmac to ask them how long the cable was on these controllers (approx. 24 inches, btw). But, in addition, the sales person volunteered that she would recommend the midlevel model. She said that their techs preferred the sound quality to that of the high end model.

The Truth: how refreshing. ;-)

Posted by Jeff | November 7, 2007 10:50 AM

Fastmac joins the iPhone headphone adapter race

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