How I discovered my left AirPod was bad
jeffgeerling.com
jeffgeerling.com
What kind of magic are these things? My bluetooth connection from my phone to headphones or the car will start to drop if too much of my body gets in between the radios.
If you're in a more urban environment, apartment buildings, or have plaster or other types of walls (mine are drywall and studs), you're luck will go down considerably.
The LGs are the neckband variety, I guess that right on top of a water sack is the wrong place to sit the receiver and out the side of your ear isn't bad.
1.5 meters seems very little and 18 meters seems too much.
Normally I loop the earbud connecting wire in front instead of behind my neck because it gets in the way for squats.
Physical walls are of course, the major factor in signal loss, rather than pure distance. It seems 2 walls between my headphones and the host are OK, but 3 walls is pushing the friendship a little.
I'm rather impressed with more recent bluetooth headsets, the range isn't too much worse than my Plantronics DECT headset.
My iPhone to Subaru OEM radio: Drops out if my I swipe my hand over the phone in my pocket while sitting in the seat.
My iPhone to Pioneer aftermarket radio: I can be walking well into the house before it finally drops off.
Dualshock 4 controller with Bluetooth adapter plugged into the computer: Struggles to stay connected.(Due to motherboard interference.)
Dualshock 4 controller with Bluetooth adapter plugged into an USB hub a few feet away: I can play games I can't even see through floors.
This is pretty hilarious by the way because if the phone just about pairs and she turns the car off, iPhone keeps playing the music, just switching to the internal speaker. We have a running joke about her "walk-in theme playing".
It went from something that had range measured in inches, constant static, incessant pairing headaches.. to something with incredible range, throughput, and connectivity.
I've got a Tivoli Audio bluetooth speaker from about 2009 that's maddening to use. I have to switch bluetooth on and off on my phone, and switch the device on and off about 10 times before I get the dreaded "failed to connect" doesn't pop up, and it actually finds the damn thing.
But now my iPhone's connected to my fitbit and apple watch all day long, can send usably high datarates to the watch (hell, it can even show the live camera viewfinder from my phone on the watch screen!), and has multi-wall-penetrating range. When I hop in my car and flip off my headphones, the music or phone call picks up on my car's audio system almost seamlessly. It's really amazing.
How are wireless headphones dealing with something as simple as switching to a different device? I can just replug my wired headphones, but what about wireless? I know AirPods do some of that W1 magic, but that's only if you are dealing with Apple devices. What if I just randomly show up to a friend's house with my wireless headphones and want to listen to music on his ThinkPad?
The audio system in my car is "Fender".
Serious players know that if you want a Strat or Tele, you get a better instrument from G&L or Suhr than from Fender. Gibson's reputation is in tatters after years of poor quality control and dubious design decisions. A group of Marshall's technical staff left the company to form Blackstar Amps after Marshall went public.
Most of the big musical instrument brands are going the way of Chrysler and Chevrolet - they trade on an old brand image, but there's little of the original DNA left. It's clearly working in the short-term, but I suspect that these brands will fade away with the Baby Boomers that have a nostalgic attachment to them.
Once paired, my experience is that at least with the AirPods, pairing with 'regular' bluetooth devices, while not instant, is pretty quick and painless. I'm not entirely sure if that's because 1) bluetooth technology improved in general, 2) the W1 chip somehow improves 'regular' switching, or 3) or my idea of 'quick and painless' deviates from the norm, but I suspect 1 to be most likely.
That doesn't make for as interesting a story, but it's clear they were rushed out the door (poor soldering according to the teardowns, tons of problems like this report, extremely limited supply months later) and it really makes me wonder about the future of Apple when they can't even nail hardware anymore.
I know the canard of "don't buy V1 of an Apple product" but it seemed to have been better in recent years. Until this, at least.
This would not only address the fact that the actual audio on apple buds is very mediocre, but would also allow for some separation of concerns and easier replaceability/customizability.
Some companies like Westone, also make a replacement bluetooth cable since their IEMs all have replaceable cables. https://www.amazon.com/Westone-MMCX-Bluetooth-Cable-78548/dp...
I am pretty sure the correct answer is: Stop making phones so thing and bring back the 3.5 headphone jack.
If the 3.5 really is a hindrance, come up with a connector that allows a simple adaptor to 3.5 jacks and still allows cabled charging. I already have a couple of L-adaptors for my headphones with straight connectors, so carrying a 3.5-to-Lightning doesn't bother me. But not being able to charge at the same time. WTF?
iPhone SE forever!
The problem was the increased space required for the taptic engine.
I for one find it to be more than adequate and actually good in fact.
I suppose it's kinda genius of Apple, turning a simple pair of headphones which can last for decades into a fragile piece of microelectronics with a life expectancy of years at best, months at worst. Not really what I'd call 'courage,' though.
Anytime you debug a problem, you create in your mind a list of likely candidates for the problem, and sort them based on a combination of how likely the problem is being caused by 'X' multiplied by how hard it is to prove the problem is not caused by 'X'.
I may have missed something, but from the story it seems like testing with one AirBud versus the other AirBud active would have isolated the problem immediately to the left pod. If you see different performance on left vs. right pod, you know immediately the problem almost certainly has nothing to do with your RF environment. So before going to extreme lengths to modify the RF environment, you absolutely must ask yourself; how can I prove the problem is not RF?
Well, you have one shared RF environment. So naturally you need two or more DUTs (device under test) to run the test against and see if the problem is consistent across different DUTs.
What's so neat about this particular case is that Jeff already had two DUTs, since the pods can apparently operate completely independently. Having two DUTs, it was a massive missed opportunity to test them independently before going down the RF rat hole.
Please don't read this as a critique of Jeff, his write-up is a great place for learning to happen!
Well done!
Why isn't there some sort of cache on the earbuds that allows the device to send the packets to it and buffer as needed (for, say, music)?
I do not know how a2dp works and if it supports such buffers though.