I’ve been down a pretty deep rabbit hole recently audio and music wise, with the launch of Apple Music Lossless formats, to tweaking the audio set up in my car to fully make use of the lossless format on long drives, to rediscovering the wonder that is MiniDisc.

Although the sound production from a pair of AirPods wont set an audiophile ears a light, they’re very comfy to wear for extended periods of time, they just work and connect to your apple devices, range is pretty decent and battery life great. 

Being Bluetooth enabled AirPods do connect to other devices, but the handoff process in Apple means its a breeze to use them. Since the removal of the headphone jack on the iPhone 7 onwards and the 2018 iPad Pro’s, those little lightning or USB C to 3.5mm cables have become valuable DAC’s (Digital to Analog Converters) and to a degree able to cope with Apple Lossless very well, but they can backwards convert an Analog signal back to digital to play on your AirPods. 

Vinyl is long gone in our house, theres a few cassette tapes floating around, but the core of our oldskool music is stored on CD and MIniDisc. Most of the CD’s got consumed in to iTunes and able to played around the house via the media Mac to HomePods / Google Home Minis via Airfoil some Homebridge magic and the power of the internet 

AirChord

AirChord fixes a problem I never knew I had, how do I play old mediums such as CD’s or Minidisc on my AirPods?

Well if you have a on old iPhone or iPad laying around, download the AirChord app as relay device, connect the device to the CD/Minidisc player via a lightning to 3.5mm lead or 3.5mm to 3.5mm* cable. (You can also use your current device, doesn’t have to be an old one.)

Select your output - AirPlay Speakers or AirPods and listen away.

*An older iPad with the headphone jack or iPhone 6s or older is perfect, when using the headphone jack a TRRS end is required.