AirPods Max
apple.com
apple.com
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25344762&p=2
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25344762&p=3
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25344762&p=4
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25344762&p=5
(yes, these comments are a workaround which will eventually self-destruct)
Currently you can just look for the one with >50% Airpod use, but that's hard to see from a distance.
These are much easier.
Being HN, I figured I'd explicitly spell it out. On Twitter you'd be right.
With that change, the first sentence lands perfectly for me (at least as far as I can tell). A single word can make or break the whole thing. Jokes are interesting like that.
claps vehemently
Does it work without Apple Music subscription?
Literally a walking cliche but may as well own it.
As an outsider, how accurate is the kit in this package? Is this the culture of silicon valley today?
As someone who has many coolers, I've never understood the Yeti craze except in certain situations. Yes, they can keep ice ice for a crazy amount of time, but it's rare to need ice stay ice for that long. For a typical boat day, I'd rather have a cooler with larger internal dimensions (and hundreds of dollars cheaper).
They're headphones. I want to put them on and they need to make noise. I'm not dealing with connectivity issues, battery issues, etc. Sure they're $500 but when Apple gets it right I'm happy to pay $500 for something that works than $300 for the first try that I eventually stop using because of some issue or another then another try at $350 for something a little better only to finally throw in the towel an pay the $500 to Apple that might not be perfect but hits it on enough points that I want to use them.
Battery, I need to be able to easily and quickly know what the status is and I need to know that if I plugged them in before I go to bed I'll be good to go all day, the next day and I don't have to think about charging.
Connectivity. When I go to use them I need them to connect and work. No fiddling around with loss of connection or not connecting in the first place.
With the spatial audio they're actually cheap if you figure I'm done with any Dolby Atmos, 9.1, 7.1, 5.1 etc stand alone setup. I'm watching movies with this. I'm tired of all the speakers, decoder, amp, wires, sub, constant upgrades. Compare this to even the least expensive stand alone 5.1 system and it's a very inexpensive alternative.
On top of that, I expect the sound quality will be a big step up, and the spatial audio might be really cool.
QC3s were much better than AirPods at multi device up until a recent update.
In the end I only use the QC35s on my laptop which is a total disappointment.
The app collects data on what music you listen to and sends it back to Bose. So obviously they want to encourage you to install and use the app.
Last I checked, at least. Also, there are _two_ Bose apps now, and which one you use depends on which Bose QuietComfort headphones you have. That I have no explanation for.
If your case is personal iPhone + work MacBook, it's probably easier to just use wired EarPods with the work MacBook. You'll get better microphone quality for meetings too.
I think this is much faster than going to either OSs bluetooth settings menu.
We have some google nest speakers and wow, they get it wrong so often despite being stationary. They can connect to one person, not another, drop connections, vanish for days until I care to reset them and get them back online. Sometimes the voice changes, haha. Airpods though, I can share them with my family and they work great between each of our devices.
It’s one of those things where I consider myself lucky. As a software developer I don’t subscribe to the “no adults in the room” attitude, but I know this stuff is hard. I’d expect more people to have problems.
The switching itself technically works. The problem is it needs to be smarter to not switch away when audio is currently in use - especially if the mic is in use.
One issue I've seen a few times is if I have something playing on my mac, and a video going on my iPad, they've gotten into a switch loop.
Not the OP, but I've used AirPods since day one, switching between my iPad, iPhone, and Mac and they've been fine. I honestly have no idea what you are talking about. It's one of the things I loved about them from go, in fact a lot of people loved the way they switched between devices from the start. It was one of their most praised features.
Happened every week or two, and I've never seen this problem with Catalina, or in fact any previous OSX.
And I still get the thing where a device only picks up one AirPod and I have to stick them both back in the case to get stereo.
Dramatically better than any bluetooth speaker I've had? Of course. But not perfect.
I agree, save I wouldn't describe it as dramatically better. My experience with bluetooth headphones switching between multiple devices prior to the AirPods was pretty much unusable. So the AirPods delivering "Not Perfect" was by comparison night and day.
Bose requires using their mobile app that is always very slow to open and sync and full of useless bloated features, and for whatever reason they've decided nobody should ever have more than 2 devices as a firm rule. So you want to use them with a work computer, home computer, and phone? Gotta spend 20 seconds opening the shitty app all the time and fiddling with which two are the currently connected devices.
And then on top of that, even when exactly 2 devices are connected they frequently steal focus from each other (which may be MacOS behaving badly rather than the fault of Bose, but the end result is that I'm often connected to the wrong thing and my sound isn't working).
Like you mention it's hit or miss with the host device though. Sometimes it fails to connect and you need to connect from within the OS.
I forget how this is on my Bose. I think video keeps playing with muted volume when you take the phone call so when you disconnect you just rejoin the video.
5% of the time, I get correct pairing when powered on. 20% of the time, going to the Bluetooth menu -> Device -> Connect works. The rest of the time is a frustrating time having to remove/go into paring mode/re-pair to get it to work (AirPods included).
You hit a nerve with me on this one. I have heard this line all too often to encourage people spend more money. In this case it is not “a bit more”. But a whole lot more.
Pricing needs to be brought to levels of sanity. The reason we are seeing ridiculous prices like these is because millennials don’t pay attention to prices or there is way too much credit in the market or because the gap between rich and poor is getting larger and larger.
I understand the whole paying more for something that works better. I do. But this argument is often used by those who are terribly inexperienced at life, like a copy and paste of a rich experienced person’s take, only they don’t have money like the experienced person does.
And what would their incentive for something like that be?
Downside is that it only works with iPhone, iPad and AppleTV 4k. It's such an amazing upgrade over my current setup, though, that I'm planning on upgrading to an AppleTV 4K so that I'm not limited to using spatial audio on just my iPad.
Spatial audio is a replacement of true surround sound to you? it's a gimmicky weird audio effect to me. Zero sense of sound source behind or in front of me.
In practice, humans subconsciously compensate for ambiguous front/back spatial positioning by turning their heads, putting the sound source on an axis where they do have excellent spatial discrimination. For obvious reasons this doesn't work well for headphones. Unless, of course, you have some kind of head tracking built into them.
I'm sure visual sensory input factors somewhat into how audio positioning is being processed by the human brain.
However an audio experience w/o visual input via physical surround sound sources provides convincing and precise positioning of audio sources. So that indicates visual input is just a tiny factor.
What I struggle with given all audio enters the two years, regardless of headphones or multiple speakers, why is the latter so much better at conveying "surround" sound than headphone? Does this distill down to a simple scenario of sound waves entering the two ears?
[1] https://www.gothamsound.com/product/ku-100-dummy-head-stereo...
The left/right sound stage is huge though in binaural recordings!
In short, two "microphones" (your ears) is not enough to place a sound in 3-space, which makes audio illusions and perception gaps possible. Beyond time-of-flight and amplitude differentials, the human ear acts like a notch filter where the notch frequency changes as a function of angle of incidence. We don't hear the notch but the brain uses it to infer angle in a plane. This has significant issues e.g. it doesn't work well for new sounds with novel spectral signatures because we can't discriminate between a natural notch frequency and one created by the ear. It is possible to synthesize audio that breaks this part of our brain by synthesizing a set of cues that violate the laws of nature -- it is pretty uncomfortable. Creating spatial perception through signal processing has a couple limitations:
First, every human ear has a unique notch filter pattern. Spatial audio over headphones, which partially bypass the notch filtering, works best when they literally insert a microphone into your ear canal and measure the unique notch filtering patterns using test patterns. This can be fed into the software algorithms to create more accurate spatial cues for your unique ears. The perceived result is qualitatively different. There is no universal algorithm that works for everyone.
Second, the relationship between your ears and the sound sources don't change with headphones. In nature, animals either change the orientation of their ears, to basically sweep the notch frequency cues (humans have vestigial biology for this) or in the case of humans we move our heads for both notch frequency and time-of-flight cues. With headphones, the sound sources turn with you, so it produces no cues.
To make natural sounding spatial audio work on headphones, the audio source needs to be able to detect changes in head orientation in real-time and apply appropriate DSP to the raw audio. This is less of a problem with surround sound speaker systems because head motion provides these spatial cues naturally. I haven't tried it out but Apple's real-time head tracking plausibly provides the necessary DSP inputs to produce a spatial model that tracks as good or better than external speakers. Where external speakers fall short is that, unless you are in a carefully acoustically treated space, the space itself injects all kinds of spectral, temporal, and amplitude artifacts that unpredictably degrade the spatial cues in the audio.
Do you need special equipment to do it, or can it be done on a PC with speakers? I'd be quite interested in listening to this
Apple's spatial audio head tracking is unreliable at best. I can fool the system easily by rotating my head at a speed that is slower than a snap rotation, side to side.
Even when the tracking is working properly, it sounds like simulated surround sound from home theater receivers of 20 yr sago.
The 3.5mm jack.
I'm all for options though! But apple don't so I guess it doesn't matter.
Not to mention cord noise on IEMs, which admittedly isn't really a problem on over-the-ear headphones anyway.
I'll probably never buy another pair of corded headphones.
And I have used bluetooth headphones for over a decade, I find it hilarious that when apple suddenly had a offering that it suddenly became obsolete with cords.
It is impossible to overstate how much bluetooth sucks for temporary connections. I dare you, pair your device in my car. Or to play that song on a shared speaker setup. Just a quickie, see how well you do. Might work, might not. The outcome isn't decided by you alone or what device you are pairing with - guaranteed.
The environmental impact alone should give one pause. As the batteries will go out and make the heaphones next to useless. Tech-savvy ones might replace them but that is hardly the norm. Yet my corded headphones are over a decade old sounds better than what apple is offering at a fraction of the price.
They do not have active noise cancellation though - and that is a killer feature! For some situations... Not in my home, where I use them. Because I have the option to do so.
With both of these, there have been times when the cord got annoying, but I really like having that option. I've had these new ones almost two months and have probably charged the batteries once. That's about on-par with the heyday pair - probably less frequently, truly.
People hate on the 3.5mm jack, but it never fails, and I think the hate it gets is disproportionate to how much people actually struggle with it. And if you do struggle with it on occasion, having the option to flip between Bluetooth & 3.5mm is easy peasy.
[0] https://www.target.com/p/heyday-8482-active-noise-cancelling...
That was one of the most failure prone parts of the phones I’ve owned pre-AirPods. Corrosion, lint, etc...
I do. I am at the point where I literally have to buy low-end phones just to still have a headphone jack.
Stuff gets lost, stuff breaks, I don't want to pay hundreds of dollars every time a little bud goes OOPS. I don't see any benefit of wireless headphones, I seem to have the superhuman ability to manage cables without effort.
My headsets never have dead batteries. Are cheap to replace, and have excellent audio quality. I guess I'm not the target audience but you'll have to add my "WTF" to the chorus in regards to $500 headphones.
There are a bunch of really good soft synthesizer apps for iOS that work with a midi keyboard but Bluetooth latency makes them virtually unplayable. With a standard 3.5 mm jack it's not an issue. You can buy a dongle but that's just one more piece of complexity.
Almost all bluetooth headphones on the market have a 3.5mm jack on them at least currently and every device that dropped the jack works with one of those very cheap usb c to 3.5mm adapters.
EDIT: I have no idea where you're getting that figure but I just looked at three different pairs of Bluetooth headphones that I have in my house, Soundpeats, TOZO, and an LG. None of them have 3.5 mm jacks on them.
My AirPods often have bluetooth issues, even when coupled to a MacBook, not just any laptop. They fail at the basic function of making sound.
The only new things about airpods were the truly wireless nature (which was definitely an advantage) and the Apple logo*.
If you have any issues all you can do is the “put them back in the case and hope that kicks them back in line” dance, to mixed effect.
Before this I was dealing with these bizarro issues occasionally that was really frustrating.
> Macro with BetterTouchTool
This is peak Apple rdf.
Not saying you shouldn't by apple, but I don't see the "it works as well as other earphones that cost 1/10th as much" as a real selling feature.
My experience with the AirPods Pro is far from being smooth. Random disconnections, sometimes L or R do not connect, cannot use microphone and listen to music...
Tired of them. Bought a pair of Beyerdynamic with a 3,5mm jack and not even a single issue... For about 150$...
Go to use them for a run and one is often flat. Or my phone will try and connect to the non-charging one in the case, leaving me with no sound when I'm not actually using ear phones.
Some Apple stuff is great - but 'it just works' is a myth.
You do not need to spend $500 if all you need is headphones that do their job.
Its amazing to me the number of Apple fanboys in this thread that seem to think that every other pair of headphones out there is completely broken, and nothing will "just work". This has been a solved problem for like a decade.
QC35 II.
FWIW, I love my Airpods Pro and it's insane that neither Sennheiser nor Bose could beat Apple to the punch with something that works as well as those do. That being said, my Airpods Pro aren't without issues: they seem to hate my iMac. Not even the Big Sur update could change my Airpods' aversion towards reliably connecting to it.
Maybe that has been true in the past. Today, that's just delusion.
Can I be listening to music on my MBP and answer a call with them on my iPhone seamlessly?
I'm confused here. There's no Appke secret sauce chip in the TV so connecting my headphones (Airpods Pro) to it is the same hassle it is connecting any bluetooth device, but they work together just fine. The Apple secret sauce for switching between devices is like an escalator breaking and becoming stairs: when you use the to connect to any other bluetooth device they work as well as any dumber bluetooth headphone/speaker.
Wait what? How does it lock you into anything? Sure, you might not get some Apple-ecosystem-specific perks if you are using their Airpods with non-apple devices (like the automatic switching described in the parent comment), but you still get the same benefits you would expect from other non-airpods wireless headphones. You can use airpods with android phones or your tv or whatever other device supporting bluetooth headsets, just like you would with non-airpods wireless headphones. You can also plug Airpods Max into anything using a 3.5mm jack cable, just like you could with literally any other wired headphones (and many wireless over the ear ones).
I cannot think of a single feature [that is also present on non-apple wireless headphones] that Apple locks you out of if you are using airpods with a non-apple device (e.g., the automatic switching between devices based on the content played doesn't count here, because I cannot think of a single non-apple wireless headset that supports it; you get the idea).
They all happily switch from phone to laptop to other device, going in and out of range, etc
They required me to manually disconnect from one device in order to connect to another (e.g. from laptop to phone or tablet). As far as first world problems go, it was a huge pain in the arse. And nobody cared to mention it in their reviews (found out later in forums it was just not supported).
I ended up preferring the AirPods Pro (and the slightly worse nc, but much lighter and automatically connecting) over them, and now I hardly ever use them. So those were $400 down the drain.
If those AirPods Max work like I want (which, judging from the AirPods Pro, they will), that would be a solid $500 spent without the remorse and dissapointment, which is much better than my Sony purchase...
The number of times I’ve had to pull my laptop out of the overhead compartment on a flight to turn off Bluetooth so I could pair them with my iPad meant I eventually gave up using them. As you say, definitely a first world problem, but I guess that just means I’m in the target demographic.
The new version (WH1000MX4, terrible naming scheme) supposedly have multi device support but I haven't experienced it yet so not sure if it's as smooth as the AirPods.
Decades-old Bose QC 15 headphones still work because the battery is replaceable. Pop in some new ear cushions every few years from Amazon and they are like new.
Don't expect these $550 headphones to be working 10 years after purchase.
A hardware subscription of sorts.
As they did with the AirPods ~$150 bi-annual "subscription". And the AirPods Pro $200ish bi-annual "subscription".
In other words, the real "productivity" hack is to not support a dilute workflow. One will save a _lot_ more time that way compared to some device interoperability.
That's an interesting connection you've drawn between switching audio sources and malingering work.
On the flip side, a mere anecdote of where this kind of flipping was actually beneficial, if you will?
It came in the form of being on a zoom call on the Macbook (which I have in a dock and connected to a pair of displays) with a single airpod in, hearing the kid having a kid moment, and being able to just reach over, open up my ipad, join the call and immediately have audio switched so I could walk down stairs to help buckaroo with a chore, walk back upstairs, put the ipad away and switch back to the Macbook was kind of...well awesome.
No one on the call had a clue.
(also comes in handy when I want to switch from work macbook to personal macbook after hours, or vice versa, if I'm on personal macbook after hours and get paged and need to jump on a slack call. Definitely not avoiding onerous or difficult work there either)
Someone people truly can't handle gadget chit-chat.
The connectivity has been one of the worst experiences i've had lol. Both in and out of Apple ecosystem.
I think it's primarily my laptop to be honest (2018 Macbook Pro), because they do better when connected to my phone; but the ~4 other bluetooth devices including one in-ear bluetooth pair i have never have connectivity issues. Yet i can't count the number of times these AirPods have disconnected, or connected one ear but not the other, etc.
I still love my AirPods, but connectivity has been the worst out of all my bluetooth devices. It's been frustrating.
Not sure why, I have AirPods and then AirPods Pro with a late-2017 Macbook Pro and never had a problem. Ditto with 2 iPhone models...
While I like the ergonomics, I'm wondering how much of the lack of it in non-apple headphones products is the result of Apple not fully supporting them and thus, monopolistic practices.
Replacing the cable with (modified?) bluetooth technology allows distinguishing "our hardware" from "their hardware" and adjusting software to only support certain features.
So, why would not apple devices only support these features on Apple headphones?
I'm not the parent but I typically use a cheap set of earbuds for exercise/active commuting and my over ear headphones while in the office or at home due to better comfort/noise cancellation/audio quality.
Call folks fanboys (I use windows / linux all day for my job by choice).
Do your "solved problem" bluetooth headphones allow EASY audio sharing when the kid is sleeping and you want to watch something with your wife? These are two bluetooth devices on same audio stream.
Does your solved problem bluetooth headphones RELIABLY connect to your current device (without having to unpaid with another device). That is game changing.
The problem is, folks have listened to folks like you so many times and gotten BURNED so many times. Oh, it "should" work you say. Total BS at least 20% of the time.
I won't buy the max'es because I have no need for something that nice. But the $159 for the airpods? Slam dunk.
You should go back and listen to the criticism of the airpods when they came out - overpriced, stupid, whatever. Then check out sales numbers.
Do that again with the apple watch maybe? Started slow, but I'm curious what their top competitor is by $ revenue - they have just improved and improved.
Do that again with the ipod?
Do that again with ballmer and the iphone?
Do that again with the actually pretty cheap M1?
Even better, your phone can act as the remote, your airpods can paid (I've heard) etc.
Other than iphone I'm very late to apple's world, but as I get older, I just love that stuff works and I don't feel like I'm getting scammed every second.
Pre-COVID I used a pair of Plantronics noise cancelling headphones that covered all of your requirements pretty well. Unfortunately the microphone was shit, so I decided to get Airpod Pros for all the remote meetings. Even with the short battery life they have quickly become my default headphones.
I'm not typically a fanboy of anything, but Apple does make some quality electronics.
Cool, just don't be surprised when the sales numbers and reviews end up not reflecting that sentiment. Mostly because I doubt that vast majority of people use that metric as a baseline measure of high quality.
Non replaceable batteries, non upgradeable memory etc is all a tradeoff. Checkout the mac mini with M1 and soldered on memory, but memory performance seems amazing.
I draw the line with replacable battery because it renders the device inherently useless for its purpose (mobile use case).
All Apple in ear Airpods get destroyed if anyone replaces the battery. Even Apple cannot, and they claim to care about the environment.
Beats got a bad name, so I just skip that. There's a reason they did not attach that brand name to their Airpods products.
We just had BF and I saw great deals for Airpods. All of them.
XM3, which has superb ANC, just had a successor (XM4) which has multiple device support. XM4 goes for 350. XM3 was 200 on BF.
Now compare that with Airpods Max price tag and features.
I bought XM4 as a successor to my Logitech G933. Logitech G933 has no ANC, not so good sound quality, it has a proprietary dongle (the dealbreaker for my use case due to USB-A and dongle requirement), it has microUSB, it has 3.5 mm, battery lasts 8 hours. Battery replacement can be bought directly from Logitech, easy to replace yourself, and costs 10 EUR. Compare to XM3/4 3.5 mm, Bluetooth, superb ANC, USB-C (in contrast to microUSB or lightning), and the battery is good... but I doubt it still is in 3 years.
As an owner of those same Sony headphones (XM3), their multi-device support is a joke compared to airpods. Not even kidding, night and day. Manual pairing, limit on devices, having to do everything through Sony's buggy app, etc. I still like them, because when I am working at my desk in an office, I would prefer over-the-ears. If Apple manages to match and/or beat Sony's sound+ANC quality, but bring all the connectivity and great multi-device pairing features of current Airpods to Airpods Max, I am sold.
I use the WF-1000XM3 and WH-1000XM4 and the pairing of the WF-1000XM3 works fine for me, but the ANC of the over the ears XM4 (as well as your WH-1000XM3) is superior. At times, I don't even have listen to anything and it still works. Its terrific at work. Even works with getting less agitated by the noise of my children.
If you confirm that ANC is actually significantly better than on XM3 (which I already liked a lot anyway), then now I know what I will be upgrading to, in case Airpods Max end up not delivering on their promise :)
And on that note, for other people who are interested, XM4 had recently a really good deal on Amazon (US) for something like $250. At that price point, it is def a really good bang for the buck.
At least until Airpods Max come out, XM4 are unilaterally imo overall the best pair of wireless headphones with ANC. Not trying to imply that Airpods Max will take over that spot as soon as they get released, they might completely flop and be trash, who knows. But either way, XM4 is currently imo the best, and even if Airpods Max somehow manages to become a magical pair of headphones, XM4 is still a great pair, and is definitely still gonna be a better bang for the buck than Airpods Max (while i pre-ordered those, I don't have any illusions about me not paying the "apple tax" on those). So for anyone hesitating or not into the idea of paying $500+ for wireless headphones with ANC, i heavily recommend Sony WH-1000XM4.
That said, I think your description of other bluetooth devices is overly pessimistic. I've had no problems finding bluetooth devices that do basic bluetooth things (connecting, xmitting audio, swapping devices) well. For that reason I basically never recommend Apple products as if they are the only ones to "get it right."
Apple is a premium brand. Folks should consider them if they want a premium product, but it's silly to act as if their competition doesn't offer the same basic functionality for much better prices.
That's partly because apple ignore HN. I need a modulare phone that I can ugprade the ram on. Apple is ignoring you, they seal their phones up with epoxy so they are pretty darn waterproof. But for normal users, this is a positive.
They call out fake third party batteries. OH NO says HN. For normal users, a plus again.
They offer BY FAR the longest and most reliable operating system support. First gen ipad pro's STILL have value! My old android tablet has been unsupported since the DAY I bought it.
Or built in junkware and adware. If I buy a samsung TV can I be pretty sure it won't datamine my viewing habits? Even top competitors turn out to be basically scammers. Will you guarantee me that samsung won't jam ads onto my TV after I buy it?
"Towards the end of 2019, owners have started to voice their dissatisfaction with larger, increasingly obtrusive, and unrelated ads showing up on their Samsung TVs. These include ads for canned beans or discount supermarkets" - this is on $2,500+ frame art TV's etc.
It turns out, despite your claims, these other very large companies selling very expensive items are scamming folks to often, it only takes getting burned ONCE by this to just reduce your circle of trust dramatically.
Is there a perfect bluetooth device out there? Sure. If I go through the amazon listings will I find that device? I doubt it. If I buy from apple will I get it? I think so.
The price of these headphones is ridiculous, I don't defend that. If they are able to sell them at this price I'll be a bit surprised. But overall, they have built user trust up pretty high.
> They call out fake third party batteries. OH NO says HN. For normal users, a plus again.
They make it impossible to replace any component even if the user knows exactly what they're doing. Not, "warning: non-certified component added", but "haha, you thought you could use 3rd party parts? enjoy your brick"
> They offer BY FAR the longest and most reliable operating system support. First gen ipad pro's STILL have value! My old android tablet has been unsupported since the DAY I bought it.
Right, which is why we keep hearing from people who move their macbooks to Linux after Apple drops support. And why Apple technically supports phones forever while releasing OS updates that tank performance.
> Or built in junkware and adware. If I buy a samsung TV can I be pretty sure it won't datamine my viewing habits? Even top competitors turn out to be basically scammers. Will you guarantee me that samsung won't jam ads onto my TV after I buy it?
I don't own any such device to test, but I notice that https://www.imore.com/how-change-privacy-settings-apple-tv talks about a "Limit Ad Tracking" option on Apple TV.
When I have done my own battery replacements on android phones I have found that half the time the battery I got off ebay is already stuffed probably because it was in someones phone for 2 years already.
We need to consider how much use letting users replace their own screens is compared to how much use having users not get their phone stolen is. Perhaps there could be a system where the part ids are tied to an apple id and the original id has to authorize a transfer but then all the displays on ebay would still not work because they are stolen.
I have completely had it with Samsung consumer level devices. Every single one I have had has come with bloatware, discontinued support after a short time and seems to slow down real bad after a few years.
The last samsung product I own is a TV which was perfectly fine on day one but now its so slow I find it hard to change channel or volume and turning it on shows a shitload of HUD bloatware about random streaming services.
And when you point out any of these issues people go "Oh its not a problem you just open the registery editor" or "you pop the back of your tv open and unplug the antenna and then flash this file on to the spi chip"
And don't care if all their other products have to be from Apple. You don't buy "one" Apple product which "just works". You have to buy everything from the ecosystem.
Lately I was checking for some good wireless earplugs. The airpods seem to be the best. But only if you're using an iPhone.
>You have to buy everything from the ecosystem.
Agreed with the first, heavily disagreed with the second. People often end up buying into the Apple ecosystem after just one product, but not because they have to, but because they feel compelled to.
That was me with original airpods. They worked superbly with android, no complaints whatsoever. So I was like "huh, let me check out their other newer product offerings, it's been quite a while". Eventually, i ended up buying heavily into the ecosystem, and couldn't be happier (sidenote: shared clipboard between your phone and laptop/desktop is amazing).
In fact, I think the timing and everything about original airpods was a stroke of genius. I single-handedly know quite a few people who couldn't care less about Apple ecosystem at all and owned zero Apple devices, but they eventually gave in to try airpods, bought them, and a few years down the road ended up buying an iPhone or a Mac. Some of them were even very staunch pro-android people.
KDE Connect: free, open source and, despite the name, works even if you're not using KDE.
The phone I used them with first was the Pixel 2. They worked perfectly fine. The only heartburn I had was once I had paired them with my Macbook, the bluetooth connection would prefer the Macbook over the phone, which was sometimes annoying.
Others might be upset at the lack of support for the Google Assistant, but for actually using the headphones, there was nothing better, even on Android.
The same with Apple. With few exceptions, I can walk into an Apple store and buy an arbitrary product and be assured that it’s, at the minimum, good. Contrast with someone like Samsung who has great products but also really bad products. I can’t pull a random Samsung out of a hat and be convinced that I’ll like it.
I don’t know, I have never once needed this capability.
> Does your solved problem bluetooth headphones RELIABLY connect to your current device (without having to unpaid with another device). That is game changing.
Yes, for the 5 years I’ve had Bluetooth headphones this has never been an issue.
No opinion on apple being better or not (mixed bag, in my limited experience) but this just isn't true in general I think. I've used at least a half dozen bluetooth headphones on at least a dozen different laptops/desktops/phones over the last decade... they have all had some issues with connections at various times.
I used to be like that and my hearing shows it, and I've learned that just because I'm listening to something, it doesn't need to immerse my entire aural apparatus.
I'm a software engineer, and I'm happy to get my hands dirty with some code. But when it comes to my devices, I really don't want to waste my time trying to figure out why this or that device, doesn't pair with, or work well with, my other device.
Apple just does this better than anyone else.
I recently got an Apple watch and the setup process was sublime. Pairing with all my other devices, was effortless. Instantly my watch was "mine" with everything I need on it.
The LTE setup was mostly painless too. There was a bug in the process that was on Verizon's end, but other than that, getting my phone paired to my number was a breeze.
The pairing with my phone, and my mac, is what makes this whole ecosystem special. It just works, and it works pretty damn well. Yes, you can get most of this functionality on a windows or linux machine, with an android phone, airpod replicas, and an android based smart watch but the fluidity of the apple integration is unmatched.
This is what (some) people are willing to pay more for.
I actually never managed to do it, and had to call for backup. In order to eventually do it, this other person had to install multiple updates, each of which seemed to only be accessible from some different piece of UI, and a lot of the process seemed to trial and error and dead-ends.
I don't think Apple stuff "just works" nearly as well as people claim it does.
Because Microsoft has had to pay so much attention to it - and maybe Apple has not - the Windows update process is at the very least far more informative about what’s going on - status of installation before and after any reboot. Updating OS on wife’s MacBook seems like comparatively opaque process. Which is fine if things “always work”, but they don’t.
I've been fortunate to never run into any failed updates (and I've done many) but as they remove features like this and 32 bit support, I'm looking at other options for my next machine.
Once the OS releases became free and were no longer distributed on physical media there was a time when releases would be downloaded from the App Store. OS updates have moved from a dedicated Software Update app, to the App Store app and now into System Preferences. For I'm not sure how long, OS installations have been effectively click and approve the license with no other input required for the past decade (and with increasingly less information displayed during the install process).
I've recently installed OS X 10.4 Tiger (from 2005) and Windows 8 Pro, both from original media to blank drives, the OS X installation was much less frustrating (most notably because I didn't have to dig up a license key).
"For I'm not sure how long, OS installations have been effectively click and..." agree to legal contract titled 'Terms and Conditions' that, if anyone read them, would clarify a TON of technical misconceptions and speculations (but ironically does not provide much legal clarity).
I've recently installed OS X 10.10 - macOS 11.0 dozens of times each with no eyes or hands, and at least one of the people involved was frustrated every single time. People shouldn't have to have experience installing every release of the last fifteen years to install the latest without struggling.
I also recall some issues when developing Arduino stuff because of the USB connection to the Arduino.
If you want the best platform for connecting random vendors together, I would probably go with Windows/Microsoft.
If you want the best platform for seamless vertical integration nothing is better than Apple. That's why people get so excited about new Apple products. It's a new shiny toy that they know will work excellently within their ecosystem.
I’ve have $10 Bluetooth earphones from CVS and Walgreens and have never had an issue using them with my iPhone or iMac.
As long as the no-name stuff follows the specs, it just works in the Apple ecosystem.
Not to discount your experiences, but I use FreeBSD, Windows, MacOS, iOS, and Android devices, professionally and personally, and I don't have many problems getting these devices to talk to each other.
>Had all kinds of problems connecting it to my Android phone.
MacOS doesn't have native MTP support. You can use a third party tool on MacOS or an SMB client on Android.
* Until they start rattling (https://techcrunch.com/2020/10/30/airpods-pro-rattling-crack...)
* An automatic update you can't roll back makes noise cancellation worse (https://www.theverge.com/2020/1/17/21069953/apple-airpods-pr...)
* They don't pair, or only one of them pairs, or they don't pair with each other (I personally have these three cases all the time)
Apples marketing department just works.
Which one is the high-end, comparable non-Apple model that I can slap a pair of AA batteries in?
Go ahead. I'll wait.
So why are you even posting in a topic about a pair of wireless headphones? You're not the market. You have no recent experience with similar products. What was your point?
Of all the things that could be disposable this seems like the least concerning. A Tesla contains orders of magnitudes more plastic, electronics, and batteries that will one day be junk and you will go through maybe 3 sets of AirPods before you trade in for a newer model EV?
My AirPods also lack battery capacity now, to a degree that it’s annoyingly short. I accidentally came over a second pair, but yeah a new pair of earphones every two to three years sounds expensive to me.
Problem is, they work so spectacularly well otherwise that I don’t know how that I could stand anything else. Part of this is that Apple seem to intentionally make other headsets work less well. For example by not routing calls through the headset by default, such a joke.
- Do an in warranty battery replacement (within 1 year)
- Pay a repair shop or apple for a new battery.
- Apple runs one of the most comprehensive recycling and trade-in programs out there. Every store offers both trade-in value for devices that have it and free recycling for those that don't.
https://www.apple.com/recycling/nationalservices/
- They will send you a fedex label if you want to fedex in your airpods for recycling if you are too lazy to actually go to a store.
People helping the environment are out there doing it, and others sit on HN too lazy to take even the minimal steps to reduce their impact.
And no, other companies you buy your totally wireless bluetooth headphones from do not make all this easier, but MUCH MUCH harder.
Everything on my Apple Watch just works, but I can do much more things with my 8 year old android smartwatch.
From what I've experienced it is true that when using apple with apple, it just works. that is true and i won't dispute that. they own the ecosystem so they can handle the integration well, obiously. But the opposite is also true. When using apple with non apple, it (sometimes) just doesn't work or works poorly. When i use the same device on Windows or Android (linux is a different beast), it just works when it won't with iOS or Mac. and sometimes i just want to use a brand thats not apple...
I think for many apple users these days, they believe that Android/Windows still have the problems they faced back in 2009 and havent extensively used either since switching.
Android pairs newer bluetooth devices essentially the same way apple pairs airpods now and windows doesnt still have all the issues from windows vista that made them switch in the first place and has support for way more devices than apple ever will.
I'm not trying to make the point that one is better than the other, my point for apple users is that the experience on windows/android isn't as bad as they think it is and my point for windows/android users is that you're not missing out on much or anything at all from the apple ecosystem.
Buy devices that fit your use case and budget. its as simple as that.
Yes, things are better. If I compared the first iPhone to an Pixel 4, the iPhone isn't going to compare nicely. It's always worth making sure you are comparing apples to apples (no pun intended ;-))
Result: couldn't get the Bluetooth conference widget working. Googled around for hours and tried all kinds of things, including compiling and installing kernel modules and replacing the bluetooth stack. Nothing worked. No, this is not an exotic non-standard protocol, it's a standard one (I think aptX or so? sorry, forgot the details again already; but I googled around and found lots of people with similar issues, and then many "solutions", none of which worked; see above)
Anyway, I am back to plugging in my MacBook each time we want to video conference, and will soon install Windows on the media server (no matter how much I hate the thought).
I really want to use Linux for this kind of stuff, but it's 2020 and I can't get a Bluetooth widget working that works flawlessly on various Macs, Windows machines, iPhone, iPad and an Android phone.
So while things may be better, they are still far from where they could be, I am afraid.
Your media server is doing a lot more than serving up music/movies/tv isn’t it? If not, it’s hard to go past Plex or Kodi.
Is video calling a thing that people call on a media server for?
I’d be airplaying to the tv, but that’s going the Apple route.
Yeah, adding the microphone and camera is going beyond that, but it's convenient to use the computer already hooked to the TV instead of, you know, hooking up yet another one. Also, how does Airplay give me access to the camera mounted on top of the TV (an old phone, BTW)? Also, how is that relevant for my comment at all? :-)
www.macrumors.com/how-to/mirror-facetime-call-apple-tv-airplay-2-smart-tv/amp/
> Also, how is that relevant
It isn’t particularly, I’d just never heard of a media server doing video chat and was wondering about it.
But yeah, much much simpler solution to just install Windows on it.
With Linux, you know that something can work if you just give it enough elbow grease. The same is true on macOS, but the ecosystem does not tempt you unless its something you actually need. On Linux, the ecosystem says, "oh, that weird thing you want to do you? YES! You can do it! It's normal! Go for it!" And then you do, and you have issues, and everyone is like "oh that sucks but also you were trying to do a weird thing." The blessed path is less clear.
I use Linux for work.
In Ubuntu 20 air pod pros still don’t pair properly - I can use the earphones but not the headset microphone.
Then there are minor annoyances like plugging in an external monitor and keyboard to a closed laptop (thinkpad) and not having it wake up (need to open and close the case), or closing the case but then the power management doesn’t work properly so if it’s not plugged in to power, then when I open it the next day the battery is drained and the laptop has shutdown - losing any unsaved state.
Finally (and this is the main one preventing me from using Linux on my personal laptop) Chinese fonts on Linux are awful. Not only are the default fonts ugly but applications do a poor job of rendering them, often getting baselines offsets between subsequent characters wrong, making characters on the same line jump around.
It’s altogether a subpar experience especially compared to macOS.
Do you really blame Linux over Apple for that? Bluetooth on Linux isn't great, that's totally true, but a big source of problems is the device makers. They often test against only the system they are targeting, and leave the rest. Nearly every bluetooth implementation has issues, but the Linux one is never tested/developed with like others.
> Then there are minor annoyances like plugging in an external monitor and keyboard to a closed laptop (thinkpad) and not having it wake up (need to open and close the case), or closing the case but then the power management doesn’t work properly so if it’s not plugged in to power, then when I open it the next day the battery is drained and the laptop has shutdown - losing any unsaved state.
I agree, this is insanely stupid. By all means I don't think things are perfect yet, but they are definitely better than they used to be. There are also easy things you can do to avoid these things, such as sleeping your laptop from the Gnome widget (or just run `systemctl suspend -i`) and it works every time. just open the lid to resume working. It's annoying that you have to do that for sure, but in my opinion learning simple workflow changes like that aren't a big deal in exchange for the FLOSS aspects, but everyone is different. Choice is what makes things great!
I don't blame anyone, and I understand the reasons, but at the end of the day I still can't use devices I can use everywhere else, and I'm reminded of that daily when I need to plug wired headphones in instead.
Power-management issues I've learned to work around - but again is something that requires regular actions/changes in behaviour that serve as a continual reminder that there are issues.
Chinese font issues I've given up on entirely and I just have the UI in English.
Don't get me wrong, macOS has plenty of issues too, and it feels like the overall software quality has been in a gradual state of decline for at least a decade, but it doesn't have the same continual reminders of issues that I get when using Linux, and the fonts always look nice regardless of language.
On desktop OS or smartphone I cannot agree with this sentiment though. I used Arch Linux (arguably the best Linux experience I've had by far) on Thinkpad for 3 years and used Nexus/Pixel for 5+ years. Starting from last year I finally had enough and switched back to Macbook + iPhone. God were the devices much, much reliable and my life much easier. At least I didn't have to worry about random stuffs like Bluetooth disconnection, lack of proper HiDPI support or the camera taking 5 seconds to start/simply freezing.
When I was last using this machine regularly, most biannual upgrades broke one of these three things anyway (and, no: the tweaks were not obscure things that caused the breakage, and several failed attempts were made to revert them, report them, or look into the causes, and they obviously don't affect the live USB).
Seriously- who is more likely to put app ads in my start menu (candy crush and friends) when I pay for the ‘pro’ version of their os? Apple or windows?
Can you guarantee my Samsung TV won’t start showing me ads? Hint - they already do.
My next Samsung smart phone from Verizon won’t have trash bloat ware on it and won’t prompt me endlessly for Samsung pay?
That I can get an item fixed easily at any of their retail stores?
Sure - stuff out there works - but figuring out the perfect phone carrier / phone provider for example is annoying. Where is download boost on Verizon? Oh, it’s disabled.
Even apples phone experience is much more consistent across all carriers. Why these other folks bundle 10 Verizon and another batch of junk themselves as user value enhancing boggles my mind
Shame on you, Apple.
This isn’t really the part of Apple’s Bluetooth that I appreciate. What I find immensely useful is when you want to switch the headphones from one device to another. Apple’s solution isn’t 100% accurate, but on any given day, it’s common for me to switch my AirPod Pros from my phone to my watch to my laptop to my Apple TV. Before I switched over to all Apple gear, I needed to either spend 5 minutes re-pairing my headphones or (what I really did) have dedicated Bluetooth headphones for my TV.
This is the major benefit for me... the seamless switching, not the pairing.
I tried the Apple smart home ecology on the argument of privacy and I’m getting frustrated at the disparity in quality vs Google. For example, there’s a noticeable probability of multiple devices picking up AND redundantly entering a command, like adding a reminder. Often, often times, another Siri device will take over from the local one in front of me and say, “Sorry, I can’t do that,” even though it could if the right device picked up.
Apple is still a top recommendation but they aren’t a no brainer. The more you use your brain the less you end up on the bad side of the Apple ecology, like with the sticky keyboard issue.
I will say though that oddly, the Siri remote got a little worse in its ATV4K revision — most notably, triggering a jump back/forward 30s is much harder on the newer remote. As a result I've paired my old original Dev Kit remote with the ATV4K, which works beautifully.
https://support.roku.com/article/360057488733
Apple TV is also available as a Roku channel:
https://channelstore.roku.com/details/a20e3c294993147c6cda43...
Roku does not yet have HBO Max, but the two services are currently negotiating a deal to make it happen:
https://www.cnet.com/news/hbo-max-exec-on-roku-deal-we-will-...
In the meantime, HBO Max can be streamed to Roku from an Apple device via AirPlay 2:
https://variety.com/2020/digital/news/roku-apple-airplay-4k-...
I guess "it just works" as long as you keep upgrading to their latest. That's true with deprecations in every product line, but it's not something I'd pay a premium for, especially when it doesn't exist.
I'm all-in on Apple, and I don't see that changing. And generally, the above has been my experience too. But I recently bought a wireless magic keyboard and trackpad for a standing workstation with a monitor in the corner of our living room. I'd expected to be able to switch between our two laptops seamlessly so that whoever happened to need it could use it, but no - you have to explicitly unpair the keyboard and trackpad from one computer before re-pairing it to the other. That means finding it wherever my wife left it, turning it on or at a minimum logging in and all the rest of the dance, every single time. It drives me insane.
I have a shitty $50 brand x bluetooth speaker that does it better than this. I want to listen to some music, I pair with it. My wife wants to listen to some music later? She just pairs to it and she's done. It doesn't seem that hard to get right.
My recollection is that the magic keyboard / trackpad insta-pair if you connect them via wire. Would plugging them each in to a lightning cable for a second to switch their allegiance work better for you than manually unpairing? Obviously it's still a hassle.
I didn't know that, thanks - I'll try that. It's still a pain, but less so than having to track my wife's computer down.
It does beg the question of why I'm going wireless at all, of course.
There’s 3 dedicated buttons for paired Bluetooth devices (fn + 1,2,3) and hitting them just pairs to the device. And you can reassign a button to another device by holding fn+1,2,3.
When you turn it on it pairs to the last device it was paired to.
Yes. Samsung has supported this for years and it has recently upstreamed to all android devices. You can literally do this with any phone and any bluetooth devices, you don't need to fork up $500 for the priviledge.
> Does your solved problem bluetooth headphones RELIABLY connect to your current device (without having to unpaid with another device).
Yes. The Bose QC35 II for example can store multiple bluetooth connections on the device and switch between them. They cost half as much as the Apple cans and are all but guaranteed to sound better than the plastic cones Apple uses.
> You should go back and listen to the criticism of the airpods when they came out - overpriced, stupid, whatever. Then check out sales numbers.
I won't argue that. Apple certainly moves product - there's a significant portion of the population that would buy anything they put out.
I have these and it’s annoying to switch them because they’re stored and switched via the app - if you’re switching between more than 2 devices.
The Bose anc also don’t have particularly good audio either so I’m interested to see what the Apple offering sounds like.
In general, there’s a bunch of little annoyances with the current anc devices available (audio quality, uncomfortable, ugly, etc) that I’d like to see Apple fix.
Not true, you can cycle between previously connected devices by long holding the power switch in the on position. You can also add new connections and wipe all connections via that switch. I have them and never need to use the app. Read the manual.
You don’t need to press any buttons. Just interact with your devices as normal and your audio connection switches automatically as if sound were playing through the device’s respective speakers.
In fact there may be a downside because sometimes I actually need to take my AirPods out to verify that audio is still playing through them since the audio just transferred so fast.
Also one of my devices is a Windows PC. I don’t know if AirPods work equally well with non-Apple sources.
The battery life is pretty much one day's use. The bluetooth connectivity is flaky, and sometimes I hear weird sound artifacts over Bluetooth too. The robot voice announcement whenever a device goes in or out of range, even if I'm currently listening to something from a different device, is super annoying, and there's no way AFAIK to turn it off.
But I worry that the "just works" will only kick in for a complete apple ecosystem. I have a bunch of issues with my airpods + Android, that iphone users don't seem to have, for example.
My Airpods don't. They are regularly confused whether they should connect to the iPad or the iPhone. Yes, both are nearby. But I'm only tapping and interacting on one of them at any given moment. Not always. Sometimes.
More frustrating: The iPad just loves to use its internal loudspeakers. I'm sitting on the couch watching a YouTube video via Airpods. I'm clicking on another video, sound is coming from the loudspeaker. Not always. Sometimes.
Third annoyance: I'm getting both Airpods out the capsule. Both are nearly fully charged. Only one is playing. I need to put the mute one back into the capsule, close it, open it and get the Airpod out again. Not always. Often.
>Do your "solved problem" bluetooth headphones allow EASY audio sharing when the kid is sleeping and you want to watch something with your wife? These are two bluetooth devices on same audio stream.
So in your mind, 'solving' a problem is buying not one, but TWO $500 headphones instead of $10 earbuds and a $5 Y connector? Oh wait, you also believe that the headphone jack is stupid. Yeah, sure, sell people a $1000 solution for a problem you created. Great job!
>It's amazing to me how many folks seem to have no clue about what folks value in the apple ecosystem.
I'm not a fan of Gucci products either. ;)
Man, I wish my headphones did this. I constantly have to fiddle with my bluetooth settings, have audio come out of my mac or iPhone, sometimes in inappropriate places, even after I've tried to tell the OS to play from headphones. The worst is when switching between my Mac and iPhone, usually I have to unpair one, put my headphones into pairing mode, or at the very least turn bluetooth off on one device.
My headphones are...Apple AirPods. They did this when they first launched, so I even got the pros. Now none of my pairs ever work.
I really wish Apple would figure out how to make stuff just work. I think there's opportunity for someone to figure it out! No clue what happened to this company, but the AirPods are undoubtedly the most frustrating Apple product I've ever owned
I switch my current ones between a macbook and my phone multiple times a day, all it takes is pressing a single button in my taskbar on macbook or control panel of my phone.
I heard they even have an autoswitch feature now, where you can use your airpods with macbook, but when a call comes in or you play a video on your iphone, it switches automatically to that device, and then back. Haven't had a chance to test that feature myself tho, so YMMV.
Neither pair will switch between my iPhone and MacBook without triggering a manual pair from the Bluetooth menu. To get that working for the AirPods I have to update to Big Sur but apparently that has a good chance of bricking my MacBook so I can't.
Is that really game changing? I recently got myself a pair of Huawei FreeLace Pro which do exactly that, even have a button shortcut to change between the two devices, works with my iPhone and iPad. They have ANC, an Awareness mode, a battery charge that last 28 hours, the audio sounds amazing enough to this non-audiophile, all of that for 89€.
(Yes, I save, and use, my old smartphones. I'm an Android developer so they're handy to keep around.)
https://www.jabra.com/accessories/jabra-link-360#/
It looks to the PC like USB audio, but it talks to the headphones over Bluetooth.
If I want to transition from the Windows 10 laptop to the Linux laptop, or desk-side PC, I just move the dongle.
Signal is solid. Has an LED on it so you can see whether it's talking to a headset (blue), playing audio with mic umuted (green), or playing audio with mic muted (red). (Amazing feature for Zoom calls!)
The retail price of it seems a bit high at $56, but you can find them used with Jabra Evolve 65 headsets on eBay for $45-$60 as a bundle. (The headset sound is pretty good, actually. Fragile if you don't pack it flat in a backpack, alas.)
Sorry I sound like a commercial, but it really makes life easier. Seems like the frustration saved was worth the $$$.
If their fidelity is below its peers, all of the "just works" stuff goes to trash for me. I have a pair of entry level Philips BT headphones (designed by Gibson) and they sound well above its price point. It's no Sennheiser, Grado, RHA or similar but, they're not a pair of cheap cans either.
So, for $549, they should rather sound detailed and balanced. Otherwise, It's meaningless for me.
Tell that to Bose. Their newest 700 model headphones are a UX/Connectivity nightmare.
If not for the fact that the Sony noise cancelling headphones exist in the same price bracket, I could easily see myself going with a $500 pair of headphones that "just work".
They're junk
Not to my experience...
Yeah right. I spend hundreds of dollars in headphones when I want to upgrade and it's always the same crappy bluetooth experience. Not saying this will be better but that problem hasn't been solved yet.
You're tempted to suspect that the problems experienced by your one colleague are self inflicted, but you'd never suggest it out loud. The differences might be real, but due to a hidden cause. Or, some workers might be more "accident prone" when it comes to dealing with tech. I've even seen this with people who should be the most tech savvy: Good programmers.
Regardless of the cause, imagine that someone discovers a market appeal to the effect of: "The problems are not your fault, we have stuff that just works." It's a safe bet that the message will resonate with X percent of people. That's a perfect market. And if Apple has discovered that market, we certainly can't dispute that they're successful -- possibly the most successful company on the planet.
On the other hand, if you belong to the other group, and somebody can make a less expensive product that you're satisfied with, and it "just works" for you, then you're happy too. They can be successful too, even if on a modest scale. I'd take 10% of Apple's market. ;-)
At one workplace, long ago, two of us were using Windows, and my colleague couldn't make it work at all, plus he sent me articles about Windows horror stories from magazines. I never had a problem. My friend ended up with Apple, and I kept using Windows. We were both happy.
Meanwhile my Sony WH1000-XM3s work perfectly with my TV, including volume control, and work perfectly with everything else including my Apple devices.
I don't have "connectivity issues" and battery life is 10hrs more than AirPods Max. They even included a stereo cable in the box to connect to the standard 3.5mm jack built-in to the headset, and they also came with a proper case to protect them when they're in my rucksack. All for £330 less than AirPods Max.
It's amazing that people think AirPods Max will be the first ever good set of on-ear wireless headphones.
Since they are modular, they also have been a breeze to upgrade and repair. Need different cables? Better microphone? Its 20$ to upgrade that part of the headphone. Want to add bluetooth support? Can do that as well.
People buying and gifting pair of > 200$ headphones every year as if speakers are some kind of tech that gets outdated.
If you really care about audio quality and the environment, just buy a good pair of upgradeable headphones. They'll last you your whole life.
Edit: I'm not being facetious, this is an excellent move for Apple to make as it continues to pursue dominance in the luxury tech-wearables market.
So yeah, not quite rich enough to buy a house in major cities, but hey, you can certainly splurge on this kind of stuff.
The ability to just take them off and have them pause is icing on the cake as well.
If other headphones have these features, I'm open to them.
If you're using a macbook you need to ensure you're using the AAC codec, for some reason macOS makes SBC as the default codec for lots of devices and you've to force it to use the non-garbage codec.
I’ve never had a firmware upgrade fail on my set of Jabra Elite 75t’s yet, and I think I’ve done three, maybe four since I got them.
I’ve never had to use or been tempted to use an app for them on the PC, only using the one on my iPhone. They work great, sound quality seems fine but not fantastic - maybe AirPods are better, but I wouldn’t know. One nice thing is the EQ in the Jabra app - it’s not “adaptive” like AirPods, but I consider manual EQ a better feature if it’s an either/or decision. Have presets for music and meetings that I rarely mess with unless on long meeting or longer music listening session. I can see how the adaptive would save you from even thinking about it so I can see why some people would prefer it.
The one thing I find annoying about the Jabra set is that if I take the left ear out to talk to someone, I may have to put both back in case and out again to get them both back online. I hear about similar problems with AirPods though.
Again check the codec mac is using for this. I've had no issues with them, you either had a defective device or Mac is forcing the SBC codec. On windows there's a headset audio device for every bluetooth device that sounds garbage too (regardless of what the device actually is).
If the tech exists for in-ears though, hopefully it will/does exist in over-ear.
Or maybe you're just being contrarian...
The point is that "their job" differs for some people and OP was pretty explicit on what "their job" meant to them.
I have Macs and PCs and the only device that I can use wirelessly without any issues are my Airpods. With the PC, it's just a click to connect. I have tried Jabra headsets, Sony, Bose, and others and none of them even come close so I have to politely disagree with that statement. If these Airpods Max are anything like my regular Airpods, that will be worth it just to add watching TV to that list.
I actually have AirPods too, and I consider the Jabras to be more seamless.
I've never noticed a difference in the sound quality, and I have actually had coworkers remark that they can hear me better when I use the Jabras, FWIW.
I dunno, it seems like you're the one ignoring what people are saying. Multiple people in this thread are specifically pointing out that Jabra can easily do this automated switching too, with no issues. I don't know why you keep ignoring that.
>The situation you're describing where you use the Jabra headsets/phones with an iPad, tablet, and other Macbooks requires you to connect to the devices manually.
No, that's not what I said. The Jabras automatically switch between all of my devices (with the sole exception of the iPad for an unknown reason). It does not require any manual acts on my part.
>If you have to manually switch anything then you either don't have them set up correctly or you intentionally turned something off.
Yes, I intentionally turned off the Automatic switching feature of the Airpods because if I left it on, the Airpods would decide to randomly switch devices even when I was in the middle of a phone call, in the middle of a song, or randomly switch to a device that was sitting in another room completely unused. The Automatic switching feature on the Airpods is completely unusable to me, and after talking to other Airpods users, they found the same. The Jabras, on the other hand, don't have any such issues, and thus the Jabras are much more seamless.
The promise of the Airpods Max is to be very high quality headphones, which are in that rough price range. On top of that the complete integration into the Apple universe and some nice functions like the spacial audio, which had been well received with the AirPods Pro. Which are much cheaper, if you are not aiming for the highest audio quality.
Audeze LCD-4z owners laughing at $500 being touted as expensive. Although, they will last a lot longer.
Considering the tiny batteries make these disposable items, it's pretty compelling.
I am an audio weirdo who used a lot of professional headphones over the years, and I like the Sennheiser sound. Too often have I been disappointed by "premium brands" that are not really in the business of designing headphone drivers and so their sound is subpar.
These Sennheiser headphones switch sources automatically, they are made from metal and leather, they sound great, they have all the battery I need and, most importantly for me, they have actual buttons. After using other headphones without buttons, I can't tell you how much better I like that "feature".
I think Apple can make headway with noise cancellation, battery and ergonomics. That will be enough for most people.
However, for myself, I am most curious if they will actually sound good, especially given that their marketing quip on that topic is - well let's call it "more than a few empty phrases".
Let's see!
Sure, if by "works" you mean "only works with other Apple products." The cost isn't just $500, it's also the opportunity cost of going with any other competing (and possibly better) product in the future. Apple's pricing is high, but is even higher if you account for the hidden hand of future buying power you give them. It's a brilliant business strategy as it limits your choice as a consumer for the lifetime of the headphones.
Say Apple decides to slow down your old iPhone again (what? no! [1])... Or maybe you just like the new Google Pixel. Sucks to be you, time to buy a new iPhone again ($$$) if you don't want your headphones to stop "just working."
If someone tells me my bargan-tier Samsung phone is slower than molasses, I'm not gonna say "yeah but I like the blue color". I'm gonna agree.
Can't say the same for their competitors (MS, Linux, Samsung, etc), whose products I've used extensively over the past 25 years. I am not a computing novice. Call it a reality distortion field if you want but I am happy.
I don't think Apple treats their customers like garbage though; quite the opposite. I've always had a no-bullshit customer experience - fast and easy returns & replacements, generous policies & even being able to return outside the window, no haggling about issues. E.g. a few months ago my iPad stopped charging, a replacement arrived 2 days later. Most tech companies are absolutely terrible at customer service like this.
Tech isn't perfect and will break. And by buying Apple you DO have to go through Apple when this happens, but the actual customer experience is top notch. To characterize it as being about shiny buttons is ridiculous, it's about buying peace of mind and having one less thing in your life be bullshit.
Could be you got stuck in an edge case or had a bad rep, which sucks. Nevertheless, they have the highest NPS / customer satisfaction scores in the industry, if we're to go by the data.
Case in point: my mom wants to buy AirPods, but she uses a Samsung Galaxy S10. I told her it'll work fine because Bluetooth, but that (at least originally) AirPods ship out with buggy firmware that needs updating. She'd need to find a friend with an iPhone just to update them to some current version before use. (And apparently even that is a UX nightmare with no real update button or indication)
Well, yeah, that is what people mean when they say this. I'm not seeing anyone here make the case that it's worthwhile if you're don't use other Apple products, or that it's not a giant hassle to switch out of Apple products. They just don't care as much about lock in as you.
I'm sure some Apple customers realize what's happening. As in, they knowingly look at the slowly boiling pot of water and get in because it's not hot enough to burn them yet.
But I think for the most part, Apple is exploiting a common blind spot in human psychology, the ability to predict the future. People look at the Apple devices they have now and make a decision to buy Airpods. They don't see the future implications of being locked-in.
The typical Apple consumer probably starts with an iPhone or mac (because of phone plans, open standards, apps, etc). The real lock-in begins with the AirPods, iWatch, etc. Once they get you to buy one of these 'lock in' devices, they're much more likely to continue making more money off of you the next time you need a new laptop/phone/desktop. That's all well and fine if you know this going in, but I'd wager most don't.
For example, an iPhone user can get the exact same experience from the Galaxy Buds as I have with my S10+, but they get the added bonus of having enhanced operability with things like AirPods, if that's what they want instead. I think the only limitation with the Buds is the ability to stream to 2 sets of Buds at once, but that's such a rare use-case and doesn't really affect the experience in the same way as the quick switching between Apple device that comes with AirPods.
I wish I could have the Apple experience, but my hate for iOS is too strong. Otherwise, I love a lot of what they develop.
Part of the reason Apple has this issue at all is that they provide continued support for their hardware years after others have stopped even giving security updates.
Apple has also a multi-year lead on things like chip performance in their devices (and more subjectively hardware design, software performance too).
I used Android nexus phones for a few years before jumping into the Apple ecosystem with the iPhone 5 (I had used macs for a while prior to that since OS X 10.3 and played with a variety of linux distos alongside it).
If Apple stuff starts to degrade compared to competition it will be a hassle to jump to a different ecosystem. As it happens, over the years it's just gotten better further ahead of the competition (with some mistakes: butterfly keyboard, touchbar).
The premium and their authoritarian approach to vertical integration and good defaults isn't for everyone, but I think it's really great and worth the premium. Other companies seem to be all over the place without much of a unified vision of what they're doing. Google in particular is extremely bad at this.
Furthermore, Bluetooth sucks all around. It's 2020 and you still can't transmit voice without falling back to SCO and having everything sound like a tin can. SBC is barely passable for music, and has hundreds of ms of latency. So companies have already hacked their own various proprietary codecs. Ever hear of AptX or LDAC? They only work with Qualcomm and Sony licensing/devices. Imagine spending $400 on your new WH-1000XM4s only to find that LDAC doesn't work on any desktop OS.
I don't see Apple doing anything different here.
>I'm not dealing with connectivity issues, battery issues, etc.
>Battery, I need to be able to easily and quickly know what the status is and I need to know that if I plugged them in before I go to bed I'll be good to go all day, the next day and I don't have to think about charging.
>Connectivity. When I go to use them I need them to connect and work. No fiddling around with loss of connection or not connecting in the first place.
Wired headphones tick all these boxes. If not for Jony Ive's quest for a legacy and absurd fetish for thinner phones we wouldn't have to live the dongle life to have every feature you listed.
And yes, I get that a lot of people do want to use wireless headphones. I'm not here to argue about that, there are legitimate reasons why people want to get rid of wires. And I also get that these headphones are filled with other features like auto-pausing, noise cancelation. There are reasons someone might look at those features and think they're worth the price. But still -- to see the primary reaction be that the important part is "just working" still feels kind of validating to all of the people who originally called out Bluetooth headphones as a step backwards from where we were.
I remember getting a lot of pushback from people who were all telling me that wireless headphones were going to get really cheap, and most of the growing pains were already over, and we were all just being ludites. But what am I supposed to think when I look at your high-tech future world, and the most popular comment is someone saying that they'll drop 550 dollars on a pair of headphones before they've even heard them, even though they'll only last 3-5 years before the battery dies -- just because it's worth that much money to have a device that reliably plays sound? How am I supposed to look at that and not come to the conclusion that the wireless market is still wildly inferior to the cheap, reliable, high-quality audio devices that came before?
It's been however many years since Apple's removal of the headphone jack and practically every high-end Android manufacturer has since copied them. And what we see is headphones that are specifically designed to work with one brand of phone/computer, that are outrageously expensive, and apparently that expense is justified to some people because the entire rest of the market is filled with options that have minor-to-major irritations during daily use.
If what OP is saying is true, then a $50 over-ear pair of Koss headphones will be more reliable and have fewer daily annoyances than most bluetooth-only headphones. And while I'm sure plenty of people disagree about bluetooth reliability, enough people here do seem agree with them that their comment is the first one you see when you enter the discussion.
I don't believe audio quality is perceptible enough that you need to spend $500 on a pair of wired headphones. But even if I did believe that audio quality was perceptible enough to require that kind of money, I also don't believe that the AirPods Max are going to match the raw specs or numbers of those $500 wired devices. And regardless, that's all kind of besides the point. The AirPods Max have plenty of exciting features tacked on, but those features aren't the primary reason why OP is excited -- they're excited because:
> I want to put them on and they need to make noise.
Well, you don't need to spend $500 to get that. Wired headphones were good at that. That was never a question or a concern that anybody had about them. Even with the awful low-quality $15-$20 solutions, you never doubted walking out of the store that when you plugged them into any audio device, sound was going to instantly come out of them as soon as you pressed the play button, even if it was a phone that your friend owned, even if it was a random ATM on a street corner, even if it was a 5 year old MP3 player or game console. They just worked.
For example, with AirPods Pro, you get automatic switching between devices, easy pairing, true wireless earbuds, wireless charging, great ANC and all that in an incredibly tiny package.
But with these AirPods Pro...do you see anything they do that others don't? They are not lighter. Their battery life isn't better. They're not objectively prettier. Their case looks worse. They don't charge wirelessly. There's not a lot of gain to be had in comfort as opposed to earbuds (competing headphones from Bose for example are plenty comfortable).
So...from what we already know, they have one thing others don't and that's the "magical" pairing and switching. And they are $250 more expensive.
This means either they sound incredibly fantastic, or they are way overpriced.
One thing a "disparity" (as in variety) of wealth creates is slices of populace where the value of the solution is worth vastly more. Tech that "just works" is one such place. People placing higher value on convenience ...
Another such place that is interesting is healthcare. Some portion of the market places longevity or health optimizations way beyond the traditional insurance models. They're willing to spend far and beyond the marginal savings from prevention to avoid health issues. An example might be taking expensive NMN/NR to potentially avoid future health issues, despite costing 100s per month.
eg: https://www.elysiumhealth.com/en-us/science-101/8-reasons-wh...
I expect that the $550 AirPods Max will be exceptional, and comparable in quality to my desktop headphones, which will be an achievement for anything portable and wireless. The flatpack case solves the non-portability of the Beats (which have a case the size of a watermelon), and they've removed the logo and reconstructed the earcups to not get tangled in long hair.
That's the kind of improvements I expected from Apple, and they appear to have delivered, at a price point that's about what I would expect for something that delivers impeccable audio (and sets them up for $150/$350/$550 market segments). The Studio beats are great, but these will be better. My biggest fear is that they'll be better than my desktop headphones. Works for me.
This Apple worship is the ultimate banality of consumerism. The Airpod max is about the dumbest thing I've ever seen Apple produce. I personally think it will be a big flop, but I guess we'll see.
Having said that, as a whole, the airpods do "just work" more than other bluetooth headphones, especially with the case that holds a charge.
Talking like other bluetooth headsets don't work is also not my experience.
There is no way I'm paying the Apple premium for what is already a solved problem for my use-case.
Also, when talking about speakers, what upgrades? You don't need yearly upgrades with speakers, unlike with Apple headphones. In the past ten years, I've spent about 400 dollars for a pair of Yamaha studio monitors fit for professional audio use, certainly for light audio entertainment as well. They'll still take any Apple headphones through the ringer in terms of quality.
The $6 wired headset I bought from amazon for WFH and looks like something from the 90s works exactly like this.
On earphones I'm not so sure. My Sony 1000XM2 works really well and I don't have advanced needs like switching devices constantly or sharing the audio with another person. Then again, maybe we just didn't know something is possible before somebody actually delivers it out there.
The "spatial audio" thing I don't think would be a very good argument though. The promotion materials are extremely vague and I don't have much confidence that the noise cancelling/sound quality of this will be night and day compared to other established earphones. So I'm not caring too much about that aspect. As long as the sound quality is not worse than Sony/Bose/Sennheiser I'll be fine with it.
I've had the same DTS/Dolby Digital 5.1 system for nearly 20 years. It still works flawlessly. I very much doubt that these headphones will be functional in 20 years time.
I have tried a lot of wireless earbuds. Jabra, Samsung, Jaybirds, Anker…and none of them have the combination of bullet-proof pairing, keeping a connection, audio quality†, and sound cancelling†. †(AirPods Pro, for these.)
But hoo boy, $550 is a lot for more traditional headphones. The price premium for earbuds feels right to me, as you have to do the engineering to jam as much battery, antenna, and circuitry into a teeny tiny space as possible. But big ol’ can headphones? C’mon, you have so much more volume to work with, it should make them easier to design and manufacture, not harder.
That'll be because Apple products use a custom protocol to iPhones, whereas all other brands have to use basic bluetooth, which has crappy sound quality, arbitrary restrictions, poor handling of weak signals, lots of delay, and is hard to pair.
Apples walled garden doesn't allow third parties to design or use their own protocols, or use apples protocols, so it's far from a level playing field.
They require a special license to use, and require dedicated hardware (ie. they won't connect to a phone). Shows whats possible if walled garden and regulatory constraints are lifted though.
What on earth? Because of the transmission spectrum they use?
Also, a lot of movie stuff, especially at budgets below AAA box office extravaganzas, still use wired gear. Zero latency, no potential audio loss, and dirt cheap.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/irregardless
> Is irregardless a word?
> Yes. It may not be a word that you like, or a word that you would use in a term paper, but irregardless certainly is a word. It has been in use for well over 200 years, employed by a large number of people across a wide geographic range and with a consistent meaning. That is why we, and well-nigh every other dictionary of modern English, define this word. Remember that a definition is not an endorsement of a word’s use.
It's for when it's really important to express that it doesn't matter.
(kidding, of course)
Now do "funnily", a non-word which I dislike with a consuming passion.
But yes, on iPhone Apple exploits their position to kneecap competitors.
- Battery life will be the same (20 hrs).
- Given my experience with HomePod sound quality and the quality of my Macbook Pro speakers, I expect the sound quality of these to be better than QC35s.
- Not sure about noise cancelling.
I don't understand why people would expect otherwise given the advancements with Airpods Pro and Homepod. Apple has a clear R&D advantage over competitors, and I think it's going to be that much better in a larger format without the space constraints of the Airpods Pro.
I'll accept a $50 markup for Apple's tight integration and marketing. That's $400.
$550 (or, in Europe, $775...) is a ridiculous price.
(13.6 ounces, 384 grams)
Guess we are ignoring the fact that this bullet proof pairing and keeping connection etc work only with Macs and iphones. Anyone here care to list how these perform if you have an android phone/tablet, a windows PC, a kindle etc etc. Or do I have to buy another pair of headphones to use with those devices?
You'll see the pricing didn't matter at all. You'll probably be wearing a pair yourself when you do that visual survey.
Who is doing this? I basically haven't seen anyone overhyping them. In fact I would say that 95% of what I've read has been very skeptical so far.
Best to judge them for yourself and then return them if they don't meet your expectations.
Waiting for reviews is ok too, though people seem to lose their minds when it comes to Apple (both for and against them). So the reviews are probably going to be even less useful than normal for headphones.
But when the HomePod was announced, I ordered it immediately, and have never once regretted that decision.
These things are just a HomePod that fits on your skull.
If the price is acceptable and the product is something you'll use and enjoy, get them. They're going to sound absolutely amazing.
Even if things are returned, they can often end up in landfills still (though I doubt that would happen with these $500 headphones). https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/marketplace-amazon-returns-1....
As for audio quality, there's really not much better that can be done than the good Shure headphones. I suppose it's possible, but quite unlikely.
Firstly, the Shure IEMs are IEMs, not on-ear headphones.
Secondly, since they use physical isolation, there is no need for ANC, which means much less calculation power needed.
Thirdly, they bypass the outer ear. This means that the outer ear won't color the sound, which means that you don't need to correct for that (which is what modern autoequalizers do). Of course this is a bit less natural, but carefully tuned drivers work around that excellently.
Fourth, they are wired, which removes the need for processing the audio signal. Modern DACs are practically indistinguishable from perfection, so that's not an issue.
Fifth, they use balanced armature drivers instead of dynamic drivers. This means that they are not affected at all by resonance and other effects.
This is why Shure IEMs can do both better isolation and better audio quality than even experimental smart headphones. They simply eliminate all the issues by physical means.
The one issue that can't be quite fixed is that Soundstage won't sound as wide as would be possible with open back headphones, but these are closed headphones with ANC so it probably won't be any worse.
Basically, the point is to remove the physical issues so that you don't have to fix them in software. This is a lot more cost efficient and, for things like ANC that can't be done perfectly, gives a better result.
If that requires a lot of processing, so be it, but that is value added to many people.
As to quality, Shure IEMs are very close to as good as it gets, so even in the best case, apples cans wouldn't be better (though the speaker in their teardown doesn't look too good).
And the original Nexus was expensive. So was the original Pixel. You can't really draw any conclusions from Google's inconsistent smartphone lineup and pricing over the past decade.
Cheap Nexus phones: 4, 5, maybe the 5X if you waited a bit.
Expensive Nexus phones: 1, S, Galaxy, 6, 6P.
Expensive Pixel phones: all of them except the 'a' line, sometimes ridiculously so given the poor experience.
So they will launch a „new improved“ line to compete at the $500 price bracket.
Even the expensive pixels are cheap if you wait.
And I doubt this is just any special price. The XM3s were always below MSRP.
Not bothering to look up nexus phones because they're from a different lineage than pixels, hence the different branding.
You're just taking advantage of semantics then.
Anyone who's followed the Nexus line knows exactly what their wording meant, since Nexus devices did give way to the Pixel and did follow the price normalization this person mentions.
Iirc the Nexus 6 Or 6P was the start of rise in prices
They might be misremembering exact prices but I distinctly remember the backlash as Nexus devices went from strong values as dev phones to premium smartphones, then the Pixel dropped and solidified that
Which captures the original poster's point pretty perfectly: the Pixel line did completely abandon those value root until "budget flashship variant" recently became a thing throughout the industry...
which was mostly lead by Apple and the Xr
(and no, I'm not saying Apple made the first budget smartphone, they just popularized the idea of making a budget variant of a 12 hundred dollar phone and marketing them alongside one another)
Remember the Apple Watch Edition? The one with a gold case that cost 17 grand?
The point wasn't to sell it, although there's a stratum of customer who always get the most expensive version of whatever they're getting.
The point was to make the entry-level price look reasonable, and it worked.
IIRC most gold watches are 12-14k for durability.
I wouldn't trade any of my Pebbles for a Apple Watch.
Edit: what I mean is that I consider the Pebble far superior to the AW: customizable and easier to program, with a longer lasting battery and display always on.
Sure, but this argument can be easily taken to its logical absurdity. Someone who just needs a watch that shows the time & date and has a stopwatch can get a Casio which accurately does all this and has a battery that lasts years, in addition to an always-on display (note: for what it's worth, the Apple Watch also has an always-on display). From that perspective a Casio is vastly superior to both a Pebble and an Apple Watch ;-).
>Introduced in 1989, it is popular for its low price [$12.95] and long battery life. Annual production of the watch is 3 million units per year.
So I do get what you're saying, and you're kind of right, but there's absurdity here in both directions. A superior product is not necessarily just one that has a bunch of features crammed into it -- it's one that solves a lot of problems without introducing new problems. If you stick text notifications into my microwave, or a charging port onto my shoes, you haven't actually improved those products.
There's a little bit of irony in having this discussion about a company like Apple, which was lauded for a long time for building interfaces that were purposeful and simple. It was the Android crew ran around talking about how iPhone was behind the curve because it couldn't do multitasking or set up FTP servers, while Apple confidently asserted that building a good, focused device was better than trying to do literally everything everywhere.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that making a product more powerful or capable is orthogonal to making it superior/inferior, and trying to equate the two concepts in either direction can lead you to absurd conclusions. Of course, for many people, the Pebble watch would not be powerful enough; they want/need the extra features in the Apple Watch, just like many people wanted/needed the extra multitasking features in early Android devices. But for people who don't need those features, the Pebble was a superior product because it did its job better and didn't introduce distractions or compromises to accommodate unnecessary features.
It's good that powerful smartwatches exist, but it's unfortunate that there's now an unsatisfied niche of people who are left wanting a more elegant, purposefully designed device that costs less money. At least (thankfully for me) the Apple Watch didn't mean the end of good old-fashioned Casio and Timex watches, because for all of its power, the Apple Watch isn't capable of helping me with my ADHD. It's too complicated and has too many significant tradeoffs to be even useable as a daily driver the way I want to use it, regardless of how much it costs.
And I think that carried forward. Look at the iPod silhouette billboard ads, which were iconic. [1] Those are not about features. Those are about how fucking cool the iPod was. The iPhone was demonstrably a status symbol. [2] And this has obviously worked well for Apple. They sell under 20% of all phones, but make 2/3rds of all phone profits. Actual features are not the only thing in play here.
[1] https://www.pophistorydig.com/topics/tag/ipod-billboard-ads/
[2] e.g.: https://www.deccanchronicle.com/technology/mobiles-and-tabs/...
Yet here you are talking more about "Fashion" rather than actual products. So many fashion experts on HN, you'd think it was Vogue's forums.
And you have the balls to talk about shutting down conversations?
But I also guess the headphones rather aim for the status-oriented crowd.
My point wasn't that status goods are worse. A Louis Vuitton purse is objectively a good purse. But people don't buy a Louis Vuitton purse because they've done a careful study of purse quality and just happened to end up with an LV one.
My point was that with status goods, it's hard to have an objective conversation about quality, because people invested in the status part of it generally won't talk about it in those terms. If you say, "Gosh, $3450 seems like a lot for a small bag," [1], they won't say, "Yes, but it makes me look important". They'll talk about how well made the bag is, how long it lasts, etc. They in effect become suddenly and specifically irrational. And if you push, they can get defensive. They might, for example, imagine you said a bunch of things you didn't actually say. Or accuse you of being dismissive and snide.
[1] https://us.louisvuitton.com/eng-us/products/bella-mahina-nvp...
If you think of apple as a tech company, their products seem absurdly priced. If you think of apple as a company that makes luxury goods that happen to be powered by computers, they make perfect sense.
The one thing holding me back actually is, based on the reaction I'm seeing so far, wondering if there will be a negative stigma to these or if they'll attract a lot of attention. Like the google glass years ago where everyone noticed it immediately and thought you were a douchebag for wearing it.
If they had better battery life, they’d be the perfect easy headphone.
You don't like them. Millions of people do. Lots of people don't value the things you (or I!) value.
It seems like there's nothing but "never bet against Apple" type nothing statements backing up everything but I want to give the comments a reasonable shake.
So let's do this.
What value do you place on frequency response versus ease of use? Is there a metric for being able to ride 20 miles on my bike without accidentally pulling them out by the cord? How about the metric for seamlessly transferring audio between sources? What is it worth being able to text my wife while riding my bike?
Once you've dialed in what all these performance metrics are worth, we can compare it to other headphones on a level playing field.
What is entirely trite is people assuming that they are smarter/ better/ more knowledgeable about a product than the people who actually buy and use it. It's condescending and flat out wrong much of the time. This idea that you can pin the desirability of a product down to 1 or 2 bullet points on a chart is frequently completely wrong.
$25000 for 1,5TB of ECC RAM on a Mac Pro are not a bargain. You can buy them for $12300 yourself and plug them into the box.
The “fashion statement” argument is completely farcical, always has been.
I'm normally an apple user, butttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttt (I'll explain that in a second) I have a pc for gaming and casual browsing. I bought a Microsoft brand keyboard under the assumption that it would be good since Microsoft hardware seems to be well reviewed when it comes to the surface line.
The keyboard is garbage, feels cheap, has dumb 'emoji' and office hotkeys that I can't easily disable or remap. And it typed that super long string of t's up there for some reason.
I know that apple has made bad keyboards, but I use one of their butterfly keyboards daily and it is better than the Microsoft one. I can walk into the apple store and know that even if I buy the cheapest product, it is still a well-built product.
I've tried to give non-apple hardware a fair shake, and it just never matches up. I had a project where I needed to use a windows laptop and the company provided me with a Lenovo Carbon x1 (admittedly not the most recent generation). I still can't believe that was what people recommend from Lenovo against macbook pros.
We're only trying to help you by throttling your phone and not telling you your battery is crap.
We're releasing a snappy new app. Sorry you can no longer have yours on our store.
There's nothing wrong with our keys.
I got them for cheap, and I definitely wouldn’t pay $500 for convenience without exceptional sound quality (so I’m completely not interested in these new ones). But to say that apple’s headphones are not good is, honestly, just wrong. I love the AirPods for background music, podcasts, audiobooks, and phone calls as I go about my day. I owned a different set of wireless earbuds before the AirPods which were actually higher-quality and more expensive, but I didn’t like them nearly as much. Convenience and decent sound quality make the AirPods perfect for casual listening. Of course, still having a separate pair of actual high-end headphones for sitting down and really enjoying the detail in music in other scenarios.
Homepods sound amazing in a stereo pair, and Apple just released an update for Dolby Atmos support.
I use a pair with my TV and the effects are really awesome.
https://support.apple.com/guide/tv/play-audio-throughout-you...
If you ignore the above then the only trick that’s left is the fake 3D effect; which isn’t novel or even desirable for someone who cares about authentic sound.
One potentially useful feature would be spatial audio on conference call when multiple people talk - you can discern different information sources when they come from different direction. AFAIK that’s how fighter jet helmets work.
Probably most people in the world.
I've rarely lived alone and always have roommates 25-35 and I'm amazed how much HNers lose touch when they get older, stop having roommates, live in a house, don't see how other people relax.
Maybe I'm coming off as mean, I don't want to. But also consider the new culture of permanently-worn earbuds. I know headphones used to be a hassle when I was growing up. But now you will notice people who never even remove them all day. So it's not extra leap to watch a movie on their phone with earbuds, something all of my roommates do.
At home I prefer my laptop speakers over AirPods just because of comfort - audio quality doesn't overcome the hassle. Laptop speakers generally aren't disturbing flatmates enough.
I assume the same feature on any competing product would feel similar.
Apple's magic is making you pay just that bit more for a "magical" experience. Bluetooth earbuds: $100. AirPods: $159. Clunky smartwatch: $300. Apple Watch: $449.
However the price difference with competing products here is so large I think Apple has priced themselves out of the market here.
The idea that a comment on HN has done more extensive research and modeling than Apple for a pricing a particular product is amusing.
- making fun of people who would have to pay the price because they feel the peer pressure or
- are pissed because now every other brand who thinks it's fashionable will push their price because they know people will pay it or
- have perfectly working headsets already which were significantly cheaper or
- are jealous that they can't pay for them
...which makes OPs comment look quite ridiculous.
We haven't seen any reviews of these so it's impossible to say one way or the other.
I'm a bit put off spending $400 on a pair of headphones, let alone $550. But it's a bit premature to suggest A is better than B when nobody has actually touched A.
I have the Sony MX3's, and they are great. I don't like toggling between devices and having it automatically connect to my last used device, have to disconnect it from one, blah, blah.
This is what Apple does. They raise prices. People are stunned initially. Others follow, then those prices are the norm. iPhone was considered overpriced when it was released. I think people have always thought the same about Macs, iPad, Apple Watch, etc.
I've come to use NFC to switch quickly to my phone, but I can't really NFC back to my PC as easily. Several awkward clicks and menus later I can start using them on my PC. Not a huge deal sure, but for a premium device I'd expect something more streamlined.
Bose QC35 has such a switch toggle. It can be paired with four devices, and connected with two simultaneously. Switching between my private Windows computer, iphone and work-Mac is pretty flawless.
It should be doable with an NFC sticker switch. (With NFC Tasks on Android, for example.)
I'm sure the AirPods Max will be pretty awesome in its own way though.
the audio quality for calling is disastrous, disabling (or turning down the noise cancelling) is impossible without their App, and the "primary" source of audio overrides the secondary source. Which can be an issue if you have something the headphones 'think' is playing, but isn't. -- common when my linux laptop is the primary source.
Do I have the QC35 II's or something then? There's a button on the side of mine which will change noise cancellation level.
At any rate, yeah, there are annoyances for sure. Keeping open two connections rather than having to switch is a definite improvement, IMHO.
That button can be configured for that or for voice assistant activation, lots of people probably use it for the latter.
And I don’t remember seeing this option in the Bose connect app either.
Sometimes you need the former, but you always need the latter. Apple can be counted on to doing this more often and consistently than any other company.
- I can have 2 connected sources of audio (ex: phone/laptop). However, only one works at a time. So when I get a spam phone call, I loose audio for my ongoing video call until I decline the ring. - I can't use wireless without turning on noise cancelling. This means, I can't really walk around and use them at the same time
QC35, at least QC35 II can set any NC level, including “none”, from the Bose Connect app (or the accessory button, if it's set for that purpose instead of voice assistance activation) while turned on.
Also they fast charge with USB-C.
Forgot to mention they have active noise cancellation too.
A BT headphone that can stream from 2 sources at the same time, mix the audio streams together, have the controls play/pause both sources at the same time, only use voice assistant from a primary source.
My guess is it's just too complex, and maybe there's no BT chip that can do 2 high quality audio streams at the same time that fits the power requirements for a 20hr headphone experience.
What I do is use an A2DP sink that sort of does this. But I need a Windows machine that pairs with all my BT sources, it mixes the audio output from the sources (along with the Windows audio), and outputs it to the default audio output. It's quite nice if you don't like taking your headphones on/off all the time.
But again, simple multipoint support seems to be pretty rare. I think the newest WH-1000X M4 finally added it, the Microsoft Surface headphones also have really good ones, and that's kinda it.
Some devices like Samsung instead use a fast switch, I think that's what Apple is doing here too?
Not sure how apple devices "just switch", it might be that they have multi-device bluetooth; or they have custom hardware.
But other devices are very "sticky" with their BT connections. My approach is mostly to turn off bluetooth one one device when I want to switch to another.
I am sure the Apple stuff works well too but let's not pretend that they are doing anything unique in this space.
If your phone to PC handoff works after calls in a way you like, I take it as you just have a use case where bad behavior works in your favor.
After all, what happens if someone wants to continue using their phone audio after the call?
Or use BT with their phone outside of a call?
But Peloton remembers your previously paired audio devices per user; so if someone else uses the bike and has never explicitly paired that set of headphones, they'll show up as an option, but won't automatically pair
Is there some secret feature of Airpods that I don’t know about? I use Airpods everyday, but I still need to go to Settings > Bluetooth > Connect every time to change devices.
After all, anyone who really cares about audio quality is listening on monitors in their sound isolated home studio /s
Could it possibly be that I'm actually just a rich guy who owns both fancy audiophile equipment and fancy Apple products, and happens to have his own opinions about them? Is such a thing even legal?
(Actually, I prefer live performances to chasing after audio quality, which I think is really more of a gear-geek hobby than a musical one)
Not true.
Yes, bluetooth compression puts a ceiling on audio quality. However, the majority of sound output devices are so crappy that they don't even exercise the full bluetooh potential.
So if you couple quality sound output system with a bluetooh source, they can still sound much better than bluetooth + crappy headphone + crappy speakers.
I was initially impressed, but the quirks got more and more frequent and I actually hate the broken switching now.
You can turn it off by doing this:
"To turn off automatic switching, go to Settings > Bluetooth, tap the Actions Available button next to the name of your AirPods, tap Connect to This iPhone, then tap When Last Connected to This iPhone."
The thing with the iphone is it was absolutely segment shattering.
Your iPhone comparison falls on deaf ears, as this isn't a defining product like the iPhone. The iPhone was stunning enough that people questioned the audacity. This is by comparison -- pedestrian for the price point.
I am not sure what other features airpods have but if this is "the" feature, you can have it even in products for about a fifth the price since years.
I always find the audiophile market to be borderline fraud. They sell CD demagnetisers, ceramic cable lifters and all sorts of items that don't make any sense whatsoever.
Apple is my hero in that regard, where you actually pay for the product experience instead for being part of some deeply troubling subculture where passionately debating about very expensive cables and gadgets without ever being able to pass a blind test on the claims is the norm, almost like cargo cult. The most eloquent writer wins the debate and thy have lengthy take down articles with graphs clearly showing that the mor you pay the smoother the curves become. I would't usually have problem with such things but they often slide into extremism and quickly pushing you on the money-spend-for-audio-performance scale where you are simply supposed to check you bank account to see what sound quality you are about to get. So god help you if you are buying an audio equipment and you decided to do some research.
You're saying "You think the audiophile market is bad? Why complain about that market when there are these other markets that do the same bad stuff?"
What's the point? Does one bad industry ruin them all? Should we not have any?
Wine, for example, just doesn't usually come with specific claims, except it's "good", or "fruity", or "created in the rich terroir of the L'Alpesian Valley". That region may not actually be better than any other, but it is different. Beyond that, everyone knows it's a matter of taste, with no objective measures of "good" or "bad", although there are obviously (imprecise) trends that many people tend to agree with (i. e. wine is better than vinegar).
But, I do think the same kind of "objectively irrelevant" upsell _does_ occur with the other non-taste-driven markets (electronic peripherals, sporting gear, etc).
I'm not trying to come across as combative - I'm just trying to figure out why the consumer side of the "audiophile" market gets such a bad wrap. As I commented elsewhere, I think a majority of people who are "into" sound gear don't buy into the snake-oil of special ethernet cables... just as I don't think most consumers opt for gold-plated display cables. However, there are distinctions between different monitors and TVs; people seem to agree that they are perceptible, and they don't bat an eye at someone spending a bit of their time figuring out the optimal display for their situation and price point. I think I'm just trying to understand why, when someone compares headphones to other headphones based on pricepoint, they are assumed to be ceramic-cable-buying elitists.
As you go towards the top end of these things, the delusion creeps in, which is that the objectivity extends from the foundation to the roof, so to speak. The fact of the matter is that it was gone somewhere in the middle, e.g. why "trained listeners" cannot distinguish between a coat hanger and $1,000 cable, and while "wine experts" will often pick a $15 grocery store bottle over a $300 bottle in a blind taste test. And they will reverse their answers if told the price ahead of time.
These same concepts exist in other product categories, but I don't know of any better examples than audio and wine.
https://www.transparentcable.com/collections/all/xl?catID=1&...
A fool and their money...
https://www.analogueseduction.net/analogue-interconnects/nor...
WHAT.
I remember the first few albums I listened to on what I then considered HIGH quality headphones (Koss PortaPros and ATH-M50s) and it was mindblowing how much better some albums sounded, how much better they felt. It creates an itch that people with disposable income will want to scratch, then once you move into bluetooth you're adding all kinds of connection issues to consider too.
You get what you pay for, I guess, but man. Best worst headphones I’ve ever had.
What did you upgrade to?
So far the AirPods Pro have been the best combo of convenience, build quality and sound quality for me. But I still think about those Porta Pros.
Not sure if the problem could have been solved with more consistent charging - but it convinced me to stick with wired WFH drivers for now.
I'd still consider getting a pair for running if it wasn't for my environmental concerns wrt the rattling problems.
You can buy spare parts for 30-years old studio headphones. Apple with their "no repair allowed" business model and 500ms latency is a joke.
The audiophiles don't like music and don't make money from their equipment, they simply obsess with it. They are like those camera nerds talking about the sensors, color science and so on but are not actually into photography. The professional photographers simply use the equipment for the task and the people who love photography don't obsess with the camera. Same thing with the audio.
For an "audiophile" AirPods are ripoff similar to CD demagnetizer.
but I have a hunch that people like me are the
(largely) silent majority.
> hat-makers
Surely you mean haberdashers--they're ground floor! (Thank you, Coil, for Going Up.)
These are not incompatible pursuits. In fact, they pair rather nicely.
As a kid I was amazed by music on the cheap radio we had. And then when I listened on headphones, it was a whole other world full of details I couldn't hear on the cheap radio speaker. And it made me fall in love with music even more.
As an adult I spend a few years learning about the gear and making various purchases, even building my own speakers from kits. Did I like tinkering with the gear? Yeah, that was kind of fun, but it was largely a means to an end, which was the music.
The unfortunate fact is that music lovers who don't think about the gear are getting a crappy version of the music. If you know what you're doing, you can get some pretty world-class sound for well under a grand or even a few hundred bucks. If not, you get a Bluetooth speaker for the same amount of money that sounds like garbage and sucks the life out of your music.
You can still enjoy music that way! Many do! I sure can! But it's like wandering through the Louvre with filthy, smudged glasses. If you really like the art, it's worthwhile to clean those things off so you can really see what you're looking at.
There definitely an element of being a gearhead, but I just really love music, and want to listen to it in the most accurate way possible.
> The audiophiles don't like music That is a pretty bold claim to make with such confidence about a massive and diverse group of people whose name literally means lover of audio.
What does it even supposed to mean?
Not great, but should allow phone conversations without too much fatigue.
Back to holding my phone against my face, I guess.
What about using wired earbuds with a Lightning dongle? That should give low latency, right?
How does apple becomes your hero when they are selling the same thing ?
> deeply troubling subculture where passionately debating about very expensive cables and gadgets without ever being able to pass a blind test on the claims is the norm, almost like cargo cult
That sounds like the apple cult.
> quickly pushing you on the money-spend-for-audio-performance scale where you are simply supposed to check you bank account
We are talking about $549 earphones from apple here.
Because he values image over substance, and his personal identity is tied to Apple.
One thing about my Grado, Audeze, etc. I can repair them. I've had the same pairs for years, used day in and out, and when I wear them out I can buy new parts and easily fix them. I don't need to go to a "Genius" or have to spudge them apart and not have them ever fit right again.
Some people will probably buy these for the image, some because they work well with Apple products, some because ??. But you don't know what he values or who he is personally. Why be so toxic?
I love my AirPod Pros, but the right bud is “crackling” again. It’s the third one I’ve had, and seems to be a design issue.
So far, they’ve replaced them.
I hope they're doing diagnostics on defective airpods they receive from customers.
What I meant was the rate at which they malfunction seems to be lower than Sony/Senheiser counterparts. Admittedly this is purely anecdotal with the sample size being about 20 people.
With the exception of an ipod touch I have never bought an Apple product, however I definitely appreciate them. I was simply trying to push back on the "image over substance" comment.
This is a great example from yesterdays conversation where anti-apple people are more passionate with their hate than apple fans with their love.
If I had $500 laying around and I wanted a pair of over ear headphones these would be on my shortlist. Not because of image, but without trying them I can say they probably sound great, and will pair/move between my Apple devices with ease. The w1 chip is a game changer if you have multiple apple devices.
And considering the total numbers doing either of these two things, I believe the tinkerers have far more need to tell everyone about it than the "fanboys".
I mean, a soldering iron isn't exactly disposable. I can see how the audiophile crowd could grind gears. But while fiddling around with something can certainly be more trouble than it's worth, basically repair shaming seems like a bizarre take. At that point it's as much an electronics hobby.
In the bad old days of computers, there were certainly more problems you had to solve with an iron. Hell, if you've had a busted cap on a gpu or mobo past warranty, there's still problems that do.
I don't know, I just find it difficult, that on this kind of software-dev focused forum, that I can discourage the hacker spirit anywhere it grows.
They sell the product experience. Easily connects, looks nice and sounds nice. Every now and then they would throw some audiphileish numbers in the product description(like it updates 3 gazillion times per second) but it's never the central argument.
Apple products are always about the experience and they wouldn't hesitate to put higher end specs when matter and lower end specs when it doesn't and make nerds uncomfortable or even angry because it would miss-match their convention of GB per USD or Herz per Euro. This is the way it always was, most famously with iPhone where Apple doesn't disclose RAM or CPU frequency or battery capacity and all-knowing reviewers will angrily tell you that Apple sells 1000$ phone with 4GB of RAM and how ridiculous is this compared to, say Samsung where you get 12GB RAM for the same price.
But that's what you said the "audio gear industry" were doing
> I find it fascinating how the audio gear industry has thought the consumers on how much money you are supposed to spend to have audio /experience/
That's how you began your argument.
> Apple sells 1000$ phone with 4GB of RAM and how ridiculous is this compared to, say Samsung where you get 12GB RAM for the same price.
This is also the same line of reasoning for "audiophile products" vs (how ridiculous is this compared to) "average headphones".
Product experience is, debatable, having used at least one product, I can "imagine" how they can improve it.
While at the same time, having duped by the audiophile industry as well, the product was also great (i got those shure headphones).
What I am saying is sure there is no denying of experience wise of both spending/product, there is definitely a gap in the cost and worth of the product.
Man, its painful on my eyes to even read stuff like that, how you contradict yourself within few lines. It would help to have some rational discussion about pros and cons, but you undermine the pro-Apple side pretty badly.
In this case Apple isn't doing anything magical or novel, there are similar products on the market for 1/4 of the price, looking better, possibly even sounding better. But sure go ahead and buy them, there are tons of folks buying 'quality' like Bose, Beats or similar.
I'll keep my cable plugged for my Sennheisers, but my main criteria is sound quality.
> That sounds like the apple cult.
I'm not sure what you're getting at here, but this statement on its face is absurd. The equivalent comparison to "without ever being able to pass a blind test" would be running macOS on a computer where you've hidden the Apple logo, and seeing if people can tell whether it's Windows.
You may have valid problems with Apple's users, but you haven't provided any evidence that it has anything in common with audiophile culture, and the comparison makes no sense on its face as described by the parent comment.
> You may have valid problems with Apple's users
I don't have a problem with apple users. I use apple products too. I also understand the rush of spending. I just don't understand how users see apple as a Hero/God company (blind trust). For evidence see parent comment.
(Your initial comment "that sounds like the apple cult" is after quoting a different portion of the parent comment that's talking about a different aspect of audiophile culture that doesn't have any obvious similarities to Apple users, hence the confusion.)
Your earlier allusion to "not program the computer" is a bit strange. Nobody is saying "stop listening to music".
It's fine to spend a little extra on actual good quality headphones. Or to push for certain software design for good/pragmatic reasons.
It's less fine if the headphones are completely overpriced because of unsubstantiated claims or unproven features. Same as it is less fine to push for some software design because of infatuation/obsession/narcissism despite significant downsides.
Apple looks to be using plastic driver cones more at home in a $30 pair of headphones while selling something at the inflection point where headphones get really good.
I'd bet heavily that these $500 headphones get outperformed by the $100 Sennheiser HD 280 pros. A $400 Sennheiser 650 will no doubt blow them away while still being $150 cheaper.
That's why Beats was a perfect fit for Apple, Apple products are also overpriced for their performance...
The M1 Macs really just continue Apple's traditional pricing - the base model & price is fine, but the upgrades that you're almost certainly going to want are ludicrously priced and oh hey all the user-upgradability (or any post-purchase upgrades) was removed would you look at that what a total coincidence.
If you consider security updates as a measure of longevity, that’s true for basically every single iPhone. Android are a 2-year device at most if you care about security (and are not a hacker), Apple is a 5-year decice; per usable year, Apple can be much cheaper.
And if you consider resale value, Macs have always been cheaper than competitors. A comparably performing dell was always slightly cheaper, but if you sold it 2-4 years later, the Mac came out ahead. And with the M1, it seems Dell doesn’t even have a sticker price advantage - unless you specifically need Windows, Linux or a configuration Apple doesn’t sell (like 64GB ram in a laptop), Mac seems to be cheaper.
Apple are definitely leading the industry here, but my Samsung S7 (released Feb 2016) got a security update last month (even though Samsung has officially said it's unsupported now).
But do note that S7 wasn’t much cheaper (if at all) than the comparable iPhone when it came out; and this length of support is unusual for Android.
On the other hand, my 5-year old iPhone 6S got the whole new iOS14 update, and my wife’s 6 year old iPhone 6 seems to still be getting critical security updates occasionally, even though the latest OS that supports it is iOS 12, which was replaced over a year ago.
The first Intel Macbook was easily the best and least frustrating Windows Vista computer you could buy at the time. Plus they came with OSX and a slew of great software out of the box that at the time you'd have to pay hundreds of dollars extra for on a PC.
The Macbook Air (even the crappy first revision) was without competition for its time and stayed that way into the early 2010s while everyone else was pushing Netbooks.
The first Retina MBP in 2012 had almost no competition at release with a comparable screen at the same price point.
The first 5K iMac was literally a free computer bundled with the 5k display panel.
The current Mac Pro and the pre-trashcan Mac Pro are/were price-to-performance comparable to other workstation class hardware packages from Dell and HP (they offer less configurations and update less frequently however).
The iPhone SE models are competitive.
The base model iPad typically stands without competition, you either get frustrating garbage on the low end or lower value Galaxy Tabs or ChromeOS or low end Surface tablets (or worse, an ARM based Surface tablet) on the higher end.
The Apple Pencil's price to performance ratio drove down the cost of that entire product segment by popularizing it. Previous $100 stylus options were much worse.
AirPods at their time of release were some of the cheapest completely wireless headphones available (most had behind-the-head wires still).
The new M1 model computers are also now very competitive for the performance they're showing.
Apple basically never competes in a race to the bottom and they rarely offer anything in the lowest tier of product pricing categories and they absolutely don't cater to everyone (especially PC gamers) but for the mid to high end they wouldn't exist if they weren't competitive.
Sure, they are never interested in the bottom of the consumer market, but that doesn't make them overpriced for what they are; they tend to be competitive with actual competitor units.
Sound quality is also subjective at a certain level. Not everyone wants flat sound like an audio engineer. I like bassy music and headhphones (which the Beats are known to be).
Now, Beats may still be overpriced since they crossed into fashion, but I'm not a fan of this blanket talk about sound quality like it's always objective.
Yes, and the truth is that many people seem to enjoy the experience of listening to Beats headphones and enjoy that audio more than the audio from many 'better' headphones.
Just like sepia toned prints are objectively worse reproductions of the original picture.
People like the sound they get with these headphones, accurate or not. That isn't a personal failing.
My point is good headphones are neutral and versatile enough that they can do both, just like a good screen can make all sorts of different pictures look good.
It's about versatility and quality in different dimensions, and headphones/speaker that impart too much color to music tend to be very one-dimensional which would limit what you can do with them.
Sound is like food. People like different flavors and that is OK.
There's also the confounding effects of different volume levels producing wildly different mixes, of people's ears/brains responding to frequency ranges differently, and of different music types revealing shortcomings more than others (as anyone who's flinched at pixelated cymbals can attest). All of which make it seem like a more subjective thing because of the complexity of interacting variables.
Regardless, true audio fidelity is something that can be measured to a fairly detailed extent. The fact is, most speakers at most volume levels aren't great at it, just 'good enough'. It mostly boils down to: how much can you tell the difference? Just like with finding that optimal mp3 encoding rate to avoid those damn pixelated cymbals.
This is why nobody buys tube amps for their guitars. Everybody just wants flawless clean sound with no breakup.
Being "objectively better" on some metric does not mean that the metric matters at all to the target audience.
apples != oranges.
subjective sound quality (what I like) is always subjective at any level, and objective sound quality (how well it reproduces an input signal) is always objective at any level.
Anyone that has tried my headphones that have V shaped sound (flat soundstage gets mixed reactions based on their preference) are blown away by how much better they are than their Beats, and at lower cost.
When people listen to my headphones and feel like they need to re-listen to their entire music collection, because they're hearing parts of the song they never heard before, that's how I know it's not all in my head.
That's what equalizers are for. The point of your speakers/headphones being as flat as possible isn't because it's the inherently best experience for everyone, it's because it's the most flexible experience. You can take a good set of flat headphone and ram the bass through the roof - it'll still sound great. You can't really do the reverse. You can try to equalize a bass-heavy headphone into something more neutral, but the result is worse overall, and a lot more finicky as a user.
> Then you should buy these neutral sounding headphones, and mess around with software to make them sound bassier
The main draw is that it's an Apple product, and it is yet another way for the rich and spoiled to signal their wealth
For example. I own Sony MX3s. They have decent sound and great ANC but the use is massively frustrating. Swipe controls don't work, the app sucks, pairing with multiple devices is a nightmare. But I keep them for planes, and use my AirPods pro for everything else.
If these headphones have sound and ANC at least as good as my MX3s, and in addition have the standard Apple package of features (insta-pairing with multiple devices, tightly integrated with iOS and Siri for effortless feature control, best in class microphones for voice calls, etc. etc., plus looking cool) I'll buy them and give the MX3s away in a heartbeat.
(Though... how do they charge? Its not clear anywhere I see...)
Their portable lines — laptops, laptop-sized pro tablet — all use USB-C for charging and peripherals compatibility. Their handheld lines — cell phones, earbuds, headphones, TV remotes — all charge with Lightning.
(The older end of the Beats product lines use Micro USB due to having been an Android ecosystem product prior to Apple's purchase; however, Beats products released this year seem to be Lightning.)
I treat the non-pro iPad as a "handheld" device, and the pro iPad as a "portable" device. There are probably more nuanced words in use at Apple for deciding whether a product gets USB-C or Lightning, but I'm not invested in my choice of words, just in highlighting the distinction between the two categories.
It's still used in new Apple products including all iPhones, non-pro iPads, the Apple TV remote, Magic Mouse, Magic Trackpad, and the charging cases for all AirPods.
but the use is massively frustrating. Swipe controls
don't work, the app sucks, pairing with multiple devices
is a nightmare.
But... is software really too hard? If so, how does Apple do it, are they just better engineers than the people who work at Sony? Maybe, but that seems unlikely to account for the difference.
And of course I don't really know, as I'm just a person on the internet, but I have a hunch: I believe Apple can do better because they have so much vertical integration, i.e. real control over much more of the technology stack in their product.
Let's say Sony has some in-house devs, but they hire a team on contract for the app's actual UI. Sony's just going to write the API layer for the UI to talk to. Sony will also make some of the hardware, but they're using a prefab chip and some antenna they bought, and they'll buy some proprietary off-the-shelf firmware for the lowest layer.
But, maybe it turns out the antenna and the chip don't play nicely under some key modes of operation. They can't redesign either of them, because they're just buying those parts. They shop around changes, but it would exceed reasonable costs. Maybe the firmware should be able to compensate here, but it's closed-source, and the company that wrote it shut down and sold their properties to someone else that won't turn any request around in under a year. And then, Sony sells the division that was working on the API, and they end up finishing the job out as a contract. This leaves all the API<->UI planning to contractors talking through an intermediary who still works at Sony. So it goes. And we all end up with another expensive piece of crap that just doesn't work.
But on Apple's side? I bet way more of it is in-house, and what isn't is locked in on deals that make Apple by far the most important customer. If they need a change, they get it. Apple's teams just... write the software that needs to get written! Maybe they physically meet each other. The firmware gets fixed when it's needed. And Apple ends up with a 'luxury product' built atop "hey look, it actually works!"
Is my point that everyone should be like Apple, or SpaceX? It's clear that not every firm can have tight vertical integration. Most have nowhere near the size, power, time, or budget to do this.
So my point is that if software and hardware were open by default, at least we could fix the damn things.
Sony maybe made some decent hardware there. It need not be shackled to some crayola software joke, if only they (and all of us) weren't so darn proud of our intellectual property that we could never dream of allowing someone to take a wrench to it.
Things being closed is so built-in that it's hard to even imagine this: how would we fix the headphone software? We'd probably need (expensive, hard to use) ROM-flashing utility hardware, decompilers, and the ability to load arbitrary code onto Apple devices! Impossible! Well, it's all hard because we want it that way. It's safer, probably.
But it boggles the mind.
That is a big part of it. But how did Apple do well enough to vertically integrate? They were not the crazy powerhouse they are now for most of their history.
Another big aspect is culture. Apple chooses not to ship things they don't think are good enough. Put aside that they're not always correct. How many other shops do that? How many places stick to the schedule relentlessly, because shipping is all that matters to them? Convince themselves they'll fix the software problems after release?
A big part, I think, is a combination of knowing when it is 'good enough', combined with the courage, patience and money to keep building until you get there (or spike the project because you missed the market window).
I have dealt with SO many (and worked for some) software companies that live by this axiom. Get an MVP to market, who cares if its riddled with bugs and hobbles along with duct-tape and paperclips holding it together. "We're just going to throw it away and rewrite it later". Devs spend all their days fixing little bugs with more band-aids - dreaming of the day when they can re-arch it properly. But the truth is, that day is never coming. Why? Because think of the expense vs the gain. It literally is not worth it to have a better experience. The crappy version is already making money. Customer Service agents are cheap. Achieving Apple-level polish is simply not worth it to most companies. That's why you have Chrysler mini-vans dying after 5 years vs Honda mini-vans lasting 15 years.
This isn’t just apple either. My logitech mouse is paired to my laptop via their dongle, and to my desktop via bluetooth. On the laptop the connection is rock-solid, on the desktop it loses the connection once or twice a day for a few seconds.
I’m convinced the problem is bluetooth itself, not the device makers.
I think lately openness is massively overrated. This stuff is hard to get right, and it takes a lot of high-end hardware and tight collaboration between full-time engineers to do it. Random people working part-time in their garages and collaborating over Github will never do it. It works sort of okay for a few particular types of projects, but fails massively for many others, particularly things involving hardware. Only big corps can manage the budget and coordination required to do it right, and they'll only do it if it's closed, so they know they'll get the revenue from customers who want it done right.
I fully agree that just publishing the spec of a chip does not enable random people working part time in their garages or collaborating over github to do it, but creating software and hardware from the ground up with modifiability in mind would enable that kind of ad hoc work.
Would it solve all problems? Would it fix every bug? No, of course not! I'm not saying that open source is the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything -- I'm saying that a world built out of proprietary, competing, closed-off little gardens at the least guarantees that that which was created sub-standard cannot ever be brought to par.
Let me fix my own damned watch, and I really might.
While in reality, we could pool together some money to buy pizza for a couple of weeks for some experienced embedded developer with some RF knowledge and odds are they'd produce something better. Without pants on.
I'm just speculating, but how much embedded code do you imagine Sony throws away and re-writes for every new headphone release versus how much is retained.
About 2 or 3 years ago I was looking for some wireless headphones who don't suck as much and there's an absurd defect that is shared by too many of them, some of them even on the higher end; the loud beep when the battery is getting low, some even had a recurring beep when the battery still has enough battery to keep listening. It makes some kind of sense with how batteries work, but it just breaks the experience so much you have to wonder why nobody thought of simple ways to avoid this behavior, but then you realize that is quite likely that the product was only tested with full battery and nobody on the team uses it on daily basis.
Same experience as the other commenters with my XM3s, sound great, battery life is great, USB-C charging is great (AirPods Max use Lightning again, thanks Apple), but the touch controls are really bad, using with multiple devices is annoying (XM4 improves the experience with two devices, but will still suck with more, maybe even worse because god knows how you manage which slot gets unpaired when you pair to a third device).
> AirPods Max come with a soft, slim Smart Case that puts AirPods Max in an ultralow power state that helps to preserve battery charge when not in use.
Let me tell you about power buttons: you hold the button, and then you can keep your battery from dying without having to carry around a special case.
AirPods Max are probably really nice, but have enough stupid Apple things on them that I wouldn't be looking at them unless they were the same price as Sony's.
So now if you've just bought an iPhone 12 and picked up a $40 MagSafe charging cable to go with it, you can go get the Lightning cable back out of the drawer because you're going to need it again for at least the lifespan of these headphones.
With the Qi charging case for previous AirPods (the various earbuds versions) they can charge off the same MagSafe cable as the phone (though without a magnetic connection for now).
Maybe Apple wanted to put a MagSafe pad on one of the ears for these, but couldn't make the magnets work without interfering with audio quality?
At the very least they could have gone USB-C, and then if you had an iPhone 12, AirPods Max, and an Apple Watch, you can charge everything using MagSafe Duo and a USB-C cable, which plugs into either the MagSafe Duo charger (for phone and watch) or directly into the headphones. But no, it's a Lightning port.
If you adjust the volume down prior to connecting, you're changing the speaker volume. When you connect to the headphones, it connects them at the volume you previously had used with the headphones. And when you disconnect, your speakers go back to the level they were at before you connected the headphones.
I've never seen them jump higher than my previously used setting.
Feels weird how the AirPods have Pro and Max as separate totally different products, but in in the iPhone where the "Max" has been used before, "Pro Max" is one product.
The rumored name I heard for these was "AirPods Studio", but probably the right call to not use the word "Studio" in headphones that don't have an audio jack on them.
But I'll take it over AirPods ASDF380C.
I do agree though, the headphones are great, but the UX is clunky and nowhere near what apple could achieve with a fully integrated set of headphones.
I’m seriously considering getting the Airpods Max if they have good Noise cancellation, sound quality and comfort.
But $550? Even this high-income Apple fanboi has his limits. At that price, the reviews better say the sound is outstanding. Because for one, Apple is competing against the Beats I already own.
https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MWUG2LL/A/pro-stand
A monitor stand ... holds up a monitor.
This has noise cancellation, wireless connectivity, rare earth magnets, and a ton of precision manufacturing.
I'd definitely take the Apple headphones over a monitor stand. At at 45% lower price, they seem like a bargain in comparison.
Disclaimer: I'm not an Apple Fanboi, so I'll spend my $550 somewhere else. But I don't think this is that far beyond the pale.
This is leaving aside the relative merits of the electronics, audio quality and featureset, where they also fail to deliver for the $.
I'll never understand what led Apple to align itself w this overpriced junk.
I myself own several headphones from different brands, and yet Beats Studio are still my favourite ones - there's just something about that muddy, dirty bass that no other manufacturer can replicate. Even Sony's extra bass headphones with bass cranked up to +10 in EQ don't get anywhere close. For certain styles of music, they are the best headphones I own. And yeah, the hinges have broken years ago, the headband peeled off just as long ago, but they still work and sound as I like - I'd happily go and buy another pair.
Apple aims to capture the same market - people who buy AirPods Pro don't compare them with earphones from Sony or Sennheiser - they buy them because they are made by Apple and they integrate well with other Apple products. That's all.
One of the weirdest myths around audio is that it's possible to objectively rate specific speakers/headphones/etc - while there's no such objective rating for music, which is _the thing that you are playing_ on said headphones! I've listened to a number of very high end setups, and frankly for a lot of music (most pop, for example) you're better off with a pair of AirPods. Yes, with the $2000 setup you hear all the details, but did anyone ever ask if you wanted all those details? And while bass with more "oomph" might not be the most accurate, it often makes the music more fun to listen to.
In my opinion, the entire debate around audio has been focusing on completely the wrong thing: some sort of objective measure of "quality", as if it's some measure you can put a number on and simply compare A to B. Many of my favorite songs, in my experience, lose their power and emotion when listened to on an "audiophile" setup. Sometimes you don't need the details: maybe a bit of distortion and bass is a good thing. And that's just talking about the sound! Getting into the actual experience, there are a ton of non-audiophile products that provide a far superior experience. The actual sound quality of some beat-up 70s rock records and an old turntable isn't great, but the experience is lovely. And the user experience of AirPods + an Apple device is wonderful. Meanwhile the user experience of audiophile products is often (not always, but often) terrible. I've tried a couple of those portable hi-fi players and they are incredibly frustrating. And I love my Etymotics earbuds, but they have to be inserted so deep into the ear that they freak out your average Joe that tries them.
That is to say: I feel the whole audio world should stop with the obsession of some weird measure of accurate, "high quality" sound over everything else. Imagine if other things had the same obsession - people looking at art based solely on some weird measure of "picture quality" and "crispness", or buying extremely expensive, ugly, uncomfortable cars because some Internet reviewer made some graphs showing they had better "drive quality".
A bit of distortion somehow helps?
Well - sometimes it does. And sometimes it doesn't. But if I'm paying >$500 for headphones I want something that is going to have low distortion, high accuracy, and musicality.
These products exist, and some of them are legendary. (Example: Nakamichi cassette decks which combined state of the art mechanical and electronic engineering with a world-leading sound.)
These headphones are very unlikely to be in that league. They're really for brand junkies who want to be seen on Instagram wearing Those Really Expensive Apple Headphones™.
I doubt most buyers are going to care about how they sound, or whether music sounds "more musical" on them.
Regardless of whatever you'd like to call it, I would argue that most audiophile products do not have it. I've personally tried a ton of "audiophile" products, from your standard Massdrop DAC+IEM combo to the incredibly fancy setup of a Swiss acquaintance and was left disappointed. Sure, there's plenty of music that did sound good to me on those setups, but there was more music that sounded better on a pair of AirPods. This is also borne out by my own personal experiments. Let a random Joe listen to your expensive setup with a carefully chosen song, and they'll likely be impressed at first. Wow, the details! The range! Incredible! But let them put on their favorite song, and they'll often actually prefer it on their shitty setup. Try it - the results will surprise you.
And my critique of audiophile equipment is not coming from an untrained ear, or someone who cares about branding. I've been playing violin for almost my entire life, and even plenty of classical music sounds better on AirPods vs many audiophile setups! And as much as I like my Etymotics+DAC combo, it exposes flaws in the music. You hear the sneezes in the orchestra, you notice the small mistakes, and God help you if you play a recording of lower quality - it'll sound terrible. There is an enormous amount of music that is _only_ available in low quality, and it will sound a million times worse on your audiophile setup than your AirPods.
In my opinion, the audiophile world has completely lost its mind. Nobody cares about if the music is actually fun to listen to - they're far more concerned with frequency response curves, which, as anyone in the audiophile world knows, absolutely makes or breaks a manufacturer. Case in point: all the audiophiles downvoting the comment by 'gambiting' to oblivion, simply because they expressed their personal preference! It's preposterous to actually _like_ Beats: clearly that user is just an uninformed sheeple, downvote them and move on. I am so tired of the idea that Beats is objectively bad and Massdrop DAC+IEMs is objectively good. Has anyone ever considered that, just like the music you play with them, it's possible to have personal preferences in headphones?
Apple's products don't break down by themselves but Beats do. My pair had the faux lather completely peeled off, the retracting mechanism on the one side lost its tik and I have aluminium foil stiffed inside the cable jack so I can listen in stereo.
They came as a promotion when I bought my Macbook few years back, which still functions flawlessly.
Except the cables, which are terrible. I have two broken charger cables for a MacBook and a MacBook Pro, a thunderbolt cable from an Apple Thunderbolt Display, a Mac Pro power cord, an iPad charger cable and a couple of old wired earphones. All broken where the cables bend.
I don't think Apple bought Beats for the headphones, really. They bought them for the recently-launched Beats Music streaming service, which is what became Apple Music, and the added music industry connections that came along with Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre.
(It's also my impression that Beats products released after the Apple acquisition have been getting somewhat better reviews in terms of sound quality, but it's not a brand I really keep track of, so that could be wrong!)
wow really?
The Momentum Wireless are pretty nice headphones!
Like, think about it this way. Few years ago if I told any of my friends that I have a £200 pair of earphones, they would genuienly think I was crazy. Now, they all have a pair of AirPods, and no one thinks it's crazy. You know why? Because not a single one of them was in the market for a £200 pair of earphones - but they all(as apple users) were in the market for a new apple gadget. Same reason why people who would never consider spending £400 on a watch, happily bought an apple watch. There's just no comparison, no one buying an apple watch considers a £400 mechanical watch instead - it's just not competition.
So yeah, in my humble opinion - people aren't going to be comparing £500 Sennheisers or anything else to them - they will just wonder if they can justify it as a new apple gadget or not. It will be sold to people who would never otherwise in a million years consider £500 headphones.
No there isn't. The audiophile culture could be replaced with a form where you type how much money you have and it gives you the equipment that you are supposed to buy but this is not because of the costs but because the industry taught the market that it must be that way. Often, the difference of sound quality between high end and low end headphones comes from tiny bit of foam.
It's really about branding and market segmentation.
If you're not hearing the difference between 200$ headphones and 50$ ones or even 500$ vs 200$ and think it's foam then there's something wrong with your hearing. Like the parent said the differences get more subtle as you go up the range and at some point it becomes bullshit (gold HDMI cable stuff)
But 10x better? If you want to spend that extra $450 and can afford it then fine but that kind of price gradient sticks in my gullet.
>There's an exponential curve of cost vs quality
My 105mm macro and flash kit cost about a grand, and let me take pictures of hunting wasps from six inches away - something I couldn't do without them. Likewise, the headphones I use let me hear things I otherwise wouldn't. You can get stupid with money for sure in this space, but that doesn't make everything in this space stupid.
But everything is objectively better and the experience is better in 95% of the cases.
Likewise for music. When I listen to some music on my studio headphones I get precise sound and more detail, but in the end some music sounds worse than on cheap but loud bass heavy headphones.
I got to compare many different headphones from different manufacturers back-to-back, using my own music that I was familiar with.
Under $200 = garbage.
$200 - $500 = generally good and largely indistinguishable apart from the comfort of the headband and the padding.
I was about to buy a pair of HD600 headphones when for a lark I decided to try the "out of my budget" HD800 headphones. They were $1,500 at the time.
It was like night & day. I couldn't believe it. All other headphones rendered the sound of a double bass in a classical piece as a monotonal "thrum-thrum-thrum". With the HD800 it was like you were standing next to the thing. Every note, even the lowest, clearly distinct. You could hear the scrape of the bow across the strings. In orchestral pieces you could hear every intake of breath and every ruffled page.
Head drooping in defeat, I handed over my credit card and bought it right there. I was ruined. There is no going back.
I ended up re-listening to my entire music collection and re-watching every movie that had decent sound mastering. Some songs made the hair stand up on my arms, they gave me a sense of tingly pleasure they never had before.
Totally worth it, at least for me.
https://www.kenrockwell.com/audio/sennheiser/hd-650.htm
[edit]
Think for a moment about what is possible in a device as large as the Airpods Max. It could fit the guts of an Apple Watch, which can already stream audio via cell modem without a host computer (as long as you are using the Apple services).
Mainstream taste in audio is crap. Designing headphones for a target audience that thinks Spotify HQ mode is sufficient is not going to produce a very good product, audio-quality-wise.
I think you're taking about audio pre-processing stuff that Spotify or others do to qualitatively ""enhance"" audio for their lowest common denominator listeners, which is completely independent from what's being discussed.
Whom amongst us has not been told that this fancy power cable will be the second coming of Christ?
Because there aren't any "natural" / "neutral" / whatever speakers / headphones / cochlear implants. They all get a signal and a task: make this sound the way the listener wants.
"Just make it sound as it did when it was (live) recorded"? That's not going to happen even assuming some "perfect" speakers (not headphones), unless you can also supply the room, audience, humidity, and appropriate level of inebriation.
Apple has done a lot of of work on adjusting AirPods to your head and ear, IIRC. That's all software, and exactly the sort of thing they've been good at, even in the last few years.
It's basically iPhone camera vs. Canon & Nikon, the sequel. How many times did people on HN insist phone cameras will never be as good as SLRs, because the latter have the five pound of glass it takes to create good photos?
Turns out software and sensors are a pretty good substitute. While some features of good lenses are still not quite there (bokeh), they've eviscerated them in other, arguably more important disciplines (low light).
Apple could have made these as good as $500 Sennheiser/Grado/Sony cans. But they didn't.
Rants about "traveling with an orchestra" don't even make sense when one listens to music produced exclusively in-the-box. And even if I am listening to recorded material what is wrong with nuance and detail... after all that is what the mixing and mastering engineers heard when they made it. Do you think they choose their microphones and recording hardware willy-nilly?
Software is a terrible substitute for hardware! Hardware is easier to understand, latency-free, and produces a more harmonically interesting result
You remind me of a buddy of mine that has hearing loss from the marines. He is a giant headphone nut, and owns numerous $500+ pairs of headphones. All sorts of head phone amplifiers and dacs. But his hearing loss prevents any of that from really even mattering.
Hearing loss is a weird beast that takes many forms. If he truly cannot tell the difference between Beats and his setup in a blind hearing test then maybe I would agree. Do you know if he's done this?
Mainsteam taste is what sells products. Obviously you're not part of the target market and should probably just move on.
You can get Sennheiser HD280's, where the audio quality is likely worlds apart from these, and earcup padding that attenuates outside noise by something like 30db passively, for $60. Or you could be a doof and buy these Apple cans
I've done A/B testing with decent headphones (http://abx.digitalfeed.net/list.html) and not been able to tell the difference. Maybe you can, but I'd bet that most people can't, and in any case the result is far from butchery.
A lot of people love to fret about this stuff and convince themselves they can tell for the exact same reasons uninformed people go out and buy $200 cables.
It's also the same as people who install Gentoo so they can tune their CFLAGS to be 0.0000001% faster under certain workloads at the cost of not running on any other machine and crashing inexplicably on occasion.
We all love optimizing things, regardless of the actual real-world benefits.
I've mostly noticed differences in lower frequencies seeming attenuated in electronic bass music, though it is possible that this might be due to mastering (for stream vs CD) or normalization
In ear headphones have evolved beyond plastic cones for a long time. At that price, you're competing against the very best balanced armature drivers, which basically have perfect frequency responses and harmonics, as well as against planar magnetic and the very best dynamic drivers too.
As for computing audio, yeah that's simply useless. Just have the DSP at the device. The device, iPhone, or Mac, or a PC, or whatever, is aware of which headphones it is connected to, and can trivially run the correction routines itself. In fact, this is already done by many.
In ear headphones aren't going to have enough battery to power a cellular modem.
This is the reason modern active bookshelf speakers like the Klipsch The Fives punch way above their weight and pull off stuff its hardware shouldn’t be capable of.
Apple can do the same thing, they have the engineers and know-how. And on top of that, the positional audio is something that requires compute power anyway.
Also, DACs today are pretty much transparent.
For example, for positional audio and driver/amp compensation, people already do the same as Klipsch does in software on their computer. You just need a good enough microphone and then you can do it by your own using REW and EqualizerAPO, for example.
In any case, I run processing on my computer to apply a convolution filter on my audio stack with adds around 2.3ms of latency and uses 0.15% of my CPU. Compared to the ~200ms of Bluetooth latency it's completely unnoticeable, and I'm sure Apple can figure this out better than I can.
In any case, the transformations are not generic at all. You basically need to do one convolution, that's it. The headphones can provide the impulse response with which to convolve at pairing.
For things from Apple, of course, this is trivial.
Remember, some of those devices have 20mA of battery. The codecs already have to be made easy to decode.
There is also absolutely no need to limiting processing to a static convolution with an impulse response. That's just the only device-specific processing you have to do. Headphones are minimum phase devices, so except for things like distortion, they can basically be described by their single impulse response.
For the rest, like spatial audio, or EQ, or anything of the sort, there is no need to do it per headphone, it's the same for all of them.
Sure there is. If the cost of computation for a required sound quality is lower than the difference in driver cost, then computation will win, especially when it adds additional value unavailable to the non-computational approach. Positioning the computation at the device is advantageous since it allows for a simpler data interface. For example, adjustments to the soundstage based on head movement can be performed on-device instead of making a round trip to source for the adjustment.
In ear headphones aren't going to have enough battery to power a cellular modem.
Sure, and when the first iPod was released it lacked wireless networking and was storage constrained compared to comparably priced products. I can appreciate the pragmatism and be appreciate folks working towards an exciting future.
Pardon me for departing, my kid wants to watch the SN8 livestream together; hope you enjoy some high quality Soyuz laserdisks.
https://slashdot.org/story/01/10/23/1816257/Apple-releases-i...
For things like on ear sound stage correction, sure. That can be done. You will pay a heavy cost in sound quality, but it can be done. If your goal is sound quality, you're not going to be doing anything more that is very latency sensitive than ANC.
As for the last point, have fun with your sound streaming device that has 3 bit/s of UI bandwidth and a battery life of 1/5th that it would otherwise. It's not an issue you can fix by trying to fix it in that use case, it's an issue you fix by improving human interfaces, battery technology, and cellular technology, which is already being done. When that will be good enough for what you're describing, we can talk.
As for me, I'll enjoy having headphones with high quality and essentially unlimited battery life, and use the carefully optimized interfaces and computational power of my phone and computer to listen to music.
Of course they will. But it's not fair to compare open backs with closed backs without a huge asterisk [0]
> If you want the best sound quality for the buck, you usually need to go with open-backed (or simply “open”) headphones. The open (but uncomfortable) SR60 is probably the best value in the business, followed by the awesome DT-880, which is far better than everything in this review in both comfort and sound quality. But open headphones are like screen doors: they let all exterior noise in, and more importantly, they let all of your music out. This will annoy anyone around you, so it’s extremely inconsiderate to use open headphones in buses, trains, airplanes, shared offices, or anywhere else near other people, and it’s irresponsible to recommend them without this huge warning.
The $450 I paid for my endgame headphone/amp/DAC wouldn't even get you in the door of an audiophile speaker place.
I think the main reasons were being able to experience the sub frequencies with my entire body (they're too big to fit in your ears!), and share the experience with my friends.
Secondly, you arguably get more bang for your buck. For a budget of say $300-400 split between open headphones and a DAC you'll get much better sound quality than similar money spent on speakers and an amp. Finally to get the most out of speakers you need space to set them up correctly and a room with decent acoustics. Headphones avoid all of that.
It's hard and expensive to move a lot of air precisely, and speakers are influenced by room acoustics. $5 headphones beat $50 speakers. $80 headphones beat $200 speakers. And $200 headphones beat $400 speakers.
I can't afford to find out beyond that, but I suspect things get more nuanced on the ultra-high-end.
For me, for music, I'm happy with something like a Sony MDRV6 studio monitor, which sells for under $100. I don't know of speakers I like under $200.
Headphones are also nice for teleconferencing, where speakers aren't.
I say this as someone with both Sony MDRV6 headphones and a home borderline audiophile stereo setup retailing for over $3k.
TBF I was powering the headphones with just my Pixel 3, but it's not a particularly hard to drive headphone.
There's been quite a bit of advancement recently with bluetooth speakers, and we'll probably see some more disruption in the affordable hi-fi space soon with what Purifi is doing with Class D amps.
The headphones will give a more faithful reproduction of the original recording.
Making a nearly-perfect class D amp isn't hard (which is not to say a lot of people haven't messed it up; there are a lot of pretty bad amps out there).
The hard part is the speaker itself. The mechanicals of moving a lot of air accurately are hard. You need a physically large woofer which moves over a long distance. If you do that, your woofer and tweater won't be in the same place, so your phase response will be wonky. You don't want the air cavity acting as a spring overpowering your driver, so you need a large box. Etc. By the end of it, it's super-complex. Headphones are super-easy in comparison.
Reasons that I can think that someone might still go with open backs are:
• Portability - You can move around your house or go running without leaving the music.
• Less dependent of environment - they basically sound the same in a small, big, or acoustically reflective rooms.
• Leak less sound than speakers - you can blast music without waking up your kids or downstairs neighbors.
• Better high frequency reproduction - whereas full sound systems will generally do better with lower.
EDIT: Added price stipulation to where speakers start to sound better. Agreed that if you're not willing to spend much and want to listen alone, headphones are the better choice.
And also open backs just bleed noise, they don't shake the room, so unless someone is next to you they aren't gonna hear anything anyways.
I put together a ~$3k system recently that has blown away any headphone experience I've had [0] [1] [2].
I guess for me, the experience goes beyond just what the music sounds like. Being able to dance without having to worry about anything falling off of my head or out of my ears, and being able to share the experience with my girlfriend and others effectively multiplies the joy I get by an order of magnitude.
[0] https://www.minidsp.com/products/streaming-hd-series/shd
[1] https://vtvamplifier.com/product/vtv-amplifier-stereo-purifi...
[2] https://www.parts-express.com/solstice-mltl-reference-tower-...
Edit: For their dollar that is. With unlimited money I would probably take speakers.
With headphones, I can still hear my music at a loud volume with high quality while the noise outside of my home office is none. The only time someone would be affected would be if they walked into my home office.
If I set my speakers to the same volume level, it'll disturb most nearby rooms in the house.
But you can certainly wear them in your cubicle or home office without any issues for other people around you.
Especially if you work from home and have an office that is a room on its own (i.e. garage or basement) open-back are a no brainer for me.
I'm never going to come to grips with the concept of $500 headphones. It just seems insane.
Agree $500 is a punchy headphone purchase though!
(That said, an HD 598 or whatever replaced it in Sennheiser's line is a great intro - the quality of reproduction is very much in the same ballpark, and you don't need specialized equipment to drive it. Considerably cheaper, too.)
I don't try headphones any more.
So essentially you buy a headphone for ever.
Some examples are Beyerdynamic custom, ATH-50, sennheiser 599, hd-25 etc
In the 90s, when high-end audio in cars was really first ramping up, I read an article which made what I consider a salient point: people buying an executive-type car with a high-end audio system built in would happily spend a fortune on a stereo for the house that they might listen to for a few hours a week, and then drop pennies (by comparison) on car audio that they could easily spend far more time with. From that perspective, the move into high-end car audio made perfect sense.
I see headphones in the same light; if you like listening to music, and your tastes run to music where the quality of reproduction will significantly be improved by spending more on your headphones, it's a much more rational spend to upgrade your headphones - which you use for hours a day - than your home audio.
That being said, I still use AirPods Pro a lot more than both HD800 and HD650 due to convenience of using it even though the sound quality is way worse. Fidelity isn't really much of a concern when I'm doing something else with background music.
I'm very excited about AirPods Max.
A linear plot has no bend.
As long as my y axis is linear, I can always see a bend in the exponential curve no matter what scale I use on the left, provided you have the correct x axis limits to visualize the bend.
As far as only paying attention to quality that we personally value and is affordable, I agree.
How is this apparent by looking at the stock photos of the assembled product?
What factors make a better cone?
But just the word "plastic" doesn't really give any useful information. With all of the different formulations of plastics out there, the physical properties span an extremely wide range.
Source: I work in the polymers/materials industry.
You need some material which is rigid enough to push the sound waves in the air, but light enough it can be pushed to high frequencies. If plastic works, why not?
The Apple one is technically a lot more complex with a good bluetooth chip (especially compared to the rest of the bluetooth offerings), some digital signal processing to make the 'simple' speakers sound better, a battery (+charging circuit) for 20 hours of wireless playback and a gyroscope to adjust the sound stage to your movement (and gives a decent Atmosphere representation).
I presume a big part of the price of these high-tech cans is contributed by research and software development, not by materials...
You fall exactly for the trap the parent is talking about. "$50 earphones" and "$200 earphones" is meaningless. There are many reasons why earphones can be more or less expensive, many of which have nothing to do with audio quality. Things like wireless support, quality of the materials used and whatever brand is embossed on it. My $50 "studio" AKG 240 are probably as good as many $200 earphones, but they're all plastic and not wireless.
Beats by Dre sell incredibly well in large part because they are a fashion statement. They also have cranked bass, which aggravates people who want accurate response but sounds great to people who put them on in a shop and hear "wow, this one sounds different".
Apple products have long been sold as fashion and status symbols alongside their tech specs. Then they add the ease of integration into their ecosystem. Is that really the same as being "outperformed"?
Dual actuators mounted like that could be interesting for spatial audio and may also be used to overcome some of the challenges with suspending rigid driver cones.
In other words it should be interesting to see the reviews...
$100 Sennheiser HD 280 pros. A $400 Sennheiser 650
will no doubt blow them away
https://reference-audio-analyzer.pro/en/report/hp/sennheiser...
https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/s...
A +6dB hump at 5khz, followed by a (checks notes) -12dB (!!!) dip between there and 10khz.
You may enjoy that sound, but it is (in a literal sense) not high fidelity. Above 4khz those Sennheisers do random things to the frequency response that an individual may or may not find enjoyable. And above 7khz it starts to become a simulation of high frequency hearing loss. I would probably enjoy it, because my old ears aren't great in the treble region.
More to the point, we're comparing active DSP EQ'd headphones (the Apples) to a bunch of passive models. Physical construction of the drivers becomes less relevant when you can use onboard EQ to bend the frequency response however you like, and you don't have to worry about making your headphones' impedance curve work with a ridiculous array of amplifiers because it is mated to a known onboard amplifier.
Now, I'm not claiming that the AirPods Max will be headphones to buy. I really don't like the sound of Bluetooth headphones in general, with the caveat that I haven't heard Sony's near-lossless LDAP codec. But these seem like a reasonable value proposition if you want wireless and a bunch of Apple-specific convenience features and you're in the market to drop a few hundred on some headphones that you might use for several thousand hours.
What do you think the audiophiles are paying for? The only difference here is that you appreciate white boxes and thin devices rather than gold-plated connectors and oxygen-free cables. You like your thing but don't like theirs.
Studios and professionals spend large sums on demonstrably better equipment. You won’t find many who identify as “audiophiles” in the “$1000 optical cable” definition of the word.
AirPods Max are headphones lacking a headphone port. They will not be used by audio professionals. Latency is avoided at all costs in studio, on stage.
Apple’s new headphones are a fashion statement. To some, wearing a new release conveys status. You know how much it costs and they own it. The price of a Porsche might appall you too.
Not entirely. A 1.2m headphone-to-lightning cable is available for $35.
Back when I flew a lot, I could have my IEMs in but not listening to anything and I could barely hear the engines. There was a crying baby behind me and I didn't know until I took them out (while listening to music almost as quietly as my phone would go).
It goes without saying, but they're also incredibly comfortable too.
I always find the audiophile market to be borderline
fraud. They sell CD demagnetisers, ceramic cable lifters
and all sorts of items that don't make any sense whatsoever.
The good news is that many, if not most audiophiles do as well. There are a lot of objectivity-minded audiophiles who reject that snake oil stuff with a passion.
The fact is that basic audio reproduction -- which is essentially just signal reproduction -- is engineering, not art, and has been pretty much worked out for decades. We know what sounds good and we know how to make it happen. Long story short: reproducing the signal as accurately as possible, with a slight shift to emphasize bass frequencies (Google "Harman Curve") is what sounds good. Floyd Toole and Sean Olive are names to research if you want to know more.
As an example of grass-roots efforts in support of objective audiophile-dom, one example would be this guy's site, full of detailed measurements of various gear: http://audiosciencereview.com
The perception of audiophiles has become a bit wacky over the years. Essentially, in the 70s/80s/90s, the stereo magazines became dependent on advertising from snake oil purveyors, and therefore weren't really free to decry that stuff. And then the media tends to focus on the really wacky fraud crap like CD demagnetizers and the like. That stuff exists, but that is the lunatic fringe and the rest of us laugh at it.
Any fandom or hobby has over the top individuals who spend 10X the effort for 0-10% gains. Just like there are people who install their own electrical pole and transformer for audio equipment, there are apple universe devotees who claim they need all the added features and then just browse the web.
That sounds like Apple though ...'I pay for fewer ports!'
High quality wireless headphones tend to come with a price premium and sound not quite as good, which seems fair since they are generally closed-back and have to drive a DAC and amp off a relatively small battery. At $549 these had better sound really good but I wouldn’t necessarily expect hur-dur-six-hundo level of audio quality.
Generally I find the “Apple tax” worth paying for consumer gear if it’s something I can actually make use of. I’ll be very interested to see how these stack up, but unless they’re the second coming of headphone Jesus I already have enough headphones.
Distortion and frequency response graphs are pretty important but not the only important thing in terms of sounds quality. And sometimes you want speakers or cans that simply look cool or have a certain size.
There's nothing borderline about it. That test proved nobody could hear the difference between super expensive monster cables or twisted coat hangers.
https://gizmodo.com/audiophile-deathmatch-monster-cables-vs-...
It's possible to talk about effects on the edge of perception: the protocols for the tests by which perceptual codecs are assessed and incrementally improved had to be designed somehow. But you basically cannot have such conversations unless every participant accepts their own fallibility and blind testing as the price of admission, which is only going to happen with a closed group.
> I would't usually have problem with such things but they often slide into extremism and quickly pushing you on the money-spend-for-audio-performance scale where you are simply supposed to check you bank account to see what sound quality you are about to get.
You can say that about anything. CPUs, GPUs, Expensive low latency memory Memory, high performance cars, etc, etc, etc. If you chase high-end performance you end up paying a lot for diminishing returns.
I appreciate your larger argument but this statement is ironic in light of your previous paragraph :/.
IME (with time as an Apple software engineer) the Apple subculture _is_ a deeply troubling subculture. Take the iPhone for example: small, insignificant iterations that demand a premium. Consider the litany of software flaws that line BigSur and Catalina? What is the end consumer truly gaining with this new iteration? Would you respond "product experience"? Yet Apple appears to be doing well YoY with their returns on these products.
I'm particularly fond of your phrasing though: "cargo cult". Again, ironically applicable to Apple.
On the other hand they would be always targeted by people who are not in the Apple ecosystem, usually called sheep and explained how they are supposed to not be happy with the product they bought.
For me, Apple is the company that cares about experience design as primary concern and that's why I care about what they are doing. It's intellectually stimulating, much more than chasing the random metric that somehow everyone decided that it's the number to look for. For example, lately everyone would talk about bezel to screen ratio. Previously it was Ghz, Megapxels, core numbers and what not.
Not all of it is crap.
The lack of self-perception here is astonishing.
FYI, for those of us outside of the cult-of-Apple who watch how Apple sells phones with a bill of materials of $300 for $900+ to people who see them as a status symbol and a community of high-end influencers, we view Apple exactly as you describe here
The way you describe Apple as "selling an EXPERIENCE" instead of selling headphones perfectly demonstrates how the Apple cult transcends a product market and speaks emotionally to the Apple cult. You aren't buying headphones, you're buying into the Apple Experience(TM).
And finally I want to take a small laugh at the fact that you describe "THEM" as a creepy subculture and cargo cult, while in the same breath calling the Apple corporation "Your Hero"!! Cargo Cult is a great way to describe how we view you and your hero Apple.
I give you the $539 leather watch band: https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MTQG2AM/A/apple-watch-her.... The $699 wheels: https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MX572ZM/A/apple-mac-pro-w...
I think Apple is very complicit in the cargo cult and charging bullshit prices for fashionable items.
The wheels are wild, but the watch band is Hermès. Their watches start at 3k. What would you have expected?
1. The sort that’s just looking to show off or is completely obsessed, without paying much regard to the enjoyment of the audio itself.
2. The sort that just wants to enjoy music.
The communities that fall into category #2 are great. They’ll give advice such as:
- Don’t waste money on X when you could buy Y for a fraction of the price. You’re unlikely to notice a difference.
- No, humans can’t differentiate between properly-encoded MP3 320 and lossless. It’s physically impossible, and I’ll show you how to conduct a double-blind test to prove it.
- Yes, X is better than Y, but it’s also a lot more expensive. Start with Y; if you’re really not satisfied, you can upgrade, but chances are Y is good enough.
- Why on earth would you buy that cable? Just get some cheap crap from Amazon. It’s a digital signal anyway.
- Balanced analog signals don’t benefit from expensive cables.
- Unbalanced analog signals don’t benefit from snake oil, which includes pretty much any cable over 20 bucks.
- If you’re enjoying your music, don’t mess with it. Stop trying to impress people.
- Don’t buy $500 headphones from Apple. Amended: Don’t buy $500 headphones.
- No, those $500 Apple headphones aren’t going to help you as an artistic professional—you need reference speakers, which those definitely are not. They’re designed to make even the crappiest audio sound like unicorn farts.
- Are you regularly flying first class and need something to dampen the screams of children? Get whatever makes you happy, but $500 is probably excessive.
Isn't this the same as computer nerds talking about how much they're spending on their graphics card or their motherboard or whatever? I agree with your overall assessment of audiophile nonsense, but higher quality components and manufacturing processes cost money, so there's a limit to how good a $60 pair of headphones will sound (and hold up over time, for that matter) vs a $200 pair. In particular, it's not like folks who care about the quality of their audio equipment are _actually_ fixating on the price itself; brands like Bose are poorly regarded _precisely because_ their headphones have noticeably worse sound quality (and, in my own limited experience, fall apart faster) than the competition at any particular price point.
That's why I like what Apple is doing: earphones/headphones designed with overall experience in mind.
GPUs have measurable performance benefits. Many people tend to buy more expensive parts than they need and there are diminishing returns (justified as "futureproofing"), but at the end of the day you can easily run reproducible benchmarks to determine exactly how much performance you bought.
Audio quality is much more subjective and there's a whole lot of snake oil. You can certainly recognize a higher quality pair of cans to an extent, but price is not necessarily correlated with quality.
Out of the frying pan, into the fire: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality_distortion_field
I’m joking, I’m a lifelong Apple fan, but this comment was amusing given the long history of people calling the Apple subculture a “cult”.
there are people who appreciate high quality audio vs people who want 'seamless audio experience' vs snake oil addicts. They all are completely different things.
That puts it in the same price category as: Sennheiser HD660S, Audeze LCD-1, Beyerdynamic DT1770/1990, Grado RS2e, among many many others.
Honestly, I don't understand why you would buy these when there are a lot of established professional audio companies offering better sound at a cheaper price. At least airpods have a unique selling point in their portability and ux but I don't see how this benefits over-ear cans.
Such as a Zombies Run sort of game where you could hear the zombies behind you, or approaching from other streets. Not sure if any such applications exist yet, though?
Because it's Apple. The same reason people pay the Apple premium for anything else. It's the brand, the aesthetic, the ecosystem, and the signaling.
Apple is high quality. You're trying to make it sound cynical and flimsy, but it's not. It's consistent demonstrated high quality.
If the alternative is a day spent comparison shopping and researching, then an overage of $200 is actually pretty reasonable, as opportunity costs go.
Of course it is. But so is Sennheiser. People pay for the quality of Apple, but it's only part of the equation.
I don't know that. I have Apple stuff already (like most people) and know it's high quality. Trying Sennheiser is taking a risk for me. I'd pay to not take that risk.
Exactly. That's the whole point of a brand.
That being said, the fact that they stipulate they only work with apple products is a bit insane to me. I’ll stick with my wireless Sennheisers that I have to charge once a month thanks.
EDIT: Here’s the bit about them being Apple only. Hopefully it changes.
AirPods Max require Apple devices running iOS 14.3 or later, iPadOS 14.3 or later, macOS Big Sur 11.1 or later, watchOS 7.2 or later, or tvOS 14.3 or later.If (and a big if, though also a possible if) they are truly exceptional and better than the competition, the desire to own these could funnel into buying more Apple products in general, so you can use them. Also, if they are that great, non-Apple users will find another reason to switch to Apple and it will boost the overall brand.
So, not an unreasonable idea. But it is bold.
AirPods Max require Apple devices running iOS 14.3 or later, iPadOS 14.3 or later, macOS Big Sur 11.1 or later, watchOS 7.2 or later, or tvOS 14.3 or later.For example AirPods Pro require iOS 13.2 or older, but work fine via Bluetooth to all non-Apple hardware.
From the tech specs page on the product itself though:
> AirPods Max can be used as Bluetooth headphones with Apple devices using earlier software and with non-Apple devices, but functionality is limited.
That's my personal experience when using them with Windows 10 and Android devices. No issues when using them with Apple devices.
They have a significantly reduced feature set when used on Android vs Iphone, and they just don't work well at all.
Really glad Apple decided to buy Beats so that they could close off their audio technology to Apple customers only.
Don't mix up B2B and B2C to make a point haha. Different beasts. If you think that's expensive you should see some of the public sector deals
Pretty sure this wasn't B2B
But at $600 after tax, I think a lot of people will decide to put up with that.
Because it is Apple. When your Audeze will break can you just pop up to the nearest Apple store to get support? Can you easily connect them to your iPhone, Mac, iPod?
That's a bit presumptive. You don't know how these sound, yet. HD660S is based on 650S from the 2000s. Knowing Apple, they were able to innovate a bit here, so let's give them the benefit of the doubt.
That having said, I also don't expect them to sound better than any of which you mentioned.
minimal wage in my country is around the price of those headphones :D
Most other big brands have frequent howlers: Google, Samsung, Sony, etc.
Technically we don't know that yet. I mean, I'm not impressed with the price/value of e.g. Beats, so I'm not super hopeful, but I'll still withhold judgment until the reviews are in.
Have you tried them? How do they sound? Do you have a time machine that takes you to Dec. 15?
Where they're better is probably connectivity, noise cancellation (which is still garbage imho), integration with their hardware.
Same with their Homepod - it was innovative not in absolute audio quality but in the way it was omnidirectional and could "fill a room" with sound (if I remember correctly, from having read a review) and connectivity. If you just want great audio for your vinyl, CD or Flac collection then you don't get a Homepod. $300 worth of HiFi gear would be better.
I would not be surprised if Apple shatters the value of their headphones. Apple’s $9 DAC outperforms many “audiophile” DACs costing hundreds or even thousands of dollars.
At minimum, this is a "wait for reviews" situation.
I will say, I feel like wearing them while walking around is asking to be mugged. Like walking around with a stack of $100s on your head.
Combine that with wireless and presumably Apple's headphone device switching ability and I'd be tempted if not broke
> better sound at a cheaper price
Oh nice you've tested them then? How's the sound for mainstream non-gold-plated ears?
I guess some virtual reality headgear has something like that, but which audio headphones?
And which audio headphones of "established professional audio companies" have four microphones built in and the chip with "10 audio cores" to adapt? Including one microphone directed to the ear, not to the outside. I guess some could have something close to that, but which?
First to know if we compare apples and oranges, then to learn about the alternatives.
What does this mean? I genuinely don't get it.
Edit: to answer the "stereo" question: so it's about the audio mixed in more than 2 channels, or VR and the like effects.
I don't know if Apple's tech also activates for stereo audio.
But, given that these only work with Apple devices...
I'm going to be honest, I have a set of Beyerdynamic DT 770 pro's collecting dust right next to me as I type this. (I used to use them when I worked in an office.) I have some 3M "hearing protection" muffs that I bought for mowing the lawn, and they happen to have bluetooth headphones in them. They aren't as good as the DTs, but they are pretty darn close; and good enough that I prefer them when I travel to the DTs.
That puts it in the same price category as: Palm Pilot, Blackberry Curve and Nokia N95, among many many others.
Honestly, I don't understand why you would buy these when there are a lot of established professional phone companies offering better phones at a cheaper price.
The end product experience doesn't always correlate to existing metrics of quality.
Many people didn't see how iPhone was better than its competitors at first either, mostly because they were focused on the things the competitors emphasized and dismissive about what Apple brought to the table. Until, of course, those things because all any company was trying to deliver.
It looks like none of these are wireless, so I don't think the comparison is accurate.
They were released at US$350 in August and sell for less now.
Apple has ALWAYS operated at a premium margin, and appealed to users who want quality, but also don’t want to spend time comparison shopping laundry lists of features and components.
These will appeal to people working from home, just in time for Christmas when people are willing to spend a little. With a pandemic raging, if you’re in the market for headphones you can’t exactly go out and try a bunch of pairs on. (Guitar Center is going bankrupt, if I recall.)
So people will likely be happy to know there’s a product made by Apple that fills an additional niche — so they won’t have to give it much thought and will know that it’ll probably be of similar quality to what they’re used to with other Apple gear.
As someone that owns a couple of the high end models you mention, and uses my Bose qc3 headphones every day, if you don’t get why that’s a difference all I can say is I highly recommend trying it. If you don’t want to pay $550, then get the Bose or Sony equivalents.
All the audio quality in the world doesn’t do you much good walking down a noisy street, on a plane, or even sitting in a noisy open office. I’ll happily take pretty good sound + wireless and noise canceling over great sound in these environments.
What I’m guessing Apple is trying to sell based on this price point is sound on the same level of the high end models you mention, with the convenience of wireless noise canceling, plus the (gimmick?) of spatial audio. I’m very curious to try them at some point to see if they deliver.
Considering that Apple just made Intel look like a bunch of fools despite Intel making more processors for longer than just about anyone, at this point it’s silly to be so skeptical of Apple when they introduce a product like this after years of effort.
In Apple's fiscal 4th quarter alone:
4Q 2020 revenue: $64.7B 4Q 2020 capital returned to shareholders: $22B
And for Apple's fiscal year:
2020 revenue: $274.5B 2020 R&D: $18.8B
So Apple spent more than 19x Sennheiser's 2019 revenue in R&D this year.
I have never owned anything from Apple. However, that new CPU suddenly sounds interesting, and it may be that these headphone are suddenly interesting too, although they are double the price of the Bose ones.
>The touch controls aren't reliable
>My bluetooth connection disconnects randomly every couple hours
I ordered the airpods pro and expect a polished experience because Apple has a track record of just that
Wireless noise cancelling headphones worth a damn are expensive. Not to mention, Apple is the only company making a headset where the mic doesn't suck and have trash fidelity when you need to speak and listen at the same time.
> With AirPods Max, voice calls and Siri commands are crisp and clear due to beam-forming microphones that block out ambient noise and focus on the user’s voice.
Mic quality has become a much higher priority for me and I think others since starting to work from home. In my opinion, high-quality voice audio helps greatly improve the quality of conversations over VC.
In addition to brand trust which other commenters describe, there is multi-device interoperability within the Apple ecosystem. Pairing with multiple devices is non-trivial and multi-device operation is not as seamless with non-AirPods hearables. This is about extending the AirPods user experience (UX) to an over-the-ears form factor.
Bang-for-the-Buck consumers always struggle with Apple positioning. UX is almost always the intangible factor.
At this price, it is a luxury that can wait until AirPods Max 2, as I have already upgraded to XM4/Buds+/Jabra 75t this year for work and pleasure. However, at first glance, some integrated design aesthetics will provide the necessary appeal for dedicated fans e.g. the digital crown, colour scheme etc. It would be interesting to see the real world tests, and for starters, I would settle for a mini review by tubers like MKBHD.
Most people I know would rather want a headset without any and I suppose that wireless devices come with an array of software problems that Apple can fix better than the others (just supposing, I don't own wireless speakers myself).
I have a set of grados and I use them so little because of inconvenience. Instead is the AirPod pros that’s with me and use 95% of the time
There is a good chance these are competitive in terms of sound quality at their price point.
Have you tested these?
Feature-terms: For the microphones. Benefit-terms: For comfortable all-day telephony, up to 20 hours between charges.
And the 95% really want to signal others that their time is as expensive as of those 5%.
The beauty with Apple is they build beautiful products that people covet. They effectively create a new market and force people to re-assess what they would pay for XYZ feature. I am sure the average user would never dream of spending $500+ for a pair of headphones yesterday. Now the landscape is all different.
Its the same for the iPhone. Why do these things costs $1000? I can get most of the same features in just as nice a package with many Android phones. But still iPhone is the dominant winner in the US market.
I don’t see the purpose of the “$1k iPhone” meme when it’s blatantly false, and competing Android phones have also always cost around the same amount.
And what’s also been blatantly true is the amortized cost of an iPhone over its longer lifespan versus competing products has always been lower.
The only possible saving grace that I can see is that it’s an image strategy: price a product very high in the first generation to build an “exclusive” image, then lower its price over time to increase sales.
“We’ve learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a decent phone,” he said. “PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They’re not going to just walk in.”
Since then I’ve not wanted to bet against Apple.
The reason people will buy these is because they are part of the Apple ecosystem. I have no knowledge of this, but I’m sure their out of the box pairing experience will be much like other Apple products. Hold your phone near it and it just connects. Far more seamless than most Bluetooth pairing.
Any audio controls are built into your phone.
And typically Apple has hardware and software designed to work together. They’ve done this with the iPhone camera to completely disrupt the digital camera industry.
It’s the ecosystem plus the benefits of hardware / software integration.
The competition for a $549 Apple over-ear ANC headphone is, realistically, $300-$400 over-ear ANC headphones from everyone else. Because user experience and usability matter a LOT; I'd definitely pay a premium to avoid all the goofy crap that goes with "regular" Bluetooth.
Counterpoint, we're not all buying $1000 monitor stands and $700 caster wheels. Sometimes Apple is just gouging.
If I were looking to spend that kind of money on headphones -- which, we should be clear, isn't that hard to do if you're serious about it -- I'd absolutely listen to these. Given Apple's general approach to usability and quality, it'd be insanely foolish to dismiss them without trying them.
>Honestly, I don't understand why you would buy these when there are a lot of established professional audio companies offering better sound at a cheaper price.
This is what I'm talking about. How do you KNOW that $other_headphones sound better? The Apple model isn't even available yet.
I mean, it's dead solid clear that Apple's making a big move here. It could fail. But they tend not to fail. If they're pricing these on par with serious high-end over-ear headphones, then they expect them to be able to compete with those high-end headphones on all the points people care about in that market.
& about that: Your counterexamples aren't in Apple's target market here at all. None of them are wireless, and none of them include noise cancellation.
Moreover, the Audeze are open backed, which (for the non headphone nerds still reading) means those around you can hear what you're listening to. You get great sound that way -- lots of folks would argue that the best sounding phones in the world are all open-backed -- but it means they're terrible choices for most modern headphone applications, like in a public place or open office.
I love me some Grados, but they have the same problem.
Apple's play here is against the high end wireless, ANC product in the market, not these audiophile-only options you mention. I have a $300 pair of ANC wireless Sennheisers that I typically used on planes (ha, ha; remember travel?) or in other contexts where I really needed isolation. They're clunky to use and have weird idiosyncrasies, but they do sound better than my Airpods Pro, and they work better for long flights.
If they broke, would I consider the new Maxes? Absolutely.
I feel this part of the discussion is missing. A lot of people seem to love the HomePod for it's great audio quality at the price, and I have heard similar things for the HomePod Mini. Apple seems to be getting decent at making high quality audio equipment(per $), I feel like the quality of these headphones could be similar to the competition.
Apple for sure has a history of overcharging for certain products (remember, you can get a monitor stand for $1k), but the M1 Macbook Air is probably the best $1,000 computer by a long shot.
The arguments floating around here are pointless. Will you be able to get better sounding (particularly wired) headphones for less money? yes. Just like you can get a higher performance laptop for less money than a macbook, and just like you can buy a discrete graphics card that performs better than integrated graphics (analogy to wireless w/integrated DSP and amplifier, vs. discrete)
Is the point here to have the best sounding headphones? no. There are for daily/practical use cases and pleasantly usable performance for dedicated listening and entertainment. They are primarily headphones for "routine use"/work, e.g. when your listening to music + doing some task, then taking a phone-call or joining a meeting. The same use cases people currently have noise cancelling headphones with built-in or inline mics.
For example, Bose QCs are very popular for that use case, and cost $300+. I use them for daily work and travel, and I'm an "audio person", with completely different setups (plural) for audio quality use cases, well aware that the Bose QCs are not "$300 class" headphones quality wise.
The Apples are more expensive than the QCs, but even from pictures and build materials immediately crush the QCs in build quality. My guess is that they will also beat them in sound quality. Yes they're more expensive, but tbh for the target use case, it is not difficult to justify cost for something you use 8h a day. Of course anything expensive is not in everyone's budget, but considering the target market, people talking about $200-less headphones are not priced out of the headphones, they're just trying to save money.
So, true to Apple, the increased cost doesn't really hurt their addressable market, and instead positions them a status symbol where it is actually important that they cost more than the competition. Yep.
Probably because most of these companies have been "upgrading" their headphones for years, but really just making tweaks and increasing the price. So much of it is just marketing.
I'm a former headphone addict who used to own a lot of expensive headphones. I saw the progression from when $300 was expensive (if you exclude the electrostatics), to suddenly $1k is the norm for a "High End" headphone. Then $1.5K, then $2000, etc.
I'm not planning to buy the Airpods Max, but I give kudos to Apple for finally stepping up with computational audio and doing more than just making minor tweaks and marketing the hell out of it. Apple might actually push the other manufacturers to get off their ass and do some actual innovation.
I trust Apple to make that 100% integration with my iPhone whereas I don't necessarily trust Sennheiser to. The third party ones will turn out to drop calls more frequently in iOS 15 or something similar. That's the kind of issue you are paying to avoid.
My Bose QC35s are almost 4 years old. My initial thought was to upgrade to the Bose 700 ($340), but the Airpods Max are $210 more expensive. If I assume 3 years before my next upgrade, this equates to $6 more per month.
The in-ear segment was a slam dunk for the AirPods Pro - no exciting options competing there (Sennheiser's True Wireless were a huge disappointment). In the wireless over-ear segment on the other hand, it is very competitive and there are great options. The H1 chip isn't that much of a leg up, compared to how well Sony, Bose and the others handle connectivity to multiple devices. It'll boil down to the basics for me: audio quality and noise cancellation - if Apple can nail those, the price increase would be worth it in my book.
This has been Apple's marketing since the 2000s.
The product quality is secondary to the price. Even the users don't want everyone to afford it. They want to be seen as unique.
Let me play you a sad song-
There once was a poor minority boy who had bad parents through no fault of their own. They wanted to become a programmer, they got a $100 Android and started working on an app. Upon finishing they publish their app for a one time 25$ fee.
But that only reached half the market.
So next the boy bought a $1000 mac, a $400 iphone, and a $125/yr app store subscription. Lol
This is what drives me nuts about stuff like this. How can you even say that? There's no way that you've tried these headphones so how can you possibly say that? Apple has gotten rave reviews with regard to audio quality in the Airpods Pro and the Homepod and Homepod Mini so why wouldn't they take that expertise and put it into these?
On top of that, going off of what that review mentions, the AirPods Max look to solve exactly that problem and compete with exactly that range of product.
Did you listen to these yet?
That said, looking beyond audio quality alone is why these exists. None of those headphones has the ease-of-syncing these will. I'm pretty sure none of those headphones support the spatial audio stuff these will. My corded Sennheiser HD280s started flaking off around the ear not too long after I bought them, while these seem like probably they'll wear better over time.
Audio quality? Yeah, I'm guessing Apple's aiming for "good enough for most people," nowhere near studio quality. But on everything else, I suspect they've nailed it, especially for people who've used AirPods or AirPods Pro and appreciate the syncing, spatial audio, etc.
We cannot know whether the price is crazy before somebody has reviewed them. I'm sure we don't need to wait for long.
If it's an amazing experience, it might be a good deal. I know I would pay huge amounts of money at this stage of my life for a great experience. Like a hundred euros for a single glass of whiskey. Or hundreds of euros for a great meal. And headphones (even battery powered ones) last a whole lot longer than a shot of whiskey or a meal.
But. They're wireless, and Bluetooth 5.0. They will be Bluetooth 5.0 in 5 years, and possibly obsolete because of that. Passive headphones bought today will be just as good in 5 years, unless something weird happens in speaker technology by then.
For comparison, Sennheiser did about $1B in revenue and Bose did $3.6B.
Are are absolutely huge and capable of surpassing every single company in terms of product and audio quality.
And you can get these for $549, too?
These things means more to my average and aging ears than some flashy audiophile names.
These are wired headphones that lack ANC.
Haven't listened to them, but just looking at the features it's pretty obvious these aren't for the same people. Apple's cans are Wireless high quality headphones with Active Noise Cancellation, transparency mode, and seamless switching. The only thing they have in common with the ones you listed is "Headphones".
This is all setting aside the fact that you are prejudging audio quality of a product nobody has reviewed.
I suspect there are a ton of people like me who are just fine with good sound and very interested in getting wireless noise cancelling headphones.
What makes these other companies good at audio that Apple cannot match? They are a huge company that have been making audio products for a really long time and (no matter what one thinks of them) they own Beats too. So I actually say, if Sennheiser and others can do it Apple can do it better, not just because of their approach but also because of their SW/HW integration story.
None of this is relevant for audio. Despite what some audiocultists would have you believe CD quality is basically as good as it gets, you cover effectively 100% of the (normal) human hearing range, both in frequency range and dynamics. Ok, ok, technically not 100% of the dynamics, but few people care to listen to "distant ventilator on a quiet night" followed by "Airbus A380 taking off from the point of view of the jet turbine".
Of course the quality of reproduction matters a lot, playing a CD through cheap $5 earphones is not going to sound great. But even there the cost of decent quality electronics keeps dropping and dropping. You can get a good quality DAC for a trivial amount of money (and stand alone DACs are still usually overpriced because they're for the niche/enthusiast/pro market, everybody else uses whatever their smartphones/laptop/desktop has integrated).
Buying ultra high-end, ultra-expensive "audiophile" equipment these days is effectively like buying mechanical watches. It's because you like the luxury and craftsmanship, or you're making a fashion statement. Apple knows that, hence these AirPods. If you're about function over form you'd sooner get a cheapo Casio quartz watch.
And there's nothing wrong with that, it just annoys me when audiophiles try to justify their fashion statements with pseudo-science.
Here's one place to start if you're interested in the ongoing theory/research: https://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/projects/binaural-broadcasting
I'd say 24/96 is comfortably the "end game solved problem" quality for source recordings though, not CD. Even if it is just for the baseline safety margin that it is easier to implement perfect filters with no transition bands anywhere near the audible frequencies, and that additional bit precision has no downside unless you get into accuracy problems with noise on the recording side.
From the speaker point of view, I think IEMs are the closest to being "solved", since the tiny drivers minimize the physics issues with larger drivers, they are probably closest to pure reproduction. For full-size speakers etc., pure reproduction can be accomplished for certain frequency ranges by individual drivers, but over the full range it is not so "solved", e.g. with bass there is often a physics issue with the kinetics of moving a large driver cone in perfect phase-sync with the relatively tiny and light tweeter.
I've actually been wondering if speaker cones are a possible application for graphene.
>And there's nothing wrong with that, it just annoys me when audiophiles try to justify their fashion statements with pseudo-science.
Yes, those people can get nutty, ignore them! Audio is much bigger than Audiophile :)
Having said that, with no pressure from consumers, why would anyone invest money in new headphone designs? I recently purchased a pair of planar magnetic headphones which used to be crummy when I tried them a few years back. The newer design is very efficient, the manufacturing process is also pretty solid, and the sound is fantastic.
Didn’t these just come out? How do you know the other offering have better sound?
I won't argue about the price. But considering that exactly zero HN commenters have tried these, how can you categorically state that the audio is bad? People used spec sheets to make the same assumptions about each iteration of AirPods and were wrong each time.
Sony WH-1000XM4s will set you back $350 and these are favourite NC headphones for many.
The AirPods Max have some clear advantages over those: 9 microphones, huge suite of positioning sensors including gyroscope and accelerometer etc. Presumably the sound quality and NC will be at least as good as Sony's, and the software, UX and "build quality" significantly better.
I was willing to give Apple a chance last year and got AirPods Pro, but they proved abysmal in terms of everything—comfort for wearing long term, isolation, sound quality, going out of sync with each other, and a while ago one of them started to emit loud noise randomly. It’s likely that some of those issues are related to my unit and individual fit, but I’m back to Shure SE215/SE425 and their black foam tips (which achieve very similar overall attenuation without active NC[0]) as my go-to in-ear headphones.
For over-the-ears I have fairly old (and virtually unbreakable) Sony WH-1000XM3; when their battery goes I would love to give Apple another chance but the price tag makes it hard to justify.
IMO to any audiophile/sound engineer familiar with the brands mentioned by eertami the price of Apple’s new AirPods would indeed appear outlandish.
[0] Measurably so: https://www.rtings.com/headphones/reviews/apple/airpods-pro-... vs. https://www.rtings.com/headphones/reviews/shure/se215#compar...
The comfort is unmatched, however, and battery life is still fantastic on them despite very heavy use. Not sure I can imagine that battery ever dying!
I've been toying with the idea of buying XM4s but I'm tempted by Apple's. I guess I'll give them a try and can always return them if the comfort etc isn't as good as Sony's.
The only feature I find worth considering AirPods Max for is, unexpectedly, the 5.1/7.1 sound. If it is truly done properly (which I doubt, but promo materials hint at something there) then I have to admit, I don’t have the room for a proper setup like that, so this could be an accessible way to try working with surround sound.
Suspiciously, nothing is known about the codec and connectivity in general. If new AirPods are limited to kbps-starved AAC/SBC, like AirPods Pro, that’d be very frustrating. I know, diminishing returns, but I don’t want yet another sound reproduction system “optimized” for streaming at Apple Music bitrates (especially if it’s 7.1). Sony’s LDAC aside, something approaching 600 kbps like aptX—or, absent that, at least an external audio in!—could make the price almost seem acceptable.
Contact Apple, they'll replace them for you. My new pair have been fine... so far.
Don't get me wrong, Apple is OK at consumer audio. The Homepod is nice, so are the APPs. Even Beats aren't too bad nowadays. But they haven't released consistently better audio products than Audeze, Sennheiser, Sony, M&D, or even Bose--their closest comparison, since both Apple and Bose lean hard on DSPs for their SQ.
I suspect the second version of these headphones will be pretty excellent. Apple does learn from its mistakes, whatever they'll end up being. Trick is Bose and Sony will have learned from their mistakes too. It'll be interesting to see if Apple ends up being able to compete on audio, not just style.
It's not just sound though, right? Can you point me to an offering that offers the same features that Apple is offering here? Wireless, with a high battery life, automatic switching, Siri, noise cancellation, spatial mode, etc.
> At least airpods have a unique selling point in their portability and ux but I don't see how this benefits over-ear cans.
I don't see why portability and a good UX are somehow not needed for over-ear headphones.
- adaptive EQ - noise cancelling - transparent-mode - 3D spatial awareness
If Apple nails those, then it's worth the money in my book.
Much like the $129 wireless charger (cable sold separately),it's intended for die-hard fans. Apple user demographic is across the entire economic spectrum so I'm sure that 1) this will sell well and 2) it's a great pair of headphones.
Worth pointing out that this doesn't have any auxiliary ports so you can't use it on airplanes, etc...unless there's an upcoming lightning-to-aux adapter. It feels like a culmination of the "no headphone jack" vision started with the iPhone 7.
They could of used this to add a new set of proprietary bluetooth protocols to improve the audio quality of voice calls and general listening. BT microphone + headphone streaming is fairly high latency and low fidelity. Same with general audio. Could of called it Apple Bluetooth HD or something similar.
Missed opportunity.
Apple is an established professional audio company. Macs are the computer used in production and DJing, have been for decades. They take sound seriously, and when Apple says less than 1% distortion across the entire audible range, well.
They could be lying, but I wouldn't bet money on that.
If Apple's new thing was wired only, I wouldn't even consider them. I already have my custom balanced-XLR Beyerdynamics on a pile of Schiit on my office desk. They serve that purpose beautifully, and I see no reason to change that.
The DT1770s that you compare them to are not wireless. They're not in the same market at all as Apple's wireless products. Of the manufacturers you list, I trust none of them to meet wireless needs. I trust Apple to meet wireless needs as much as I trust Beyerdynamic to meet wired needs.
I’m not saying you are wrong, I would just like to know if this is based on something specific.
My biggest concern is if they are user serviceable. I have a pair of Sennheiser that cost around £700 when I bought them 16 years ago. Granted they are not wireless but I can and have repaired them with parts directly from Sennheiser.
I doubt I will be able to do that with the AirPods Max which is a concern. At this price point I expect them to last at least ten years and there is no chance a battery will last that long so if it is not replaceable I can't see why I would buy these over an alternative in the same price range.
Sure they have some "cool" features but that does not justify a product that will most likely have a battery in need of replacement in 3-4 years becoming worthless.
Edit: OMFG They use Lightning for charging not USB-C?! WTF are Apple doing :(
It's not 10 years but the experience of owning a lithium-battery powered pair of headphones has not degraded as much as I was expecting. Hopefully the Apple batteries are replaceable though, it would really suck to have a $550 pair of headphones that you have to keep tethered to a desk.
My daughter now has a pair of Sony XM3 that she loves but she will no doubt want these. Lucky for me she is now 18 so can buy her own expensive headphones :D
Their laptops do sound miles better than the competition though, and the homepod is great for the size. I don't know if I have a defective pair or what, because they don't sound good at all.
With regard to the battery, I expect apple will replace it for you at the Apple Store, probably for around $75. I believe they'll do it for iPads (including Pro) for $100, and in fact they give you a completely new (refurb, honestly) unit. So you also get a brand new screen with no scratches, which is nice. I don't know if they'll do replacement units for headphones, but wouldn't be surprised.
To make a product that Apple believes is significantly better than the competition they had to design a very intricate solution that includes:
* High end look and feel not similar to the bulk of their products with lots of textile webbing and memory foam ear cups. These get way more wear and tear than normal electronics being exposed to sweat, sunscreen, etc. On top of that these must be safe for long skin exposure and comfortable across many head shapes and sizes. * High quality magnets with custom speaker design for low THD and large frequency range. * 2 custom ASICs built for sound processing and low power bluetooth and 10 audio cores each. * 10 microphone array for ANC and wind noise cancelation. * Multiple accelerometers + gyros head tracking with spatial audio.
It you remove one of those components, I'd be surprised if Apple still shipped this. At least 40 people worked on designing and engineering this new headphone. There are not many companies in the world with the right kind of talent for this and Apple happens to be one of them.
Why should humanity put so many resources towards improvements that no mere mortal can notice? It’s probably better to put the talent on other problems...
True if you're selling average products for average people. Not true if you have a niche.
It's not a judgment on the product. It's just a lament that the days of individuals or small companies innovating in the consumer electronics space are (long?) over.
I mentioned elsewhere in the thread, the best chance at making a wave as a consumer product concern is to make waves on some sub-component of the larger product being produced by the majors. You aren't going to compete with Apple, Sony or Bose directly, but you can improve on new technologies or extant processes and hope to get subsumed. That's the truly sad part.
The difference between a good product and a premium product are the experience. Sometimes that experience is the most expensive part of the product.
I have what is, evidently, a pretty large head, given the fact that I've only been able to find one hat ever that is large enough to fit me.
And yeah, lots of high-end headphones are painful to wear, because they went for the "standard-size" head.
I mean, AirPods Max may be actually better than the competition (unlike regular AirPods, which are a bestseller anyway). But they were just announced, why the hell would you assume that they are any good at all?
I'm not an Apple fanboy, but people said the exact same thing about the M1, which basically blew everyone away. So the track record pretty heavily favors Apple here.
Because Apple released a product recently that received excellent reviews, all Apple products are assumed to be good? All Apple products come out of the unit that produces their processors. All Apple products are owned by the teams responsible for their Macbook / Airbook lines. All Apple products can achieve whatever innovations that occurred with the M1 chip.
I don't think I said that, just that their recent track record favors them. The M1 and the new iPhone 11 were very warmly received.
Even though they were not as recent, I believe your argument would be more compelling if you used Apple's more similar products, e.g. AirPods Pro, or perhaps the latest watch.
The products and technologies involved are too different to take any goodwill and apply it universally. Even in the same product there are issues with subcomponents: The M1 is great, but the touchbar is still mostly useless and the keyboard only improved recently. How can we possibly say anything across products?
You're probably off by an order of magnitude. 40 people is nothing for a largely produced product.
These headphones will be mass produced in huge volumes. It's a consumer product. Just a very expensive one.
This headphones will sell for the reason that people don't want to/have time to research headphones, they know this will integrate well with what they have and will justify it since is also a fashion/social class statement.
They wont sell because they're headphones, they'll sell because they complete the apple wearable ecosystem.
I doubt any other device comes close to a rate of $0.80 per day for the amount of utility you get from it. If you use it for 4 or 5 years, like I do, that goes down to as low as $0.50 per day.
It's like student loans, in a way.
edit: I don't know if this is still the case. I buy all my phones full price anymore
I've had my current iPhone for 4 years. If I buy one $20 bag of coffee beans a month, then I've spent more for coffee in the last 4 years than I have on my phone. Seems like a good deal to me?
> Lightning to 3.5 mm Audio Cable (1.2m)
> Connect AirPods Max to your iOS or iPadOS device. Or connect to 3.5mm audio ports in your car, on an airplane, and more.
After AppleCare, this optional 3.5mm cable, and tax, it comes out to just over $700 USD.
[0]: https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MR2C2AM/A/lightning-to-35...
Is the brave move in a world without headphone jacks.. to bring them back?
That's not a 3.5mm jack, that's the top of the headphones. See[1] where the crown is on the top.
[1]: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/images/product/airpods/standa...
I realized this issue when I replaced a set of wire/bluetooth headphones with a new pair, and noticed the mic quality was way worse, even when wired. It turns out my old ones had a wired connection for the mic, and my new ones always use bluetooth for the mic.
After googling a bit, I found there's still no high quality microphone audio profile inside bluetooth, even after all these years.
For this round in particular, Apple is not competing against the Grados and Beyerdynamics of the world, they are competing against the Bose QCs and Surface Headphones of the world, particularly those with integrated mics. The vast majority of people buying these ~$300 headphones for daily general use/work/travel can afford ~$500 headphones as well, if they want them. So true to Apple, they do not reduce their addressable market with increased cost, but rather turn themselves into a status symbol among the consumers in their targeted market, due to the increased cost, not in-spite of it.
The headphones will sound at least as good as the direct competition because it's not that hard to do among this class of headphones. Give them some common-sense credit. The build quality is already better from pictures, compared to all-plastic which dominates the market. The user experience will be better with Apple products than pure Bluetooth, as everyone knows.
I'm not even going to touch the audiophile discussion. I'm an "audio person" as well, but again, exhausting discussion. Nobody knowledgeable about audio would use anything with noise cancelling DSP to achieve peerless audio quality. Nobody would use a tiny integrated amplifier and expect it to perform like a full-size discrete amp and wired headphones.
Just like I wouldn't expect my Bose QC headset to compete on sound quality with my Sennheiser IE8s, I do not expect my IE8s to work as a headset or reduce ambient noise while selectively allowing voices though. It is pointless to bring up these comparisons, especially in the context of "sound quality units per dollar".
Edit: judging from the explosion view, it does look to feature actual screws, so I'm cautiously optimistic they might last longer than 3 years, although you never know if they didn't add authentication to the battery to prevent it from being user-servicable.
https://www.firstxw.com/view/235586.html
And that with space left over. If Apple really wanted to make this product sustainable, they could.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/10/08/everyon...
"After the one-year warranty on AirPods Max has expired or the up to two-year AppleCare+ coverage has come to an end, Apple will charge a $79 fee for battery servicing."[1]
[1] https://www.macrumors.com/2020/12/08/79-airpods-max-battery-...
Personally, however, I'm actively working on moving away from this ecosystem. I've felt like every purchase is a lose/lose for a while now. I can't deny that Apple products offer a superior experience in almost every category, but feeling like I'm getting ripped off every time I buy is miserable, that's just not how I want to live life. I used to love apple stores, now they just remind me of nearly-mandatory $200 storage upsells.
Apple continues to be highly successful, so chances are they do know what they're doing with the pricing here.
> Using the gyroscope and accelerometer in AirPods Max and iPhone or iPad, spatial audio tracks the motion of a user’s head as well as the device, compares the motion data, then remaps the sound field so it stays anchored to the device, even as the user’s head moves.
Those features do make sense for hypothetical AR glasses where you move around a space with objects emitting sounds.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Head-related_transfer_functi...
From my reading of the quoted paragraph, it appears these headphones will play system sounds (alerts, siri, etc) in such a way that they appear to emanate from the paired device - a very neat trick. If the headphones can do that then it is a short jump to making sounds appear to come from ARKit objects moving in real space.
Try this. Watch something on, say, an iPad with spatial audio enabled. Turning your head left and right moves the audio so it appears to be coming from the iPad. Works great. Then turn your head, and keep it turned for a few seconds. The audio will gradually slide to where your nose is pointing, and will not stay anchored to the device for long.
It seems to me it's assuming that if your head is still, you must be looking directly at the screen, and recalibrates. The position estimates seem to be computed using accelerometers and not absolute positional tracking. Alternatively, it is actually tracking absolute positions but assumes that you want a "centered" audio experience even though the iPad is to your side. I think the former explanation is more plausible.
Also, try moving laterally to the iPad, so that you are no longer looking directly at the iPad. It will still keep your audio entered.
I’ve had a bunch of Apple products that have never disappointed me in the last 10+ years.
I’ll buy these overpriced headphones because an extra $200 for a product I’ll probably use for 5 years will not break my bank account.
Could they have had a great listening experience with a more established audio name? Sure, but so what. Those companies failed to reach these customers. Apple will sell them a new listening experience (for them) and they will love it. If they don't love it, they will return the product. That's how it works. No good or evil, just products and customers. If the customers like them and find value Apple will sell a lot of headphones. If not, these will go on the trash heap of other failed Apple products. Customers always have the final say.
Bought airpods pro, love the noise cancelling sound, think they sound great (to me)
Bought homepod, sounds great
As a customer, I just trust that Apple will not put out a crap product in this price range. It may be missing a headphone jack or some audio balancing features that audiogeeks will care about. I trust that they will sound very good (to my average ears), good good and most importantly have a great resale value if I get bored with them
They will also make a great gift for the people on my list that have everything
I have a very hard time believing you're not aware of this, and feigning ignorance in order to criticize the fact is just disingenuous.
According to that link’s definition of a “Veblen” good, if Apple had raised prices, then demand would have increased. Either someone in charge of pricing Apple products missed out on huge revenue increases by failing to raise the price, or it’s not a Veblen good.
And there is no contention that the amortized cost of an iPhone SE, iPad Mini, or MacBook Air gets you the lowest cost to quality ratio of any competing product that also last the longest.
The iPad Pro, the iPhone X, and the Mac Pro were all shockingly expensive. I remember the chatter on Hacker News like it was yesterday.
The first two sold like gangbusters and the last is less of a Veblen good and more of an anchor price for the rest of their lineup.
Apple's 'affordable' version of a product is always "a good price for an expensive X", rather than actually cheap. And they go up from there.
There isn't even a competing product for iPad Mini.
Maybe a case can be made for the highest end Apple products are Veblen goods, but that's a far less interesting comment than all Apple products are Veblen goods.
In contradiction to your post which I replied to, Apple has raised the price of their flagship iPad and iPhone, and continued to bust through sales records. That's Veblen enough for me.
They have also lowered the price of their most affordable product in a category, and in any case, this being tech, each new product isn't the same as the predecessor, which complicates the analysis.
I don't think "people buy the latest flagship iPhone because it's expensive" is as true for Apple as it is for, say, BMW.
But it's reasonably true, and there's a trope to go with it: Apple keeps releasing products where the commentariat say "that's so much money for an X! who is going to buy this?" and then sell millions of that product.
Seems like a useless concept to me. If the flagship phones are getting better and better each year, why is it noteworthy that the price might increase? Is there a business that sells a better product at the same price as an inferior product?
For example, these cost more money than an average resident of Sierra Leone earns in a month. You could donate to feed their family.
Or for $550, you could spend $300 on buying a Kenyan family 5 sheep, $100 on gifting 5 Serbian women a month of literacy classes each, and $150 on 15 rides to school for refugee children in Egypt. Taxes not included.¹
You have airpods and airpods pro, and you don't care enough about sound to spend an hour or two researching headphones. Why would you want these then? What about your current headphones isn't good enough that you are willing to pay $600?
> They will also make a great gift for the people on my list that have everything
I mean, so would a really great pair of headphones that costs $200 less. Also, if you are giving out $600 headphones as gifts, I would like us to be friends.
I'm just saying I get having trust in a company, but what you are describing sounds like more than that.
This happens in just about every hobby. e.g. Some people buy expensive golf clubs and don’t know how to properly swing them.
My brother spent $2,000 upgrading his golf clubs, and didn't improve his score at all. GP said he's willing to spend an extra $200 to avoid two hours of research. Most of us here make at least $100/hr. The opportunity cost alone makes the purchase reasonable.
Well, that's definitely the type of thing you don't let people know, haha
It’s like they have some kind visceral reaction to seeing someone who isn’t being thrifty and researching every little thing out with spreadsheets.
It doesn’t affect you. They’re not telling you to do it.
If you want to get a better deal by doing the research then do it.
I’ll probably get these for the same reason as the parent; I vaguely want some air pods but I haven’t got around to it and I prefer this form factor.
I trust apple not to sell useless knockoff rubbish in a shiny box. My relationship with them is no more complex than that.
Anyway, the issue for me is that these are supposed to be audiophile/professional grade headphones - something you buy explicitly because you want the best audio quality. If you need these in the first place, then it's worth doing 20 minutes of research to see if it's the best quality for your money, or even in general.
I hate to say it, but I agree with the comments that mention these being more of a status symbol than anything. There's nothing wrong with that either, but that's the reality. I mean, they are pretty much guaranteed to perform worse than high end Sennheisers while still costing more, so what else could it be?
I find the argument of "I need professional grade headphones to do my job, but don't have the time to research the best option" just disappointing I guess.
I own AirPods Pro myself, but those are intended for a different market and are actually a decent value (compared to the Sony which has better sound quality but worse integration with Apple stuff).
This is where you’re wrong. That’s not the audience they’re targeting. Their target is Apple users bought into the ecosystem who may or may not use AirPods. If they see an Apple made headphone, they implicitly trust it to be not crap and hardy even if it may not compare well to the competitors. Your passionate arguments for why there are cheaper alternatives don’t matter, this has been the same argument for a lot of Apple made products. They are one of the few companies on the market that has demonstrated a commitment to quality (for a premium, of course) for the masses. Their brand is very very strong.
I am not an audiophile and I don’t care to be. I like AirPods and my first reaction to this was: oh nice, my Bose headphones are pretty old. These look quite pricy but it’s Apple, I trust that I’ll get a fairly reliable product that looks beautiful and works really well with my phone (no custom janky apps).
No, they are not.
It's unlikely professionals are buying any wireless headphones and professionals definitely don't want/ need ANC.
These are headphones for people who want good quality sound and value the other features these offer. If you don't find the other features these offer appealing, they aren't worth the money.
Almost every criticism of these pits them against top end wired audiophile headphones... that's not what these are primarily competing against.
Would you pay $100 for a 100MB usb drive? Would you not react and try to dissuade a friend from making a purchase you recognize to be ill-considered?
It’s your money, do what you want, but people are upset because there are (probably, since we dont know yet) better options that don’t have an Apple pricetag. The purchase would be based on complacency with a brand, and not conformity to rational principles and knowledge.
Few have already posted that they would buy this because it’s Apple, in order to avoid 1-2 hours of research. I really hope these aren’t the same people complaining about how terrible capitalism is.
I'm not about to be upset that someone still wants a Yubikey though.
Sure it does. This religious consumerism is favouring one of the biggest polluters on earth, with products that are as hard to repair as possible. And the favorism it's not even warranted: Apple produced a bunch of crap over the years. But zealots just ignore that.
And not only has this a negative effect on our shared resources, many people also plainly abhor when other people refuse to think.
Also, the comment about people refusing to think is a bit obtuse, don't you think? Assuming that people who buy Apple products don't think is a ridiculous claim. At least recognize that those people might have a different calculus for their purchasing choices.
It's nuts how much toxicity there is around Apple.
Some. They also make good stuff. But look at Louis Rossman's Youtube channel, he rants about the common defects in the bad Apple products better than I could.
> Also, the comment about people refusing to think is a bit obtuse, don't you think? Assuming that people who buy Apple products don't think is a ridiculous claim
It was the nice variant of what I was trying to say ;) The mechanisms of Apple fanboyism work like a religion or a cult, and that's not a novel thought by me. In that context it's not absurd, it really is what happens: People buy these products often enough without an ounce of thought, it's religious conviction and our primate brain wanting to signal status. Not always of course, but often enough. And that does produce the negative reaction in others -> parent was asking.
Just in case: I did not say that people care about how things work. You get in every category Apple sells products in other products that are more affordable, do not suck and look good. Besides, many people buy Apple products that they can not afford, that's part of the problem.
OK buddy. Lemme go find you a soap box. BRB.
And it looks like you are implying comments like mine are made without thought, which would be neither nice nor correct.
That's a myth.
I mentioned 2011, which is well before the nasty keyboards.
You guys are spending a lot of effort to respond to things I didn't say, including anything at all about competitors. Sony Vaio laptops probably hold their value longest, AFAIK, but that doesn't mean Apple laptop haven't traditionally held value quite well.
Apple products have high resale value, at least before the recent keyboard crap, because many people find them to be very useful for a very long time.
That's what I should have said.
It's a similar story for me with smartphones. My first was a Droid X2. After about 9 months I switched to an iPhone 4 and used it for the next 5 years. Then upgraded to a 6s which I only retired for an 11 Pro last year because work bought it for me. They all work fine today.
I babied every Dell/Sony machine and that Droid just like every Apple product I've purchased since; this is just the proof I've found in the pudding after eating both kinds.
I very much doubt you can find anything to substantiate your claim that Apple is one of the biggest polluters on earth.
They feel uncomfortable that the person above can shell that money on stuff that is slightly more than what they can afford. They then need to rationalise their decision that they made the best choice.
If I make $50 an hour, I am not going to waste 8+ hours searching and doing spreadsheets to figure out 'what is the best for the money' because I am already losing 50$ per hour. The new pair that is 'cheaper' costs as much as the device itself + as much as I 'paid' searching for it.
If it isn't my hobby, there is no reason to waste time on it.
I can't even imagine why my response sounded "upset".
> someone who isn’t being thrifty and researching every little thing out with spreadsheets.
No, I don't think spreadsheets are required. I probably wouldn't spend $600 on something that doesn't seem like it usually costs that much without reading a couple of reputable reviews first, or maybe checking to see if the features I want exist in a popular cheaper brand. OP isn't doing this because OP isn't buying the headphones to fulfill any need, but because they "trust apple". It's bizarre and hard to understand for anybody who isn't used to thinking of $600 as pocket change, I guess.
> I’ll probably get these for the same reason as the parent; I vaguely want some air pods but I haven’t got around to it and I prefer this form factor.
This was the part that confused me. OP has AirPods and AirPods pro and claims that he loves both. The part I don't get is blindly dropping $600 to buy something that doesn't even solve a problem for you. Apple puts it out, OP buys because it's an apple product.
> I trust apple not to sell useless knockoff rubbish in a shiny box. My relationship with them is no more complex than that.
This is the part that DOES upset me.
You think Apple never made useless rubbish? As we speak I'm typing this on a piece of shit 2019 MB Pro issued by my job. It sucks. Bad design (no ports, no magsafe, no escape key).
* Knowing little about headphones it would take me more than a couple hours to research properly
* I don’t enjoy this research. So unlike most leisure this could be evaluated as a time cost against other activities like working on my business, which translates into a money cost.
* There is a seamlessness when everything is apple. It all works very well together. Having another sort of device makes it the odd duck out and a source of friction even if it is superior on one or two metrics. These headphones will seamlessly switch between multiple devices and work with Siri/Apple music etc
* If there is ever a problem, Apple support is excellent and there are apple stores all over the world. I’m also in the stores reasonably often if I need to buy some other thing, check out a product or need servicing on another device. Apple also offers excellent mail service with premade labels and pickup. Servicing things is work, so this servicing convenience lowers the effective cost.
I won’t personally be buying the overear headphones. I really like my airpods and have tinnitus so I’m not sure I should be using noise cancellation. But hopefully the explanation above gives you some explanation of how buying an apple product can make more sense once you’re already in the ecosystem.
Can't speak for others, but I simply want good quality over ear headphones for sitting at my desk listening to music while coding. I have a set of decent AKG over-ear headphones, but I'm tired of the cable and there are times when ANC would be nice. It would also be nice to have a set for watching TV in the evening.
Not sure why so many people have their panties in a twist about this. Apple makes arguably the best wireless tech in the business. People keep comparing these to high end wired headphones (without ANC) which completely misses the point.
Also, please get me a line on these wireless over ear headphones with good sound and ANC you can pick up for $200.
Edit: I should admit that you are correct that $200 (MSRP, not paid price) won't buy a fair competitor. More appropriate is $350, which is what the XM4/QC35 II cost.
It's good to have a realistic comparison. All these comments comparing it to wires, non ANC headphones, and studio monitor headphones are pretty far off base.
- Sennheiser HD650s
- Schiit DAC
- Schiit Amp
They sound good (price ~$500, more after the DAC/Amp), but the build quality of the HD650s is poor, they feel like plastic crap. The Schiit devices are really nice and I like them.
Sennheiser also differentiates one of their lower models simply by stuffing a piece of foam into the ear cup to make it sound worse and then sells it cheaper than a more expensive model with the same driver. I find this to be a pretty disgraceful way to differentiate.
I think these Apple headphones are probably a better overall product at a cheaper price point. They've improved the beats products and the build quality is better than Sennheiser.
Audio stuff has a lot of snake oil around it and (ironically) a lot of extreme anti-brand tribleness that I'd argue is more irrational than what the parent comments suggests about buying Apple stuff. (Hatred for bose for example).
I think it's more about signaling some sort of in-group status than about the products themselves.
All of that Sennheiser stuff is currently in a cabinet, because it's a hassle to use and Airpods/Beats studio work better day to day.
My usage is 50/50.
Plus, the old apple stuff was hilariously bad on certain sound things; but it’s clear they’ve focused on it, and usually that means it’s fine.
Adding 550 for something that will sit on one's head for hours and hours isn't outlandish in comparison.
I'm in the Pixel 4 / cheapish Sony headphones camp, but for people riding the high tide it doesn't look out of place pricing wise.
These are Apple Beats.
- 20 hours battery life
- wireless
- noise cancellation
- has microphone(s)
Does audio quality matter that much when they have to work with bluetooth where the bandwidth will be halved whenever you have to use the microphone?
https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/blog/what-you-need-to-kno...
And by the way, the Bose and Sony's are considered top of the line for noise canceling wireless headphones. You absolutely lose sound quality from the noise canceling though, so that feature is a trade-off. Airpod Max may well be a contender, though it is not out yet, so it's premature to give it the noise canceling crown.
It's not strictly fair because you asked for 20 hours, and these do 30, so perhaps disqualified.
I use a similar model MPOW at home. They sound great! Not like audiophile perfect great, but good enough. I have a kid who likes to play with everything, so $500 headphones are a big no. I'm not arguing that these are dumb, or overpriced, or anything, I don't really care. But there are decent alternatives in this space already.
$200
https://www.amazon.com/WH-1000XM3-Wireless-canceling-Headset...
$300
https://www.amazon.com/Senheisser-Momentum-Cancelling-Headph...
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B08K3TWS4W/ref=sspa_mw_detail...
$500
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B07RHWDY9N/ref=sspa_mw_detail...
I really really don’t think Apple is going to make better headphones than Sennheiser and Shure, or even Sony. I’m particularly intrigued by the Sony XM4’s battery life of 30 hours, and 10 minute charge that gets it a 5 hour charge. The worst thing about all day use of wireless headphones is that it will just die on you if you have a podcast or music on in the background all day.
"I know nothing about the subject..."
"Not gonna learn about other options..."
"Apple doesn't disappoint me..."
"I'll buy the overpriced stuff because I can afford it..."
This Apple-blinkers comment is telling, and refreshingly honest.
I'm sure there are other brands with that sort of attachment, but none that exemplify the phenomenon more.
Never, ever, buy any Samsung appliances.
I own a few rental properties. The failure rate on any and all Samsung appliances is insane.
Their dryers are the worst. The belt tensioner is a plastic pulley with no bearing at all - it just rides on a sleeve. I've had a few of these go.
The front loader washers use some sort of zinc mounting place that reacts with the stainless steel drum and causes a failure (usually right after the warranty is up).
Just don't do it.
With companies like Samsung, quality doesn't necessarily translate across divisions. Their phones may be okay, but those aren't the same people designing the appliances.
Last year I bought a new house. Any guess what brand of appliances the kitchen came with?
But we've also had a Samsung double oven that had issues in year one.
Huge mistake. Terrible software, hardware bugs, issues with motion interpolation (even basic things like 24fps over 30hz judder reduction), audio sync issues with sound bar, etc.
I'll get an LG soon.
I suspect it's because they are considered fashion items now, people want to show them off. So they spend all they money on finishes and gizmos and screens. Then spend as little as possible on durability.
Personally I think some research suggests it might be the suspension of the drum which should be easy to replace but there is no need for that to ever fail, even after < a year. Sorry for the off topic chat everyone :-/
Most people do not have the time or the inclination to exhaustively survey the market and technology when they want to buy headphones, speakers, laptops, and so on. They use low-effort proxy signals to judge the quality and desirability of products.
Brand is a reasonably reliable proxy and most Apple stuff is pretty good. At the very least, its rarely terrible, which you can't say about many other brands. If you know nothing about headphones but want a decent quality pair without looking into it too deeply, these are a rational option.
Their computers and general design is top shelf as far as I'm concerned, but when it comes to audio I'll put my trust in companies who've been in that specific business for decades.
Apple Beats for example are a bit of a joke to anyone who knows anything about audio (and I don't mean people who spend $$$ on cables).
Edit: Looked it up and apparently Apple's buyout was an April Fools joke some years ago. I've definitely talked about it on HN before and I'm surprised nobody's corrected me until now.
Majority owner of Bose Corporation is MIT, yes, that MIT:
Volumes have been written about them so I'll sum it up by saying that while they make some real overpriced crap at times... it is also true that over the last 50 years ago they have probably advanced home audio reproduction more than any other individual company.
Car audio, as well. Their role in car audio is extremely undereported, because a lot of Bose-engineer car audio is unbranded. But if you're wondering how factory-installed car stereos went from "sounding like clock radio speakers" to "honestly, fine" in the past few decades, Bose is a big part of that answer.
That's the thing, will people who know nothing about audio be disappointed by Apple Beats?
1. Don't distort.
2. Don't otherwise hurt the user (there were cases of earbuds and over-the-ear headphones where the maximum volume would damage the wearer's eardrums, for example).
3. Easily and reliably connect them to the desired device.
4. High quality enough that the product lasts years.
5. Trusted by users that 1-4 apply.
Most audio brands are obscure for the average user. If I ask someone random on the street about Sennheiser they won't know about the brand.
1 is restating what I said. Nobody* actually knows or cares about 2. The rest are, as I said, non-audible parts of the experience.
As long as it gets loud and bassy, people will say it has good quality audio. See also, loudness wars.
* You'll note that Apple's earpods were capable of hearing loss causing levels of volume, yet people loved those things.
Similarly, the HomePod. I have used a Nest Audio (returned), Nest Hub Max (returned), Echo Studio (returned), a Sony GTK-XB7 (really like this one for parties as it gets very loud), and a UE Hyperboom (also really like this one as it has a 24 hour battery). HomePod has the best audio quality. Are there speakers that are better? Oh hell yes; I have a pair of Mackie MR5s that blow the Homepod out of the water. But also, they're five times the size.
I would not put it past Apple to do something great with these. In my mind, they've established themselves as being a top-tier audio equipment manufacturer, alongside Sennheiser, Sony, Grado, Beyerdynamic, etc, and I really think the people who don't believe this just haven't been using their full scope of audio products.
I do think one needs to answer whether $500+ is something one is willing to spend on a piece of audio equipment. Its a ton of money, and audio naturally has a rate of exponential decay of return (you can get 95% of the audio quality of $1000+ headphones with a $100 pair of the right ones). That's a separate question from whether they deliver value previously only seen in $800+ devices. If they can do that, then these are worth it to some people.
Over the past 10 years or so it's the traditional hifi that's become the niche, a bit depressing.
No it's not. Not in this era of marketers, influencers, social media and fake news.
I'm not sure why Apple receives this kind of contempt for having built a brand people trust for valid reasons (i.e., "I've had a consistently good experience trusting this brand"), going by the comment that's gotten so many bothered here.
Part of the value of the Apple brand is that people will pay some fraction of that cost to avoid that search while also being sure that their product actually works.
I recently bought a car. I spent about a year deliberating over it, picking the right market segment, picking the right model, picking the right financing option.
Last week I bought a microwave. I just walked into the store, looked at what they had on the shelf, and picked a Panasonic one that was around the right size I was looking for. I didn't even look at the features, I just looked at 'Panasonic.'
I suspect Panasonic hasn't added any new features to their microwaves in the last decade anyways
The commenter is simply saying that they can afford the price and that they trust Apple's brand not to disappoint them based on previous experience.
That seems fair enough to me.
Personally, I wouldn't buy these because I don't like the styling. I'm also moving towards products made by OEMs rather than outsourced manufacturing as I'm not too price sensitive. i.e. I'm not in the target market segment.
If I could get over all that I'm sure these would be good enough.
I wish Apple had a competitor in the US. Google competes with software and phones, but is losing the phone battle hard. Microsoft puts out an operating system that is too busy making sure legacy software from 1995 still runs. All (most) of the hardware "competitors" run Windows and can't compete on the performance side. We need a company that produces their own hardware and operating system that competes with Apple, I think.
Here is a review: https://thatgeoguy.ca/blog/2020/12/06/Librem-5-Evergreen-vs-...
TLDR: If you want to join a community of people who are interested in working on a competitor, buy one of these, or a pinephone.
I strongly encourage people to buy these and contribute, but don’t expect them to work as a daily driver.
"I know nothing of OP's set of priorities..."
"Not going to enquire after them, just make blind judgements of them compared to mine..."
"I'll take OP's probably hyperbolic label of overpriced at face value, and criticize them for making a purchase they project to cost them only an extra $3.33/month ..."
This elitist take is telling, though not really refreshing.
I'm sure there are mindsets other than that of anti-Apple zealots, but none that exemplify the phenomenon more.
I'm sure there are other brands with that sort of
attachment, but none that exemplify the phenomenon more.
Do you research evvvvvvvvvvvvvverything you buy? Toothpaste? Underwear? Toothpicks?
Ever order from Amazon even though something costs slightly more because you're not sure if the other retailer is trustworthy and you don't feel like spending an hour figuring out if Bob's Wholesale Toothpick Emporium is a site you can trust?
I don't know about you, but my life is a combination of things I have obsessively researched and stuff where I just sort of relied on the brand name. When I need a pair of pants I usually just buy Levis or something because they'll be fine. I've only got so many hours in my life and I don't really feel like becoming a... pants expert.
Also, Ferrari don’t make scissors. To presume I have knowledge of something that doesn’t exist, is confabulation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confabulation
Second, I know a thing or two about audio. I saw an earlier comment mentioning that these use "plastic" drivers, as a sign that they are cheap. Generally speaking, the greatest speakers in the world use plastic or paper material for the cones in their drivers. (Google SEAS or Scan-Speak drivers for some examples). A minority of speakers use aluminum or other lightweight metals instead, but generally it is not preferred.
Third, most of the comments on this article are comparing them to traditional, passive headphones in the ~$500 range. These are active headphones with onboard DSP. The physical construction of a speaker matters much less when you can simply shape the response via DSP. If you've ever listened to Bose QC headphones with and without the onboard electronics engaged, you know there's a night and day difference and in addition to the noise cancellation, that difference is due to DSP EQ'ing of the headphone's output.
Fourth, Apple has a solid track record when it comes to audio engineering. They've had some misses, but their laptops, phones, tablets, and other devices tend to measure very well[1][2] in the audio department. So trusting Apple to "do the right thing" with an audio product (if perhaps not at a desirable price) is a reasonable proposition.
_____
[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Aaudiosciencereview.co...
Apple doesn't shit on their own brand for a quick dollar. The HN reader might argue nuance, but their consumer base is the proof.
There is nothing wrong with people having a bit of brand loyalty. It's one of a thousand shortcuts our brains take a day in making decisions.
Nobody has time to exhaustively research every product they buy, and most people don’t have the inclination. Therefore when they find a company that meets their needs reliably, they tend to keep buying from them unless there is a problem.
This is a normal feature of business. Every business tries to satisfy their customers in this way.
If there is something special about Apple, it is that they have a lot of satisfied customers.
I never turn it on, I use my TV speakers. Even with cinematic shows I find they mix the dynamic range so high that it's insufferably loud when something exciting happens, and then I can't hear anyone talk for the rest of the show. I'm constantly changing the volume.
I mean, we all know apple fan-bois are vividly after the apple logo, but come on, there's still the majority of sensible people who put actual value higher than the show-off effect.
YES. People are vain. News at 11.
Stop betting against vanity.
I did notice the Apple website does not list the Frequency Response specs.
I totally get how much engineering goes into the Apple products. There's also something beautiful about a completely passive headphone using a hundred year old connector technology made by a 67 year old company with a BIFL philosophy that is repairable and will never go obsolete. White and seamless is not the only kind of cool.
https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-over-ear-hea...
~ 5 minutes of reading time and done.
EDIT: would love to continue this conversation with those who replied to me but HN has decided I am "posting too fast" (my last post was an hour ago?) so... shrug.
That categorically sounds like not wanting to read any such articles. I highly doubt the barrier is to do with Google skills or finding them in the first place. GP just doesn’t want to. Not to mention most people will not feel they have sufficiently researched a topic by reading the first piece they see.
First of all, you have to trust that the reviewer is truthful (this case, NY Times, might be given a pass). So you either check a bunch of reviews and frequently come out more confused than going in, even as someone who's knowledgeable about the subject or you just buy something from a brand you already trust.
Secondly, the problem with reviews is that they're done by specialists. To give you an example for movies. I've watched some of the movies which are top rated by experts. Frequently I've found that I just don't like them. Too artsy. You know what they say about specialists: they know more and more about less and less until they know everything about nothing. At some point specialists basically turn into aliens. Their tastes stop intersecting with those of the average J. Doe.
In many cases you just want a brain-dead solution to a problem because you're using your neurons for something else. And one of the safest brain-dead solutions is to go with a brand you already trust. Another one is to go with the crowd. Apple is kind of both.
And I say this as someone that generally avoids Apple products :-)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16443213
> We rate limit accounts when they post too many low-quality comments too quickly and/or get involved in flamewars.
I've had a huge list of problems with it:
- The noise cancellation sets itself to maximum power every time you put it on and there's no way to completely turn off noise cancellation when using a computer; here's a thread of people complaining about it: https://community.bose.com/t5/Around-On-Ear-Headphones/NC-70...
- The only way to use it with no noise cancellation is to pair it with your phone, install the Bose app (there are three, make sure you use the right one), open the Bose app, find the settings which are not easy to find, and turn it off, and repeat this process EVERY TIME you use the headphones (there's plenty of lag in every step in this process, of course)
- It requires a Bluetooth connection to use the mic (the cable only supports speakers), which means I can't use it in Boot Camp because Boot Camp Bluetooth is currently broken
- It mispronounces my name every time I put it on, with no way to fix it, which gets very aggravating
- There's sometimes some weird static noise when connected to my Android phone, and they also automatically reconnect to my phone every time I turn it on, even after I manually disconnect it every time (my AirPods Pro don't do this so it's not just a problem all headphones share)
It's otherwise pretty good, but these flaws are really frustrating considering how much I paid for it.
The reason people are willing to pay more for Apple is because Apple products usually don't have problems like these.
Always trying to get the best for the smallest possible price starts to drain you. You get to a point where you say "I trust them and I can afford it" and that is ok. I wish I could do that.
So true. I've been doing this lately, and have realized how mentally draining it really is to conduct exhaustive research to maximize the value/price you get for a product. Not to mention the time spent easily runs into the hundreds of dollars worth.
For enthusiasts it can be a joy to research a product. For example audiophiles with headphones. But for average consumers like me, just going with the expensive but safe option is on average a really good heuristic.
But there's a fatal flaw. These glorious masterpieces that fit your body perfectly come with a horrific subatomic nanotechnology called 1/8" jack. And while all phones are thicker than that, one cannot simply set that example for children.
Please think of the children.
Also Alclair audio makes some dank shit for half the price. They'd love your business.
Can you share URLs to some recommended vendors of the products you're talking about?
Do not buy headphones until you’ve discussed your product choice with them. You may find that they can be fit correctly but will have a huge unsightly bulge outside the ear canal. They will usually have Opinions, as it’s their job. Know your price range.
There’s no other way to do it but to go somewhere in person and have a cup of liquid goo poured into each of your ears by a trained professional. (Do not try this at home, etc.) They will send the molds off to be fit into your earphones, which either you’ll buy new from them or turn over to the audiologist at impressions time.
You can also use the mold to produce musician’s earplugs that are transparent and have swappable filters that have different dB reductions. I use my -9dB pair for parties so I can hear better.
I assume they keep the mold on file for a little while, in case of fit issues or whatever, but it’s been a decade since I last went so I don’t imagine they still have it. (Who knows, though!)
When you have them in hand, turn your volume way down and be very, very careful with them. You are sticking these deeper into your ear than headphones have ever gone before. You can go deaf very rapidly. If your phone has a volume limit setting, enable it and turn it the lowest point (75dB on iPhone). If you’re constantly wishing it was louder after a day or two, raise it 5dB and wait a bit longer. The audiologist will make scary comments about risk of hearing damage, and give you a hearing test to see how you’re doing beforehand. Listen to them. It’s deadly serious stuff.
Most importantly, rather than using speakers like headphones, they use a technology called balanced armature drivers which have incredible properties.
An example manufacturer is https://alclair.com I have two sets of theirs, one for master studio tracks, and another for live music that's more geared for guitar and bass playing.
They block out nearly all outside noise, some up to 28db of protection, which is wonderful.
I love the endless comparisons to products which don't actually compete with these or even the AirPods. If you are looking at AirPods Max, your tampon headphones aren't remotely in the running for no other reason than they are wired. That's without even looking at the other features of the headset.
Good bluetooth headphones finally have completely destroyed my willingness to wrestle with cables.
Obviously the AirPods Max aren't coming on any bike rides either, but when I'm at my desk I prefer over ear headphones or speakers. (But I'm probably not buying the Max either)
As I mention above, wires are a no-go for me at this point. Both while coding at my desk (where I would use something like the Max) and while out and about riding my bike, they are too big of a headache.
I don't judge Apple. They are free to price what they want and people can buy what they want, but the pricing for this product seems expensive.
For 149 USD more, you can get the latest 256 GB, M1 based Mac Mini.
For 50 USD More, you can get a new iPad Air.
For 149 USD More, you can get an iPhone 12
These headphones are really expensive.
Netflix on Mac with Spatial audio with nothing inside my ear would be worth $549 to me.
I’d wait for the second or third before I’d consider investing into this.
The price point is ridiculous but the Bose go for like $350? so I can see it I guess. Will have to wait till reviews. For me on quality to buy they would have to compete the entry level prosumer stuff HD-650 etc. But they are closed back, active noise canceling so it is a completely other market that I don't even have headphones in.
For walking on the street or in a plane I am into chi-fi IEMs that are like $35 and compete with $500 stuff and just block out the sound through isolation.
This is a bit confusing, why would you need an ultralow power state for your headphones? Is this just so you don't have to turn them on and off? It seems less convenient to put them in and out of a bag than to just turn them off (and preferably fold them) when you're not using them if you need to stretch the battery life.
I agree though that the case doesn't seem like the best way to accomplish it. Put a switch on them, or allow them to fold in such a way that the folding/unfolding can power on the device.
I expect Apple wants to market these to people looking for fancier Beats.
1. You are assuming these don't offer a better experience than Sennheisers et al. and that the only reason they are more expensive is "because Apple". Maybe true, but also hard to justify contextually given Apple just released the best bang-for-your-buck laptop on the market.
2. The audio market is pretty competitive. If Sennheisers up their prices without improving anything, someone else (with equivalent quality) will come along at Sennheiser's old price point. I know I just bought some $50 noice-cancelling headphones that work for my purposes (and have USB-C fast charging).
I bought a pair of Sony WH-1000XM4s on sale a month or two ago in large part for the 30-hour battery life (yes I could use wired headphones and have an infinite-hour runtime; I have a very nice pair of Sennheisers for that. I don't always want to).
people are bad at understanding when a product wasn’t made for them.
Edit: After AppleCare, optional 3.5mm cable, and tax, it comes out to just over $700 USD.
See's price: Nope... I'll stick with what I've got for now.
Those are some of the most expensive headphones I've ever seen and I thought Bose's QC3's at $350 were overpriced. This kicks it up a notch further. I'll be curious what the reviews show for sure, but too rich for my blood.
You should hang around head-fi sometime if you think these are expensive...
If it's just the ear pads, those can be replaced for like $20.
Interestingly, it looks like the usual Bose folding method, just stopped halfway through.
Reflecting on your comment made me realize I'm never going to be driving a fancy car, I feel like I've lost something today.
The questions will be sound quality. A lot of people on here are already stating that they don't know why anyone would buy this product when they can get better sounding products for a similar price. I don't know how anyone can know how good these sound yet. I personally assume these will sound quite good as Apple has made a number of nice sounding products over the years. With that being said, at $550 it is competing with audiophile grade headphones so it needs to at least be roughly in that class.
If it is even roughly in the ballpark of other $500 headphones it is going to be a no-brainer for a lot of people due to the integration with the Apple ecosystem and the stylishness of the build.
They quietly released a lightning to 3.5mm audio jack cable today to go with these, for use with legacy gear. It's $35 and is somewhat over-engineered (allows bi-directional usage, containing both an ADC and a DAC).
I strongly suspect a lightning-to-lightning connection (e.g., headphones to iPhone) would be full duplex though.
I'm fairly confident I've reached my own personal peak for Apple pricing. As a spectator I've no doubt these will sell massive numbers but I'm curious to learn what the market will bear for Apple's products.
For some reason the Bluetooth consortium was years behind the ball in standardizing a high quality bidirectional audio transport, versus the phone-quality "Hands Free Profile" and "Headset" Profile using 90s era codecs (uni-directional is fine since it uses a higher quality "Advanced Audio Distribution" profile).
The consortium launched Bluetooth Low Energy audio last year (or maybe this year?), but I'm not sure if it's actually shipping in anything yet.
An update to that spec would be much appreciated.
My theory is the AirPods start getting ready for syncing as soon as you open the case/detects you touching them, while the Beats X had a traditional on button and were entirely unimpressive to me.
(I was very surprised the price can vary that widely, actually. On Sony's US page they're $279, while in the EU they're €380 which is about $460.)
any idea what's going on there and/or if apple would solve this somehow with airpods max?
I’m sure the AirPods will be more convenient in some ways, but as I’ll be using them almost entirely inside the house, I’m willing to forego that considering the huge price difference. I much prefer the visual style of the Sonys too; not that that matters all that much.
I’m interested to see reviews of the AirPods to see what they’re like on the sound quality front though.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sales_taxes_in_the_United_Stat...
[1] https://www.aarp.org/money/taxes/info-2020/state-sales-tax-r...
If Apple's headphones have high audio quality and a seamless experience across multiple devices and cool features prepping the way for VR/AR (the way other comments have suggested) then I'd buy a pair.
This is tinfoil hat stuff. What are you expecting to happen?
I mean, perhaps if Facebook made a pair of headphones would you accept that it's not quite tinfoil hat stuff to be interested in user privacy? We should never trust any centralized authority or corporation with data if we can help it.
“One touch set up” is just not a feature anywhere on my Venn Diagram of excitement.
/s-sortof.
From a company that priced a monitor stand at $1000, this is at least more functional. But for most people, a pair of $30 headphones will be just as good, albeit without the status symbol element.
And my reply was mainly to highlight the parent comment of > The world is getting wealthier. Money is getting cheaper. We've just printed trillions of dollars this year to keep the good times rolling baby
does not actually reflect the reality of most workers; who's purchase power has only decreased.
The AirPods Max is a headphone.
AirPods Max are headphones.
I saw two AirPods Maxes.
With regular AirPods, they work individually. You don't have to use both. So it's helpful to think in terms of each one being its own thing, even though they're paired.
Not the case here.
I'd imagine Schiller would say that AirPods Max is both singular and plural, given this tweet on iPad Pro: https://twitter.com/pschiller/status/725791354769399808
I'd add that over-the-ear (so, one item) "headphones" have a similar issue as AirPods Max. I'd probably call two of these products "two pairs of AirPods Max." (Well, actually I'd probably just say 'two pairs of headphones' but that's a dodge.)
I know naming things is hard, but I think they’ve really painted themselves into a corner here, so to speak.
AirPods is the product line name. Max is the model. So you have AirPods, AirPods Pro, and AirPods Max. If you needed to buy 10 of these you would say your were buying 10 pairs of AirPods, AirPods Pros, or AirPods Maxes.
Honestly though, it's English we're dealing with, so there are more exceptions than rules, anyway. Muddy the waters further with proper nouns and branding considerations and basically the only people who can tell you what is "right" would be Apple's marketing dept.
AirPods Max are headphones.
>I saw two AirPods Maxes
It is a compound noun, the base word gets pluralized, so it would still be Airpods Max. Like the plural of cup of tea is cups of tea, or sergeants major, brothers-in-law, courts martial, passersby. Airpods would be the base word.
Soon we will all see many pairs of AirPods Max.
That can make a mass-ive difference in sense of realism for lows. Perhaps they think the Adaptive EQ makes up for it.
I’ve been disappointed in headphones that aren’t 50mm for electronica, jazz, pop, movies, and gaming, fine with 40mm for classical, choral, and television.
I love music. The convince (and lack of guilt over breaking numerous $10 pairs) wins out, and I don't notice enough for it to matter.
I was patiently waiting for these. I bought (and loved) the original AirPods. I really wanted noise cancellation for flights, but the AirPods Pro hurt my ears no matter what I tried. I waited through each Apple "one more thing," hoping these would surface. I eventually went with Sony's WH-1000XM4s. The Bluetooth is a little slow, but they're pretty stellar otherwise.
Update: I see a mention of the lightning connector (for charging) at https://www.apple.com/airpods-max/specs/ . I wonder if lightning to mini jack adapter would work with this product.
Not even standard bluetooth.
These are beautifully designed and no doubt they will pair seamlessly with other Apple devices, but that price tag seems...audacious to put it nicely.
Not sure how that factors into their Beats strategy though, but prices would basically be converging at that point.
https://www.apple.com/newsroom/images/product/airpods/standa...
But I'd never want to carry my headphones in my hand. When not in use, when I'm out (say I'm about to check-out at the grocery store and don't want to be rude), they hang on my neck. I'm not going to want to carry around an empty carrying case at the same time that I'm using my device so that I can neatly put it away when NOT in use. Maybe overnight, if there's some benefit?
I suppose if they were in a suitcase, it could prevent damage? But airports are one of the main places I love over-the-ear headphones, so they wouldn't be in my bag. Also, if in a bag, you wouldn't want the carrying strap because it just adds bulk.
I'm very happy with my Sony WH-1000XM4 that are about $200 cheaper.
I'm sure they work well but I don't see them one-upping airpods. Airpods have a key feature in that they can be put in one's pocket or purse.
I'm not sure I buy airpods are a status symbol either in most people's eyes either. I like airpods, but does anyone really make a judgement based on choice of earbud? I doubt it.
I wasn't a fan of the Airpod aesthetic either, but they made a bit of sense, because they seemed like a reasonable evolution from 15 years of marketing around their iPod/iPhone headphone cables.
Gaming latency is true though - when I use Bluetooth headphones on my TV, Game Mode gets automatically disabled.
I use cans for video calls primarily, with listening second. Personal favourite is the original Sony MDR-1000X - they just work, and work anywhere, and have a cable if the battery dies. ANC is good enough. Sound quality is good enough. I'll buy a newer model when they cease to function.
I also have a pair of PowerBeats Pro, and they are mediocre. Left only changes half the time. Audio quality middling. Ignoring the lack of ANC, they weren't worth the expense and poor value. It's left me with the impression that Apple/Beats haven't got a clue about sound reproduction.
I also use Audio-Technica ATH-50 headphones, but rarely because no mic. Clear but too sterile except as studio monitors.
Also a set of Y50s that were inexpensive but served well for lightweight on the go sound/voice. Better than the Beats that came after them.
Price is not a good indicator when so much is spent on marketing.
I doubt anyone will buy any of the Apple audio products specifically for non-ecosystem devices. My guess is more folks decide to leave the ecosystem and end up using them elsewhere down the road.
Plus you get the virtue signalling of being "rich"
It works fairly well, but every time a new device connects the headphones say loudly into your ear
"BLUETOOTH. DEVICE. TWO. CONNECTED."
... over whatever you were listening to.
And you can't turn that feature off or replace it with a simple tone.
Emperors clothes. The audio is already anchored to the device, since the device emits the audio. And the device is (presumably) anchored to the wearers head by friction. so...
The headphones themselves are always referred to in the copy AirPods Max, never as "a device".
The headphones are unusable without a source, referred to in every single place in as "a device".
I get making the mistake, but there's no need to double down when someone points out you've misread.
If they cost $550 and last 1-2 years, that’s quite different from them costing $550 and lasting 3-5+ years.
Edit: Relevant, AirPods Max Ear Cushions are attached magnetically, and replacements will cost $70.
I'm not sure I want this? What does this actually mean?
Could be something Apple is testing and "pre-staging" for the future though. VR/AR?
No idea why you'd create it otherwise.
It’s cool but I’m not sure why it exists.
This actively makes it seem like the sound is coming from a certain place, even though you have headphones on.
It's a well executed feature with a extremely limited scope/use case. I would not base headphone purchasing decisions on its availability.
vs surround sound:
> able to create the sensation of sound coming from any horizontal direction
Having been using spatial audio for a few days, the effect is surround sound. What’s clever is it works regardless of where your device is
Also used for surround sound, so if you turn your head, the "center channel" still is focused on the screen, and surround sound is where it would be if there were actual speakers behind you.
The same way when you’re outside and you hear a car, and you turn away from the car the sound dampens. The same will be true of music played through these headphones.
Note that the Airpods don't actually know where your device is located. It simply sets a "base orientation" when the sound is started. This base orientation is updated when you keep your head in a new position for a longer time ("resetting" the approximated position of your device).
The emulation is convincing and well executed, but it is still just a gimmick that only really works when playing back Dolby Atmos movies.
As to "why", people might actually prefer the (emulated) experience of a point sound source, as it could closer resemble talking to someone physically present (calls) or listening to a live performance.
And while it's not a benefit this year for me, I also like them on flights.
Nope.
I'll never buy an 'un-repairable' headset for $549.
What other headphones are repairable at that price point?
usually because it’s for industry professionals who thrash their gear pretty hard.
Most of my headsets have detachable XLR cables, and some of them have replaceable ear cushions too.
Last week I took the ear cushions off my AKG Q701 (5 years old?), put them through the washing machine, and they came out great.
My first gen MacBook Air's display (the LED backlight to be precise) broke down due to coffee spill. Took it to Apple store, the estimated repair price was almost twice the original purchase price MacBook Air. I didn't know what to say!
I'd say it's more about Apple moving from a yearly/bi-yearly iPhone renewal goal to a 2-3 years calendar, with now lucrative gadgets to buy in between. Fine by me: just get the long lasting core products and then pick what you want/need.
They have managed to turn a tech company in to a luxury fashion company. That is every entrepreneur's wet dream. You keep getting away with customers like a bandit and people will still happily buy it. Just look at the people commenting in this thread where people are honestly admitting to paying a $200 markup just because it is Apple and they "trust" them, for a product they don't even know if they need.
Amazing, to be able to achieve something like this is really wow...
Interestingly, I can't find any information on how much the batteries could last. This is basically the lifetime of your AirPods Max since (I guess) you won't be able to change the batteries.
+: also, these doesn't replace the AirPods but complement them. So it's more like $250+550 now.
They'll still end up in a landfill somewhere. The batteries aren't replaceable, which makes them purely consumable with a 2-3 years lifespan at best (tiny ass batteries + heavy usage = multiple cycle a day).
Spending $549 on a battery powered gadget which will cycle several times a week and for which you can't get a battery replacement is such a weird move to me. This is peak planned obsolescence, battery powered + non serviceable should be an instant red flag to anyone.
For comparison, my dt770 and shure se215 are going on their 6th years with no sign of ageing whatsoever.
I also found the Sony privacy policy on the headphones to be lackluster. If the Apple headphones are more privacy conscious and also make this experience across devices as seamless as they're promising, I'll pay for them.
I have Sennheisers. Should I write about their up- and down-sides too? What about Bowers and Wilkinsons owners? What about Bose owners? I think we all know that Apple comes nowhere new the quality of these brands. Could we please focus on the actual topic of the post here?
I am a Bowers and Wilkins user and have the same pain points as you, it's a recurring and daily issue that I'll listen to audio from a home based device (laptop, iPad) and then have to unpair/re-pair to my phone when I leave the house.
As a seamless wireless experience it falls short as it would be faster to have a wired set and simply plug it in to the device.
Same again when I come home and want to switch back. Apple cleanly solves this.
Whether that is worth a £200 premium on top of what I paid for my current cans is debatable, however if they can match or outperform the current NC family (PX, Bose QC, Sony MX4) I will be seriously considering them as my next pair
So this is first gen and is likely going to see a ton of improvement. I would:
1) drop the crown, just like on the Watch it will likely lead to accidental changes of volume and is kinda gimicky 2) replace metal with light solid plastic
Next gen should tought “Half of the weight of previous generated for unprecendeted comfort”
If these fit my head and I can wear them for 12 hours straight, they may be worth the money. I'd pay $550 for that.
However, this is Apple. Which means it is likely they will find some clever way of making these headphones obsolete. Or they will break in some unfixable, or expensive to repair, way.
I think I'll pass.
It's Apple -- they'll keep iterating on it, come out with a better model at the same price at right around the same time the battery wear in your current model will make you choose between an expensive battery replacement or just getting the new version.
That's no bueno. Are we to assume this only works with apple devices?
E.G. when I open GarageBand, and hit a piano key - is there still a bloody whole second delay before I hear it in my ‘AirPods Pro’ with a ‘custom’ W1 chip on a device supposedly made for creatives?
No, really. For creators, this might be the worst value proposition I’ve ever seen. $550 USD for headphones that can’t operate without latency.
If it wasn’t for the wheels or the stand on the Mac Pro, I would say this is the worst value proposition I’ve seen, period.
I’ve seen mock-ups of an iPhone 13 without a headphone jack. Will they just stop offering GarageBand, or any other music creation apps?
Apple’s hit a new low. For real.
It's honestly just embarrassing.
According to Apple Bloggers creatives are a small market and really Apple is about serving the 99% not you and the Pro doesn't really mean for Professionals and all the other arguments that get wheeled out when this stuff starts to fall short.
That is a problem. That it is continually brought up to the point that you're bringing it up in advance in attempt to dismiss it means it's so much of a problem that it shouldn't be dismissed.
The branding is just wrong. No, it's not an 'iPad Pro', if I can't run 'Logic Pro', Apple's own 'Pro' software on it. It's not a 'MacBook Pro', if it has the same goddamn SOC as the MacBook Air. (You can order an Air with the identical 8-core processor as the Pro)
A consumer could easily make the mistake of buying an iPad Pro, reasonably thinking it could run Logic Pro, only to find out that it can't.
That you can't get low bitrate audio decoded in less than 300ms less than a metre away is absolutely absurd above taken into consideration.
I'd be alright with 200ms. That they prioritized going wireless so, so intensely, and completely; fully ignored this issue is absolute tripe.
These are about as useful as those $900 Mac Pro wheels that have no lock and thusly are only even effective if you have a flat floor.
Similarly, these headphones only work if you want to listen to audio - for any creative use whatsoever any given pair of headphones is better.
I just don't get Apple anymore.
Personally i think it's the BT standard though as i have been looking far and wide for actual good "live performance" headphones.
If anyone knows why Bluetooth is so horridly bad i'm all ears, my previous post taken into consideration where i can literally stream 10MBps video with 16ms latency including decoding over a normal WiFi router.
And while 460 Comments are shitting on its Pricing.
Shipping time is 12 Weeks for Green, 10 Weeks for Blue, and 8 Weeks for other colours. This is looking like the original AirPod launch where supply wont catch up to demand for quite some time. They are selling like hotcakes.
Yes, it is expensive, but it also has 9 Microphones, 9 Sensors and two H1 Chip. So it is more expensive than a B&W PX7, it certainly does offer a lot more functions.
Cant wait to see the reviews.
I can't really speak to the price (like others in the thread) until I hear them. It's possible they're $1000 headphones for <$600, much like how insanely high-quality the HomePod is for its price. It's also possible they're just some Beats in a metal case. Impossible to tell without actually using them.
Looking forward to trying a pair.
Because apparently just “turning them off” is too normal I guess?
If I don't like them I'll just return it. The price is high but I am happy to pay for it - if I can make use of them 3+ hours per day while working on my computer - and Apple knows that!
$500 is just silly... I just need noise, anger, maybe little a music.
"Give me convenience or give me death" once said a wise man...
I thought the same thing - but I guess Apple is exceptional.
It would be nice for those that have lower-latency needs.
> Simply charge via Lightning connector.
Do people really want to spend this much on something with a non-user-replaceable battery and with no analog input, no way to avoid the limitations of Bluetooth?
Yeah, I get it, it's a fashion accessory not an audio product.
Spoiler alert: It was not fine.
It's a bit like wheels on luggage... you don't think you need them until you have one, then you never want anything else.
Just to be clear though, I actually use my wired headphones way more... but that's because they're very very good and driven by a good dedicated amp.
Portable is a whole different ballgame.
So, 6 of one, half a dozen of another.
I haven't pulled out my wired headphones in a long time, wireless is just so nice.
Just one example, wireless with noise cancelling means I can listen to a podcast while cooking with the exhaust fan on high, while fiddling with my phone to check up on the recipe, without worrying about the cord.
My AirPods are one of the few things that if I were to lose I'd buy again immediately.
I still love wired headphones too, especially because I never have to think about charging. I run the wire under my hoodie so there’s no issues with it snagging.
In arm's reach I have three different headphones: One is wired XLR, two is dual wireless and 3.5mm wired, three is wireless only. They have all been used in the past 24 hours.
Meet your needs however you see fit, and once you're happy, be happy! Others will choose differently. They shouldn't pressure you about it, and I certainly don't intend to either.
When running, climbing or just doing chores around the house, wireless headphones really make it easier to not get them yanked out of your head.
If your use cases don't run into any limitations with a 3.5mm cabled headphone then you certainly shouldn't pay the extra money to be able to freely move your head/body around. For me I am very happy to pay for that as it has improved my experience dramatically.
This is something I want standardized across headsets so multiple vendors can add support. Imagine spatially aware zoom calls, being able to turn towards or lean it to someone's voice.
I love high quality audio, but I'd pay $550 for a better video conferencing experience.
As an aside, I wonder what the latency is on these? Many BT headsets can have a 200+ms latency, which contributes to how horrible video calls are.
filters:
- Brand: Apple
- Seller: Amazon.com
- Availability: Include Out of Stock
Amazon search with filters: https://amzn.to/3mTRvWu
OG google search: https://www.google.com/search?q=%22airpods+pro+max%22+site%3...
Bluetooth has gotten pretty good recently but I still have to tap and click a lot to switch my Sony headphones from my phone to my computer and back.
You simply pause the music on the computer, and play something on the phone and it just works. It's quite something.
My partner has new WH-XB900Ns and they do not seem to suffer this issue but will only play output from one device at a time.
I would be willing to pay a premium for headphones that could maintain active connections between multiple devices simultaneously and mux the audio into a unified stream.
Wait, can these only be used on Apple devices? Or is there a Bluetooth fallback. I guess to spend so much you’d be a little crazy to just want a vanilla Bluetooth experience.
> AirPods Max can be used as Bluetooth headphones with Apple devices using earlier software and with non-Apple devices, but functionality is limited.
Which is the same thing Apple says for the "basic" AirPods FWIW: https://www.apple.com/airpods-2nd-generation/specs/#footnote...
All the airpod pros (ear buds) during the 1st year of manufacturing suffers from a rattle issue that develop over a short period of time. Many people have warrantied 3-4 pairs of these.
I love my both my AirPods and XM3, they're completely different headphones with completely different uses cases. They're both fantastic at what they do. There is no way these are $300 better than my XM3s however.
When Optimus ordered Maximus to "Sacrifice to save your life; if not I shall make you die in torment," Maximus answered, "I have always wished it; it is in order to pass out of this short and miserable life to the life eternal that I have declared my faith." [wikipedia]
Those rumors have been there for the past 5 years
Apple confirms AirPods Max ear cushions will be sold separately, $69 “each”
https://appletrack.org/apple-confirms-airpods-max-ear-cushio...
As a road cyclist, there's a 100% parallel here to Specialized S-Works bike frames.
However if they can really deliver on quality, battery life and comfort for me $549 is worth it now days with WFH and using my AirPods constantly.
What would be the usable lifetime on these? Can the batteries be replaced?
Oh man, wait til they hear about "off", it's gonna revolutionize the industry
Instead of, you know, a power button.
Also this one falls under using lighting, flip of a coin
Mass adoption of Spatial Audio may spark new startup ideas, for example.
I will keep them for the desk and my existing standard AirPods for outside.
I guess I have different taste as I do not see anything stunning in this design.
This isn’t marketed at audiophiles though. This is marketed at middle management and execs who have been saving their restaurant money throughout COVID and want to conspicuously flout their success on Zoom calls.
These are not designed for music. They’re designed for Zoom.
Surely not ALL of them.
I wonder if they'll end up sounding like beats?
AirPods look like flimsy plastic stuff. For portable heapdhones they are not water resistant, do not fold and not even come with hard case. And given apple, there will be no spare parts and manuals.
Get Sony, much better value.
I've replaced the pads twice, at a cost of about $10 each time.
I love that they include an insert telling you exactly how to take the entire headphone apart - I don't think I've owned a pair like that before.
But, I broke out my B&O H6s to do an A/B test after giving them to her, and I think it was a mistake? The H6s are of course in the next higher price price bracket, but the 7506s did not compare musically to them at all.
As much as I appreciate the repairability of the 7506s, I think would recommend something a bit more musical as a daily driver.
The B&O adds a bass boost from 20-50Hz, and then an upward curve from 400Hz up to 3.5KHz, then a bigger bump from 6.5KHz and up.
From that, I expect you found the B&O to bring a deeper thumping bass and a sparklier sound to cymbals. It's almost certainly more exciting than the Sony.
https://eldeforma.com/2020/01/27/airpods-alternativos-mas-ba...
tl;dr – you have multiple mics which allow you to improve sound quality (via a stronger signal from where you want it) + filter out frequencies that you don't want (i.e. background noise), without needing to do audio processing at a software level (though I'm sure Apple does that too).
If I had a component in house that already fit the spec, then I 'd consider that before sourcing a new component or designing a new one.
Marketers and influencers out in full force.
They're much pricier than I have anticipated. It doesn't look like I'm going to buy one any time soon. However, this "proves" nothing more than what we already knew: Apple sells expensive products that one can expect to work (close to) flawlessly for a long period of time, and a lot of people like that.
Just like whenever they call any minor upgrade "revolutionary"
The AirPods Max are not the Pro Max. We have AirPods, AirPods Pro, and AirPods Max.
I expect to see AirPods Pro Max sometime next year and I wouldn't be surprised if they come in somewhere around $1000.
Ow.
It is Apple, after all...
You mean a headphone that doesn't support lossless audio? Lol!
People still don't get this thing. Its simple : Big Corporations are taking big profit by using China as manufacturing, China is not a democracy, China is not free market economy, buying products completely made abroad is killing off a middle class and financing oppressive regime of CCP. Big companies have enough cash to relocate manufacturing in democratic countries.
As a consumer, you can search for products that are made locally or with minimum Chinese parts.
There’s a really interesting Netflix documentary American Factory that depicts one particular example, and puts on display a lot of the complicated factors you’re talking about. But the interesting thing is after like 2 years of training and tweaking processes, the American location of this auto glass factory just can’t for the life of them produce a product as high quality as the Chinese factory.
See also: most other Apple products, for more examples of high quality things manufactured in China.
Also, call me crazy but why should I care about random Midwestern Americans any more than random Chinese people I’ve never met? Globalization has raised an astounding number of people in China out of poverty in the past 20 years which is an amazing feat.
Not wanting to support the country because of the governments human rights abuses is totally fair, but you seem to be mixing that in as just one reason among all the other protectionist rhetoric.
Lastly, to pretend that companies are giant infinite pools of money that are choosing to hold out on everyone is just silly. If they were to manufacture things in more expensive places, then you’d be looking at $700 headphones instead of $550. If you’d rather support other companies, then great, do that! That’s the beauty of having so many choices.
And to be more pro consumer choice, here you can see competitive products with prices: https://heavy.com/tech/best-high-end-headphones/
One is for sitting alone in a quiet room listening to music, the other is for travel, work, commuting, etc. in noisy environments where you still want decent sound quality.
The only real alternatives to these new Airpods are things like the Bose QC3 and similar Sony model, and based on the pricing I would say Apple is confident theirs sound significantly better.
Please don't.
I live in a home in the suburbs. I do not wear audiophile headphones in public.
I bought a Schitt Bifrost/Valhalla and Grado PS1000e combo 8 years ago. I use them every day with my Macbook Pro. Except for that year that High Sierra broke all USB audio stuff, it has been great with my Mac.
I use Airpods and Airpods Pro for Apple bluetooth benefits. They are great.
The over-the-head hardware, wire, etc: $40.
Usability, care for minor conveniences, thorough support in the rest of Apple products: $529.
Some other companies tried to emulate this, with limited success. It's not just a problem of designing and executing (which are real large problems), but also a problem of forming a large base of devoted fans, and a reality-distorting field™ to keep them devoted.
The latter cannot be done with smoke and mirrors, only with solid design and engineering, plus the right elitist-but-accessible marketing. This is easier when you are Ferrari or Tissot, but Apple managed to be almost price-competitive, and sell massive amounts.
One of these items specifically involves finding out whether the candidate uses anything Apple/Beats for music listening. Don't ask me why, it's a telltale sign on who I am hiring.
When Apple decides to make its "airpods" even bigger and more visible from further away, I can only feel happier.
p.s. Because there is so much dissonance in this thread, I will intentionally not mention whether I actually keep these candidates or let them go ;)
A) You're an android fanboy who can't appreciate good tech from non android manufacturers.
B) You're an apple fanboy who can't appreciate good tech from Android manufacturers.
C) You're agnostic in the tech wars and evaluate the best value for your own needs.
Please select an option from my secret undisclosed checklist for evaluating commenter IQ in Apple HN threads.
Especially since you acknowledge that it would be illegal or at least unethical if you acknowledged it. Knock it off.
The Airpods Pro (I still cringe at the stupidity built into the name) at least had strong technical merits. The only step they missed on was keeping them open back. You lose the ability to have cavity resonance for low frequency frequency response. The phase issues associated with this are imperceptible at low frequencies.
If they coupled that with tuning filters with microphones (flatten response and linearize phase up to an acceptable amount of delay: ~10 ms) then they would have a great product on their hands. Instead they made a piece of jewelry.
At least the iPods are rather small and the phone fits in the pocket.
I simply conclude these are not designed for me. I think I prefer my current QC35s
I do note though that they are not really branded as such. It's just that Apple's styling is very distinctive. My Bose headphones for instance feature an embossed Bose logo on each ear.
It was worth paying extra for the device Apple was selling because everyone else was years behind them.
Now it's wireless headphones with technologies that have all been done before, for more than $500. Or the same iPhone as last year, with a slightly better processor. Why pay more for that? I mean, sure, they seem high quality enough- but $549 level high quality?
Come on Apple, surprise me. Make me feel like the iPod announcement again.
The new generation of Macs are also err... reasonably priced for the performance? I think? I mean if they really do beat high end Macbook Pros on the same (real life) workload, they're offering a ton of value for money.
Airpods are a pretty big deal. The Apple Watch and iPad continue to be basically uncontested in their markets as well.
It's difficult to have an iPod or iPhone moment these days. Some of those products I mentioned sell more than the iPod did in its day, they just seem small in the face of Apple's $2T business, and the much larger selection of products in the consumer electronics space.
I guess my point is that it's not binary. Apple can do exciting things and also release overpriced niche headphones. The latter doesn't mean nothing they do can be interesting or have a big market impact.
I'm letting my pessimism get the better of me (and am rightfully being downvoted for it).
As much as it’s an evolution of the AirPods Pro and doesn’t do anything completely new, you can’t say that innovation wasn’t driven here.
The price point is pretty dire though.
Done before because they put it in their AirPods?
And people buy their stuff, so they're doing something right (mostly marketing heh).
I've been looking at the Magic Trackpad, which is pretty niche and doesn't get much attention.
Usually when apple creates a new product they are very careful to give it a distinct look that is immediately identifiable from competitor products.
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Entirely off-topic: Looking forward to seeing people who make 1/3 of what I make (and my salary is pretty average) telling me they are a winner because they snagged one of these babies on release day. We are so easily fooled...