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Comment by mrtksn | Hacker News Reader

Oh, I find it fascinating how the audio gear industry has taught the consumers on how much money you are supposed to spend to have audio experience at certain level. Pay attention on audiophile arguments, they will talk in terms of money(i.e. 150$ headphones vs 500$ headphones) when talking about audio quality.

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.

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There's an exponential curve of cost vs quality. Buying in the bend is best. The difference between a $50 and $200 pair of headphones is staggering. From $200 to $500 is still significant. From $500 to $1000 is extremely slight. From $1000 to $5000 is basically unnoticeable.

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.

I mean, they do own Beats - they know exactly how to make headphones that are good enough quality and which sound nice for an average consumer. Now they can bundle that with some of their proprietary tech and that's how you can easily arrive at that price. No one will be comparing these with $500 Sennheisers because Sennheisers don't have all the features you'd buy these for.

Beats are widely considered to be overpriced for their audio quality. I think it's reasonable to expect the AirPods Max to be as well, but I think the main draw of this product is seamless integration rather than pure audio quality, and the question is whether you're willing to pay a (substantial) premium for that. I expect that many will be.

> Beats are widely considered to be overpriced for their audio quality

That's why Beats was a perfect fit for Apple, Apple products are also overpriced for their performance...

The new M1-powered Macbook Air would beg to differ.

I am shocked by how rationally priced are M1 Macs

The upgrade pricing is still straight robbery. It's $400 to go from 8GB RAM / 256GB SSD to 16GB RAM / 512GB SSD.

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.

You either buy the upgrade up-front, or prepare to struggle in your device's lifetime.

Literally the first product apple has released in the last 15 years that isn't priced pretty far above competitors.

That’s not true. My first three MBPs (I tend to sell them after 3-5 years years, it’s nice that they hold their value), I specced out equivalent non Mac laptops. For size, screen, storage, ram, CPU, and graphics they were equivalent or lower cost than a non Mac laptop. I can’t comment on the last 5 years because I haven’t done the comparison in a while. That was even accounting for the Apple tax on components like RAM that (at the time) could be upgraded after purchase. Upgrading myself or through Apple, they were still price competitive.

I think that spot was taken by iPhone SE2.

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.

> Android are a 2-year device at most if you care about security (and are not a hacker)

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).

That’s good to hear. Perhaps thi by a are changing -

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.

Whaaaaat? 15 years ago takes you all the way back to the PPC to Intel transition, Apple has released tons and tons of price competitive products in that timeframe. Not cheapest, but competitive.

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.

This is really ahistorical. Apple definitely has had a few head shakers, but the "apple tax" is largely overblown.

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.

Honestly the first Airpods were cheap for "true wireless headphones" compared to other offerings.

For me, they also survived sweaty conditions better than others I'd had before ("sweat resistant" was a joke on a couple of them, did not survive a summer afternoon run in Georgia). I only replaced them because they got washed and now sound very tinny (and are long out of warranty, costs as much to replace with new as to get Apple to replace just the ear pieces).

The 2000s called and they’d like their meme back.

> Beats are widely considered to be overpriced for their audio quality.

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.

Regardless of how the bass response is tuned, higher total harmonic distortion is objectively worse than less total harmonic distortion. Headphones are a tool to enjoy audio experiences, and a good tool should get out of the way of said experiences.

Headphones are a tool to enjoy audio experiences

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.

Higher total harmonic distortion is an objectively less accurate reproduction of the original sound. But people can have a preference for less accuracy and that is not objectively “worse” except on one single scale that the consumer may not value.

Just like sepia toned prints are objectively worse reproductions of the original picture.

Hell, every photo filter is a less-accurate representation of the original. And filters are wildly popular.

Yet, all of Apples devices are equipped with screens that have best in class color accuracy.

That's a terrible analogy, would you buy a screen that has a fixed perma-filter applied to every input? The whole point of buying headphones that are neutral and accurate in their frequency response is that you can enjoy different pieces the way you want. You can apply any "filter" you want to color an accurate and versatile speaker, but you can't get a pair of beats to clear up the mids or make the bass less boomy.

But if you don't need them to be less boomy or clear up the mids, and that is the filter that you want, then there is no problem.

Hey I wouldn't pay extra for reduced functionality, but you do you.

You seem to be confusing my point that people have different preferences with my own preferences.

People like the sound they get with these headphones, accurate or not. That isn't a personal failing.

I said nothing about your preferences, that was the generic "you".

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.

Numbers being objectively worse doesn't mean that the experience as a whole is objectively worse. If that was true no one would buy vinyl and the iPod never would have succeeded.

Sound is like food. People like different flavors and that is OK.

Reminds me of the 'bass boost' feature on a lot of consumer audio stuff going back to the 90s (or earlier)-- most of the time, it obfuscates & distorts the original mix and sounds muddier as a result, but people adapt to it and it sounds normal to them.

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.

> Regardless of how the bass response is tuned, higher total harmonic distortion is objectively worse than less total harmonic distortion. Headphones are a tool to enjoy audio experiences, and a good tool should get out of the way of said experiences.

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.

Uh no. I sometimes use a DSP to introduce harmonic distortion when listening to music. There is also a good chance the producer of the music has also introduced a great deal of intentional harmonic distortion already.

> Sound quality is also subjective at a certain level.

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.

Plus some of the latter Beats headphones got neutral/positive reviews, even from audiophiles. For most people who buy Beats, they meet expectations.

Marketing works, and people will believe that the audio quality is fantastic on awful products because the bass is boosted. They haven't ever used a good product, so they have nothing to compare it with.

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.

> Not everyone wants flat sound like an audio engineer.

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.

> I, a consumer, want bassy sounding headphones

> Then you should buy these neutral sounding headphones, and mess around with software to make them sound bassier

yeah, no, I disagree - I have a pair of Sony's XM2 headphones and even when I set the "bass boost" to +10 they are still not as nice to listen to as my beats studio are. Yeah the beats suck for a lot of other music types, but for some they are still my favourite headphones, and I'd pick them over other brands any day.

Bass is like sugar. Lots of it produces a quick addiction to their consumer, but that doesn't mean they are good. Beats produce loud but muddy basses. Good bass will be more subtle, but at the same time clearer. Try a Sennheiser if you can, especially one over ear with cable. It's too bad right now most of the known brands produce poor quality. My wife was completely amazed when she heard her favourite track through good headphones, she heard new instruments and other things she'd never noticed before. But also be aware that better gear might sound worse when you use it to play bad records, because it will expose the bad quality more clearly.

> the main draw of this product is seamless integration rather than pure audio quality, and the question is whether you're willing to pay a (substantial) premium for that. I expect that many will be.

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

Yeah, this. They're not trying to take over Grado's market, they're trying to sell more stuff to people who have already bought heavily into the Apple ecosystem and value comprehensive and simple functionality.

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...)

"Simply charge via Lightning connector"

source: https://www.apple.com/airpods-max/

wait the old one? Or does this somehow mean USB C in Appleese?

Yes, the old one. USB-C is sometimes referred to as Thunderbolt 3 but it's usually kept to USB-C.

USB-C and Thunderbolt 3 are different things. USB-C is a connector defined as part of the USB spec, which was developed in tandem with USB 3.1. TB3 is a different spec, basically an external PCIe interface, that uses the USB-C connector (used to use mini DisplayPort). Typically, TB3 ports are also compatible with USB 3.1, but I don't think that's a requirement.

Thunderbolt 3 is a superset of USB-C, although they do use the same connector. It's a mess.

Wait, so they are not even halfway through the transition to USB-C and they launch a new product with the legacy connector? How many cables do they expect us to keep around? I'll wait for AirPod Max S :)

One day you might be able to charge your Apple iPhone with your stock Apple Macbook charger cable!

Apple isn't transitioning their handheld lines to USB-C.

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.

I had no idea this was the case, cheers for the info! I'd just assumed USB C was the new hotness for all things now on

Yet iPad Air 4 is USB-C and arguably "non pro"

They mean the 8-pin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightning_(connector) .

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.

This is a great expression of one of the primary issues facing the software (and technology) industry today: it seems like software is fundamentally just too hard to do right. Basic competency and non-broken operation is regarded as a hugely valuable luxury feature. It's a cornerstone of the luxury technology brand!

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.

> I believe Apple can do better because they have so much vertical integration

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).

Didn't Apple start integrated? The Apple 1 and Apple II were largely designed by them, the OS was written by Apple, they licensed Basic from Microsoft. The Integrated Woz Machine [0] ran the floppy drive. It seems like it's part of their DNA, they always try to do as much as possible themselves.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_Woz_Machine

No, those were tinkerers machines with as much of their IO exposed as could be done. Even the later Lisa had expansion slots.

There's a simple reason. From the top down, the culture at Sony is, "it's good enough for 90%". And getting that extra 10% isn't going to be worth the investment. Those folks can go buy Apple.

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 is also an important factor in why public-sector and government solutions cost so much more. They have to serve everybody, regardless of disability, the tech available, etc. etc. A company can just dis-regard the 20% of the market that is expensive to serve; governments, the DMV, etc. can't.

That points to the other part of the issue. It is not enough to insist on 100%. It is also necessary to develop those solutions efficiently and to develop the right things (have good taste.) Both Sony and the public sector cannot achieve superlative results, for different reasons.

The magic comes from proprietary protocols. My airpods pro switch devices intuitively, but when I pair them to my windows laptop with bluetooth things don’t work so smoothly anymore and they are just as cumbersome as any bluetooth headset. I think the core problem of bluetooth headsets is the bluetooth spec itself makes it impossible to deliver a good UX.

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.

There's probably a lot of truth to this. It does go against the common sentiment here that open everything is always better. Well somebody will improve it themselves, right? So why hasn't anybody improved the open standard Bluetooth yet to meet those same standards of quality?

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 think this is exactly the crux of the issue, but I see a big difference: Bluetooth being "open" doesn't mean much when the kernel and device drivers and electronics are all closed. What would them being "open" mean -- specs are available? No, it would mean they are built in a fashion that allows them to be modified. It would mean that tools are easily available to the lay to allow modification.

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.

It's funny because your comment would make sense if the Bluetooth spec wasn't a product of design by committee by a bunch of big companies called the "Bluetooth Special Interest Group", but was instead the fault of someone hacking from home without pants on.

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.

If I were to hazard a guess, it would be a culture of bugfixing and software updates post-launch. These headphones no doubt share a lot of code with Airpods. Code which has received numerous bugfixes throughout it's life. Coupled with their ability to actually push out firmware updates to their users without needing them to install a separate (buggy) app, it leads to the evolution of a very stable software platform over time.

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.

They don't let engineers design and implement UX/UI's but instead have them create properly designed UX/UI by UX/UI people who know what they're doing? It does make sense, I have no idea where does the notion of engineers doing UX/UI came from, would we want UX/UI people to actually code the software delivering their designs? ;)

I am only guessing that Sony outsources software development to developers who don't even use Sony. Apple developers love Apple product, look around the third party software on Mac, their developers love the operating system, and use it every day. It makes a huge difference. Elon Musk drives a Tesla, so he knows what it feels like to be a customer. I doubt Sony executives use Sony headphones in everyday life.

I definitely agree with this. It's quite absurd how many devices have a broken experience in just less than ideal conditions.

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.

I have some over the ear bose headphones, and the moment I paired a third device (phone, tablet and computer) it starter to frustrate me, as it never got the device i want to use and have to use the app to disconnect from the other device. At least that is something that apple has much better than the competition.

Happy owner of mx4s here. Great work headphones, but man the UX is bad. On top of everything you mention, it defaults to noise cancelling and turning off noise cancelling (I only want noise cancelling for travel, otherwise I like being able to hear) involves listening to a woman tell you what mode you are in while basically muting current audio. WTF SONY

And the fact that everyone is getting its name wrong is further evidence that Sony is terrible at naming things. It's a miracle the two new models of PlayStation aren't the PS-1000XM5 and PS-1000XM5D.

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.

The Lightning charging situation is a really unfortunate signal. I'd seen the Beats Flex announcement a few months ago where they discontinued the Lightning version and made the new ones use USB-C, and figured that meant they were planning to phase out Lightning in favor of USB-C and MagSafe. With these using Lightning instead of USB-C, that's obviously not the case.

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.

Do you also have these sound level bugs with your XM3, where you adjust down the volume before connecting and then the headphones adjust the volume back up to some level when connected? This has severly blasted my ears multiple times and I can't express how angry I get when that happens (its a miracle I didn't destroy them yet). Its just a shame they combine so good battery life, ANC and sound quality with such a bad software, to a point where I rather get mediocrity in all points than what sony is offering me. Since I got my AirPods Pro I rarely use the XM3s anymore so I will probably not directly jump for the Maxs but they will definitly be an option for me in the future

I think that's a case of the OS you're connecting to having a separate volume setting for Bluetooth headphones and the built-in speakers, at least from my use with an iPad that's how it works.

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.

Might be an iOS issue, but for me its even happening when I connect them, turn the volume down and then start playing something. The instant it starts playing the volume is adjusted up to some previous level. This has never happened to me with other bluetooth headphones / speakers

Oh my god naming things. That's another thing that basically only Apple does right. I still can't get over how many companies have decided that their naming scheme for consumer products should just be a bunch of random letters and numbers, I guess because they think it sounds more advanced and techey? Thinkpads are another massive offender here.

Even Apple screws it up. There's been periods where the MacBook Air wasn't the lightest MacBook. And there's some nebulousness over the Pro lineup (more so on the Mac - the i* lines are more clear).

Broadly speaking, "Pro" in Apple's line is "the more expensive version." It's mainly in the Mac Pro and iMac Pro where it's a particularly significant difference for professional use.

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.

Also have the XM4s. If you go into the app, you can turn off "Notification and Voice Guide" under the system settings. It will then switch instantly when pressing the button without the woman speaking. Way better with it off.

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.

Thanks I appreciate that. I would still prefer a positional switch but that will make a big difference..........once I download the app which I have never used because I just assumed it was bloatware. whoops.

I agree about the app sucking and multiple device pairing being ass (at least on the XM3s), but I don't really have an issue with the swipe controls.

I had the MX4s and they were just too uncomfortable. I was getting headaches after prolonged use and my manager couldn’t hear me on a call indoors.

I’m seriously considering getting the Airpods Max if they have good Noise cancellation, sound quality and comfort.

Yeah, but Beats Studio already do most of what AirPods Max do. I own not one, but two pair of the Beats (like ‘em enough to get the wife a pair), so I’m their “sucker” target market. Sure, maybe one can get better sound for the same money, but as you point out, other headphones don’t connect to my Apple stuff as neatly (or at all; yea, Bluetooth), yada, yada. So I’ll will sacrifice a bit of sound quality (or so the sound nutters say) for convenience.

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.

Hey, this is cheap by high-income Apple fanboi prices. It's cheaper than a simple monitor stand:

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.

The thing is, Beats' build quality and technical design absolutely suck. The hinge is weak plastic, and even a little bit of over-opening them can and will break it.

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.

Because Beats have the same quality that Apple products do - people who buy Beats headphones continue buying them, regardless of any other options.

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.

Thank you! I don't own any, and they wouldn't go well with most of the music I listen to, but I'm glad to see someone actually defending Beats on HN.

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".

This debate has been around since the 60s. It used to be called "musicality."

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.

Hmm. And what's the debate called today, then, if not musicality?

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?

You make some valid points, but FTR some of the anti-Beats sentiment relates to build quality (ie, cheap plastic and tendency to physically break at the poorly-designed, fragile hinge), and to the cost compared to alternatives with similar electronics / sound.

Tell me about it. Did you know that Beats Solo 2 have this strange problem where at some point one of the ear-cups would stop functioning on Bluetooth and the way to fix it is to stick some aluminium foil into the audio cable jack? It's so ridiculous and I am amazed that someone the internet discovered this solution and the solution is working for the others, including me.

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.

> Apple's products don't break down by themselves but Beats do.

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'll never understand what led Apple to align itself w this overpriced junk.

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!)

> Beats Music streaming service, which is what became Apple Music

wow really?

Yep. I'm pretty sure the weird onboarding process for Apple Music -- tap bubbles that represent genres you like, or something like that -- was very close to Beats's original process. I'm not sure it still does that, since it was kind of weird and confusing. Beats Music had a real focus on human-curated playlists rather than solely algorithmic ones, something that Apple Music kept.

Yes, it did, and MOG (what Beats bought and turned into Beats Music) had something like that too. Almost none of the MOG aesthetic is left today, though.

My sub-$300 Sennheiser HD1 closed, over-ear, BT (w/ cable option), active noise-cancelling headphones are hands-down the best purchase I made in a decade, maybe ever. I'm not a deluded "audiophile" poseur, but I'm a musician who cares deeply about music, and a software dev / architect whose family depends on my ability to focus deeply on my work, and I wear them for about 8h/day.

I love mine. Really wish they had the option to turn off the noise cancelling while on BT though.

The build quality of beats though is complete garbage. Plastic that can snap in half and then you're boned out of hundreds of dollars. These airpods will live or die based on their durability and battery life. Personally, I love my nose cancelling Sony's. They come in at a lower price point and last YEARS.

Is cancelling your nose really a price worth paying?

Beats are mostly cheaply made crap that aren't competitive on price.

And their marketing knows this, just like Apple does - their products aren't competing on price. They are competing on the image and brand recognition, and there are people(me) who genuienly like how they sound and are willing to pay the premium for all of these features.

You really think they won’t compare them???

The Momentum Wireless are pretty nice headphones!

https://en-us.sennheiser.com/momentumwireless

I really really do, because it's not a product for people who compare brands and prices.

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.

Wow. I honestly never thought of that. Now I’m questioning my own buying behavior!! LOL!!

As far as I recall, Beats were using dime-a-dozen drivers. That may have changed in the interim, but people were buying them like hotcakes even when they were garbage.

>There's an exponential curve of cost vs quality

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.

Umm that's just straight out wrong.

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)

You might be able to hear the difference and you might be able to say with confidence that the $500 ones sound better.

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.

Yeah, hence OP's original point:

>There's an exponential curve of cost vs quality

The experience is a little like that of photography, I've found. Starting out, you can spend substantial but reasonable amounts for very significant increments in image quality. After a while you hit an inflection point beyond which you'd be spending effectively unbounded amounts in search of just that little extra bit of sharpness or depth of field or so on. The people with the money and urge to climb that curve are very like "serious audiophiles" in my experience, but there's still a range in which you can spend and see a real difference.

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 is the higher price necessary or an artificial segmentation of the market? Of course expensive sounds better than cheap, but could $100 headphones sound as good as $500 or are they really that much more expensive to make?

I doubt it - there is plenty of competition in that market. I bought some "no-name" chinese open ears for 50$ with supposedly good drivers - had decent reviews saying they sound above their price - you just needed to replace the horrible ear pads they were decent. But for example my 200$ DT990 are obviously a class above.

I think the problem is that the music I listen to is mastered so poorly (compression wars) that the more expensive headphones just expose how bad the music sounds rather than make it sound better. Maybe if I changed my taste to enjoy classical music instead of J-pop.

I have a similar problem - I use studio headphones at home mostly but popular music actually sounds worse without EQ. Listening to podcasts however is almost like being in the studio.

I can hear the difference between $200 and $500, but I'm not sure I would say that the $500 sounds better -- or just different. I suspect I'm not alone. But its up to each person to find the right price point for their ears.

It's funny, sometimes better reproduction quality ruins the experience - for example I rewatched some sci-fi movies on my 4K TV in full resolution and the extra detail just brings attention to flaws in effects, it shifts the experience from people in a magical place to actors in front of a green screen.

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 had an interesting experience along these lines. I was in a headphone shop because my old $200 Seinnheiser headphones had fallen apart after many years of use.

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.

I've never tried $1500 headphones. You've now convinced me not too.

Apple’s hardware game is very impressive in recent years. I’m prepared to be impressed further.

As a counter point, Apple is bringing computation closer to ears. The Sennheiser 650 is an analog cabled experience and will accurately reflect the upstream digital to analog conversion, typically made without regard to the destination device. If Apple can use on-ear computation to make a plastic driver cone sound like a more expensive material, why would you care about the materials used?

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).

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204691

The last thing I want with my audio is some bullshit "computational experience" fucking with things and telling me what I want to hear.

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.

He's talking about the computation involved in turning any digital sound into the analog one needed for a speaker. If there's no cable between the digital-to-analog conversion chip and the analog speaker, there's no chance for cable characteristics to have an impact on the sound.

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.

The wording implies there is at least some level of extra DSP going on (talk of "dynamic EQ" or whatever notwithstanding). Calling a digital-to-analog converter a "computational experience" seems beyond the pale, even for Apple PR hacks

Pretty mainstream level of snake oil in the audiophile world though.

Whom amongst us has not been told that this fancy power cable will be the second coming of Christ?

Was Monster's marketing ever that aggressive?

So I guess you travel with an orchestra?

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).

Phone cameras still aren't as good as SLRs, and never will be due to sensor size and optics.

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

Yeah man, you live in a different world from 95% of consumers. For typical users the iPhone camera will destroy what they could do with an SLR.

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.

Does it? Or are you just saying that? You can't experience hearing through his ears, so how can you possibly say that?

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?

> 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.

Mainsteam taste is what sells products. Obviously you're not part of the target market and should probably just move on.

Apple could use their position of product leadership to introduce mainstream consumers to a higher standard of fidelity if they wanted to, particularly at this price. But I guess that would cut into their Beats business and would make Apple Music look worse than it already is, and surely the profits aren't as nice as using plastic(!) drivers

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

Spotify HQ mode is not a bad digital source. Do you mean that's all (these) people think is required to get high quality playback?

It's not bad but neither is it good. The compression still butchers a lot of sound. It's easy to tell when compared against the original CDs or FLAC backups for certain kinds of music

Spotify high quality is 320 kps, if I remember correctly. This should be indistinguishable from lossless unless something is weird with the track.

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.

320 kbps mp3 is already indistinguishable for most people with most workloads, let alone the much more performant 320 kbps Vorbis that Spotify uses.

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 will have to listen more closely, though last I remember it was like 256kbps.

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

I bet you are fun at parties.

And I'd bet you my parties have far better sound than you've ever heard

There is simply absolutely no need for on ear computation to make low quality drivers sound better.

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.

Is this still true when active noise cancellation is involved?

No, it's not. If using ANC, you do need a chip on the device to do ANC for latency reasons. But that's already a solved problem.

Sorry, but when the DAC can be tuned to the specific hardware, and the engineers know what the hell they are doing, the result can be pretty damn impressive.

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.

I never argued that point. I just said that it makes no sense to make the vast majority of that processing in the headphone when your phone and computer already have specialized hardware to do it.

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.

Sounds absolutely horrible. I'd rather not install some bloatware crap headphone software that injects itself into my operating system's audio stack and introduces extra latency on every device just to get the headphones to sound right.

You already have to install software that inserts itself into the audio stack and introduces extra latency to be able to use your wireless headphones. Those are called "Bluetooth drivers".

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.

Hardly the same - they are generic, provided by the OS, follow a standard, don't require specific support to be provided for individual devices.

They do need some pretty wide support per individual device. A proper stack requires something like 6 different codecs, all of which are quite heavy and very different.

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.

Yes, basically Bluetooth is already almost too complicated to do well, and you would rather it were more complicated still? And like you say applying a convolution is computationally trivial especially compared to decoding a lossy audio codec and running a Bluetooth stack and antenna, which the headphones are already doing. Offloading this to the device is going to make absolutely no difference to battery life while increasing complexity and unreliability, while also restricting what processing can be done to static convolution with an impulse response. There is no reason to do this on the device.

It certainly would make a difference to battery life. Bluetooth connections as well as decoding are done in hardware using commodity chips that can't do much else. Adding additional audio processing hardware will increase the complexity of these chips which translates to higher prices and lower battery efficiency.

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.

There is simply absolutely no need for on ear computation to make low quality drivers sound better.

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...

Read carefully. I said there is no need for on ear computation. I personally even have impulse response profiles for my headphones that I load onto my phone and computer to make them sound much better.

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.

> A $400 Sennheiser 650 will no doubt blow them away while still being $150 cheaper.

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.

[0] https://marco.org/headphones-closed-portable

Serious question. If open headphones (which I've never used) let everyone else hear what you're listening to, why would anybody ever use them? Isn't it better just to have decent speakers and not use headphones at all?

Not everyone has the space for a decent speaker setup. An open back pair of headphones will work anywhere as long as the environment isn't too loud. Another reason could be if you are living in an apartment with neighbors who won't be very happy with your speaker setup blasting sound through the walls into their apartment. Open back headphones do leak sound but in a much more localized area. Also, you can get a great pair of open back headphones for $200 or less and then with a $50-$100 amp have amazing sound. I haven't looked closely into speaker setups but I feel like a good speaker setup is going to cost more than that.

By an order of magnitude or two, yeah. In addition to the very pricey speakers and receiver, you also, at that point, need fine control over room shape and acoustics, as well as more space than any apartment is likely to provide, in order to get the benefit of what you're paying for. Headphones are a much more controlled and thus easily engineered environment, so it's a lot cheaper and easier to get equivalent quality, albeit with a necessarily narrower soundstage in almost all cases.

The $450 I paid for my endgame headphone/amp/DAC wouldn't even get you in the door of an audiophile speaker place.

$450 endgame? What do you have?

HD 6XX, a Magni/Modi pair, and no real interest in hearing anyone else's opinion about what I should've gone with instead.

Haha fair enough. I ran an HD 6XX with a Jotunheim for a while, but ended up preferring a pair of JBL LSR305s with an SVS sub a lot more.

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.

I actually compared my Sony MDR7506 with my Anker Soundcore Motion+ this morning and the Soundcore blew away the Sonys to my ear. Yes, the Soundcore is an unrepairable bluetooth speaker, but they both cost ~$80

While everybody can hear, they won't hear it anywhere near as loud. So you can listen to music as loud as you want without disturbing your neighbors or even the people in the next room.

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 lets everyone hears but the sound is not that loud, e.g. manageable even in a room with bad sound insulation. Beside, a comparable speaker setup in term of sound quality takes a lot of space and cost a lot more which may not be desirable.

That "everyone else" hearing may include other people close by in the same room, not from other rooms or other apartments. In addition, getting the same audio quality from speakers costs a multiple of the price of a high-end headphone pair, and even then it's very difficult (think room reveb and positioning).

At any sane price point, headphones blow away speakers.

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 think the comparison is far more drastic than that. I would compare $100 headphones (like your Sonys) to amplifier speaker set up of at least $2000. That depth of bass response and accuracy is quite an achievement for speakers.

I say this as someone with both Sony MDRV6 headphones and a home borderline audiophile stereo setup retailing for over $3k.

This is anecdotal and I mentioned this somewhere else in this thread, but I did a quick shootout between my Sony MDR7506 and a $80 Soundcore Motion+ bluetooth speaker and the Soundcore actually blew the 7506 away.

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.

... I'm not so sure about that. I suspect you might have liked the way the speaker changed the sound, but you could have gotten the same effect (with greater control) with the headphones and digital preprocessing.

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.

They know their target consumer. You can get two colors with one stimulus check. Brilliant.

While not telling which way is superior sounds produced by the speakers are also felt by your whole body even if subtle. That makes for a noticeably different listening experience.

Headphones don’t require a treated room to sound excellent. Speakers will engage the natural acoustics of whatever space they live in and comb filtering will result. Almost always a great pair of headphones will beat a great pair of speakers in a listening test.

Totally valid point. In most cases, I think the layman will generally find an equivalently priced speaker setup over $600 sounds better.

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.

Sennheiser HD650 + an empirically incredible amp and dac will run you between 1 and 2 grand. For speakers multiply that by 10 at least. And they still won't sound as clear and intimate as something pressed up against your head.

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.

> For speakers multiply that by 10 at least.

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-...

Oh, don't get me wrong, I love speakers, and I adore filling a room with noise, I just think headphones make more sense to someone interested in getting more depth and clarity out of their music.

Edit: For their dollar that is. With unlimited money I would probably take speakers.

TLDR sound bleed can be ok.

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.

Because you have kids (or a spouse) sleeping in the adjacent room.

People need to be really close to hear what you are hearing. Open back headphones are not for the metro or bus.

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.

The scale you are looking for is logarithmic.

I grew up listening to music on $20 dollar earphones (taking into account inflation). In later life I've upped my limit to around $80. I thought that was extravagant.

I'm never going to come to grips with the concept of $500 headphones. It just seems insane.

I agree, and I own a pair AirPod Pros which I love.

TBF, until I spent what I considered 'proper' money ($200+) on headphones I didn't really 'get it'. But the difference my first 'proper' pair of headphones made to listening to music, I'm not sure I'd ever be happy going back.

Agree $500 is a punchy headphone purchase though!

TB equally F, by the time you have headphones, amp, and DAC, you'll be pretty close to that price anyway. HD 6XX + Magni/Modi is about the most cost-effective you can get, and with shipping you're looking at about $450 all told. Worth it for sure, but it's pretty rare when you get into this kind of stuff that you're just paying for headphones.

(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.)

A few years ago I bought a pair of Hifiman HE400i headphones for around $300 (they’re less than $200 now I think). These are wired, open-backed and have planar drivers. Going from a pair of $100 headphones to these was like night and day. I’m not an audiophile by any stretch, but wow is there a big difference. If you enjoy music, and are in a position to use open-back headphones, I’d highly recommend trying something like them in the ~$200 range. With proper care they should last many years.

I have a pair of HE-400 headphones that I love - the sound quality is outstanding. But dang if they aren’t the heaviest and least comfortable things around (Compare to something like a nice pair of those seinheisers that everybody owns - those feel like you’re wearing a cloud and still sound 85% as good). To me the HE400s are very much “special occasions” headphones that I bust out for when I’m really sitting down to just listen to music. For everything else I need something a bit more... usable.

It's one of those things where you don't know what you're missing until you know what you're missing. If I'd never tried a pair of HD 598s, I'd have stayed satisfied with $50 whatever. If I'd never tried a pair of HD 650s, I'd have stayed satisfied with HD 598s.

I don't try headphones any more.

I think the sweet spot is around $100-$120. At this price point you also get the capability to easily replace cables and pads.

So essentially you buy a headphone for ever.

Some examples are Beyerdynamic custom, ATH-50, sennheiser 599, hd-25 etc

> I'm never going to come to grips with the concept of $500 headphones. It just seems insane.

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.

I have $4,000 audio setup (Sennheiser HDV820 + Sennheiser HD800) and honestly a $500 Sennheiser HD650 plugged directly to a 3.5mm adapter sounds way more fun in everyday use. The exponential quality curve only goes up to certain point and beyond that it's all about the sound characteristic (HD800/S is good for classical/jazz) and how much the manufacturer is going charge for it.

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.

FYI you can get an official HD650 equivalent (HD6XX) for $220. https://drop.com/buy/massdrop-sennheiser-hd6xx

The defining featre of an "exponential" curve is that there is no "bend". The bend is an illusion create by arbitrarily imposed scale. What there is, "quality that matters to to you" and "price you can afford", and you should ignore the part of the curve with too-high price and too-low quality.

Hmm. Don't see that. The defining feature of an exponential is that there is a bend everywhere.

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.

The point is a “bend” implies a spot like an elbow, where suddenly diminishing returns kick in. Exponential growth is a clean curve with no such spots. Move x units right, you’ll always get a y% boost.

That's true of a ton of things in audio, video, and lots of other things. Pros and enthusiasts spend thousands on gear that makes a tiny difference in experience, output quality, etc. It makes sense in some situations. But a lot of people who have the money also just overspend.

so much of it seems to be a status play

> Apple looks to be using plastic driver cones

How is this apparent by looking at the stock photos of the assembled product?

What factors make a better cone?

Maybe it's lighter than the alternative? Not everyone wants to wear a brick on their head.

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.

Thanks for saying this. None of the people here have even tried the headphones yet, don’t know what they are made of, and don’t know how computational audio plays with material..

I own a pair of midrange Dali speakers which use compressed paper cones and sound really great.

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?

You are paying more for the design and user experience with Apple. Sure, there is always something better though I doubt many listen to music that is of sufficient enough quality via their devices to hear the difference or had a really good pair to compare it to. Beats headphones proved that audio quality is not always what moves the market.

I’m curious of what is the quantifiable difference between those price brackets. It’s especially confusing to me how people are buying in ear headphones and spending hundreds of dollars and somehow getting a better sound than $50 ones.

Your Sennheiser examples are wired headphones which are (essentially) unpowered speakers.

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...

The price is steep as is the apple way, but I agree that saying "EGAD How can they charge as much as HD6-whatevers" when those headphones basically require an external amp just to run is just a little silly.

Both AirPods that have been released have already been wayyyyy better than every “established” earbud product in their price category. Don’t see why you would assume that AirPods Max would all of a sudden be worse.

>The difference between a $50 and $200 pair of headphones is staggering.

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.

That's true, but when op says that, I assume they don't mean any $50 headphones, they mean the best (lets go with least harmonic distortion as our arbitrary criteria for "best") ones you can get in that price range, and for the most part they are describing a trend that DOES exist to some degree in almost any category of physical good you can buy, from power tools to kitchen appliances.

That’s an uncharitable interpretation. I understood it as “average quality to price correlation”.

Right, but that's the thing, because these products these days are often fashion statements there's less and less correlation between price and quality, especially as you go towards very expensive devices. A $50 pair of headphones is almost certainly better than a $20 one. $500 vs. $200? Maybe. $5000 vs $2000? Who the hell knows.

The point is that at $50 the AKG 240 are already the maximum audio quality you can get (in the sense reproduction). They are literally made for studio professionals to monitor recordings. Do you think non professional people need better gear to listen than what was used to record? What you are really buying above that price is build quality, comfort, or misc features.

I think the assumption here is that an educated consumer isn’t going to just buy any $200 piece of junk that calls itself “high end”. They are going to listen to it themselves and/or do research to figure out who is providing true value at any given price point. In that context, your $50 AKG 240’s will definitely sound 2nd rate compared to options at a higher price point (HD6xx series and a couple hundred milliwatt amp would be my favorite example at a $300 price point). I do agree that other features (wireless, vanity, etc) may factor into the decision, as I myself enjoy the decent sound provided by the AirPods Pro given their convenience.

What does outperformed mean?

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"?

Logorithmic

Have another look at that internals picture (which is a render so take it with a grain of salt), they appear to be using an extremely unconventional arrangement of a rigid cone driven by two linear motors mounted at 45 degree angles to the driver axis. A rigid cone is challenging but a goal in many high-priced designs (less so for headphones but definitely in speaker drivers with say carbon fibre drivers).

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...

When it comes to high-end speaker/headphones drivers, plastic and/or paper are the preferred materials. Metal is not inherently superior in this application. It is different, not better. Stiffer materials are more resistant to cone breakup but that is not really an issue in tiny headphone drivers. Some headphone makers probably choose metal drivers for marketing reasons, because (as we see on this thread) consumers understandably think that metal is better than plastic.

    $100 Sennheiser HD 280 pros. A $400 Sennheiser 650 
    will no doubt blow them away

Sure, lets look at the 650's objective performance.

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 is the difference you are noticing? What is the performance you are talking about? It's the exact problem the parent is talking about, people have no idea so they talk about price.

> Apple is my hero in that regard

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.

> How does apple becomes your hero when they are selling the same thing ?

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.

You're assuming a lot about the person you're talking about.

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?

Apple is his “hero.” As if they cured cancer.

Oh c'mon. Apple products tend to be long lasting, are incredibly easy to use, don't malfunction, have a good design aesthetic and are a good addition to an already existing suite of Apple products. Suggesting that he values image over substance seems unnecessary.

> don't malfunction

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.

If you've needed multiple replacements, might they give you a refund? Some states have "lemon laws" about this.

As someone with the same issue (including multiple replacements).. I don't want a refund. I just want working ones. I really wish they'd fix whatever manufacturing defect is causing this.

It's frustrating. My airpods pro had an issue where they'd make a crackling sound with every step I take (but were fine when sitting). Apple replaced them in warranty and it's been fine since, but they now have a replacement program for these out of warranty as well.

I hope they're doing diagnostics on defective airpods they receive from customers.

yeah, same experience. they start crackling a bit when I talk loudly. then crackling when I talk at all. then eventually crackling whenever I move.

Glad to know they've replaced them.

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.

> Because he values image over substance, and his personal identity is tied to Apple.

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.

But is Apple your hero?

No. And all those headphones are not my villains. They are just different products making different trade offs.

Endlessly fucking around with your equipment, priding yourself on replacing a $20 extended warranty with a $40 soldering iron, two hours of your time, and three deep breaths of mercury is just as much an "identity" as enjoying Apple products.

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".

Wait, are you talking about de-soldering with mercury? That sounds...uncommon and ill-advised. I've seen a brand mercury that makes electronics products(?), but doesn't seem to quite fit the context.

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.

>How does apple becomes your hero when they are selling the same thing ?

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.

> They sell the product /experience/

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".

By experience, I mean the experience you get from using the product, I don't mean the money spending experience. Audiophile industry definitely provides you the spending experience but that's not what I expect from products.

You must be more than average rich if buying apple products does not give you a "money spending experience".

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.

> By experience, I mean the experience you get from using the product, I don't mean the money spending experience. Audiophile industry definitely provides you the spending experience but taht's not what I expect from products.

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.

Can you please point out the contradiction?

> 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.

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.

"pass a blind test" wasn't my choice of words, I would rather put it like something similar to "no one was fired for buying from ibm" on a personal level.

> 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.

Got it, yeah having a problem with Apple users who "see apple as a Hero/God company (blind trust)" is fair and valid.

(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.)

Be careful not to equate pro audio equipment with “overpaying audiophile” gear. Spending $500+ on headphones is common for engineers and musicians alike (typically custom fitted IEMs).

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.

> "AirPods Max are headphones lacking a headphone port."

Not entirely. A 1.2m headphone-to-lightning cable is available for $35.

Thank you I did not realize this. If the adaptive EQ can be disabled I suppose they could work in a pro setting, but likely in the mastering context of “I wonder what this mix will sound like on high end consumer headphones”

I'm not an audio engineer or a musician but I got custom IEMs and they were a great decision for me. My ears don't work with the majority of in-ear style audio devices out there for some reason-- my left ear is fine but everything falls out of my right.

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.

Former mastering engineer here. Discussing audio gear in any open online forum is pretty hopeless. Any conversation will eventually be dominated by people who misunderstand (often willfully) the human perceptual mechanism and its propensity for illusion.

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 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.

I, too, find that stuff abhorrent.

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.

thank you and i totally agree

I dunno about fraud but it does occasionally have similarities to drug usage imo in that you can become aware of certain highs and then wind up endlessly chasing new levels of greatness.

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.

The Porta Pros are still amazing headphones. Lifetime warranty, cheap, and great sound. They work perfect for exercising, if you're willing to put up with the cable

I loved my Porta Pros. They sound fantastic and they’re so cheap. The problem was that they broke a lot (thank goodness for that lifetime warranty). After third or fourth time sending them back I decided I wanted something more reliable.

You get what you pay for, I guess, but man. Best worst headphones I’ve ever had.

I've never had a pair break, just had to replace the pads as they wore out after a couple of years. I don't think I've been _particularly_ careful with them, but I definitely don't toss them into my backpack or anything like that?

What did you upgrade to?

I'm a somewhat clumsy person, so I'm willing to accept some of the blame here :) I had a pair of Grados that I didn't like quite as much, my next job gave me a pair of Beats for free, then I got a pair of AirPods and then upgraded to the AirPods Pro. I will not be purchasing the AirPods Max.

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.

I've been eyeballing the AirPods Pro as well! I had a coworker who was using a pair for video conferencing, and recommended them at first - but eventually became repeatedly inconvenienced by the battery running out and having to change to a wired set.

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.

Ah yes, the included mic is very useful for videoconferencing. The battery only really runs out for me if I'm on calls for multiple hours without recharges, or if I forget to charge the case.

> "you actually pay for the product experience instead for being part of some deeply troubling subculture"

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.

What I like about Apple fanboy subculture is that it's generally positive. Apple fans can get smirky when discussing Apple but would't chase down and brigate, turning every discussion about competitors into "We are smart Apple elites but good for you for trying". Competitor hateboys are not common among Apple fanboys.

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.

There might not be as many hateboys, but what I have found is that Apple fanboys are significantly more defensive, and often respond poorly to criticism, and are generally at best dismissive of it. This is probably a result of being so frequently accosted by said hateboys, but it makes nuanced discussion outside of the bounds of marketing copy difficult. Then again, rarely do fanboys make it easy...

> 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.

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.

> 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...

The wheels are wild, but the watch band is Hermès. Their watches start at 3k. What would you have expected?

If any industry is a cargo cult, the watch industry qualifies.

I would say there are two types of audiophile communities:

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.

>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 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.

At or below around $1k, price is a decent proxy for sound quality in headphones if you stay away from the trashy consumer stuff e.g. Beats, Raycons. Audiophile snake oil crap (e.g. ionic crystal cable risers, brass pyramids, $10k USB cables) isn’t really part of the same market.

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.

finding this a really weird comment. In both NYC and Chicago I've had no problem walking into a store where I can try many different sets of headphones and talk to someone on staff about my listening habits, taste in music, and environment where I'll be listening. Both times I got straightforward advice and wound up buying a headset that lasted at least five years that I loved.

it’s not a comment about in store experience, it’s about audiophile culture.

this is like saying "programmers follow trends and there are many things in the tech industry that are frauds therefore you should not program the computer"

It's not remotely like that. They're talking about how people will spend dollars to defend their 'audiophile' badge with no regard for what if any actual impact it makes on sound fidelity.

ah yes programmers are so smart, they would never spend dollars attending conferences or buying training or buying service contracts to defend their 'scalability expert' or 'tech guru' badge with no regard for what if any actual impact their pet technology choice makes on their startup.

It seems like you are arguing against yourself now. If the phenomenon you describe is real, and you think it's also present in audiophile circles, then you agree with the post you replied to in the first place.

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.

Some programmers do go to conferences and buy training courses to keep up appearances regardless of the impact on their actual performance. We mock them for it just like we mock people who buy $1000+ headphones to impress other audiophiles. Responding to this fact with "people waste money on conferences, so you shouldn't program" is like saying "people waste money on headphones, so you shouldn't listen to music," though.

You can’t shit on audiophiles without mentioning overpriced cables

Funnily enough I came across these the other day.

https://www.transparentcable.com/collections/all/xl?catID=1&...

A fool and their money...

They will go very nicely with Sony's WM1Z Walkman® Signature Series https://www.sony.com/electronics/walkman/nw-wm1z

Both of those links lead to insults to my EE education.

Be sure to check out how much the Walkman costs.

You can't talk about expensive cables without mentioning Nordost Odin 2 - something like $30,000 per meter.

https://www.analogueseduction.net/analogue-interconnects/nor...

Probably mentioned elsewhere in the threads but posting it here as well, be sure to check out their entire selection of snake oil. https://www.audioquest.com/cables/digital-cables/rj-e-ethern...

> RJ/E Diamond prepared Cat 7 Ethernet cables use solid 100% Perfect-Surface Silver conductors, which completely eliminate strand interaction, one of the biggest sources of distortion in cables, for clearer, more dynamic and involving sound.

WHAT.

Your last paragraph could easily apply to Apple fans and their unjustified love of Apple products.

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.

Why only borderline? It is a market that preys on delusion.

Do you think it preys on delusion more than the "high end" spaces of other niche markets? I think the same kind of upsells occur in spaces like sporting gear, bags and luggage, computer peripherals, etc. Hell, I think even fine food and wine are similar in how they project an artificially high "taste ceiling," if you will.

This is a strange comment. It starts like you're trying to argue something, but the argument isn't really present.

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?

It really wasn't intended to come across as an argument, thats why one isn't present. I don't think this is really a problem easily fixed (short of overhauling the ethos of consumerism). I was just curious if the commenter thought the "high end audio gear" market was distinct for some reason.

Yes, the audiophile market is uniquely stupid, in that they tend to make specific claims that are objectively wrong. The ethernet cables come to mind, or any (digital) cable that's supposed to be better at conducting a signal than any generic spec-compliant alternative.

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).

Ah, yeah, I'm with you. I think the distinction between taste-driven preference vs technical superiority is important (maybe a more interesting discussion would surround the juxtaposition of audio gear and organic/non-gmo food marketing).

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.

the commonality between the phenomenons of audio and wine etc. is that they start on a foundation of objectivity and end in subjectivity and cognitive bias. Hearing and taste are two things that are literally unique (almost impossibly equivalent, probability wise) for every single person.

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.

>they will talk in terms of money(i.e. 150$ headphones vs 500$ headphones) when talking about audio quality.

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.

I agree but my point is that it doesn't have to be like that and I have distaste towards fixating the overall product experience on the "sound quality per $" metric. Any product that emphasises on anything beyond that metric is talked down and its users are branded as "uneducated suckers". It's impossible to explain that you want a headphone that looks good, is light, can fold, can connect easily etc. They are extremists that prey on balanced products and people like those.

That's why I like what Apple is doing: earphones/headphones designed with overall experience in mind.

> Isn't this the same as computer nerds talking about how much they're spending on their graphics card or their motherboard or whatever?

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.

It seems you you are a huge fan of Apple, but you haven't explained what Apple is doing here that is interesting or unique.You can have any opinion you want, but I don't think you understand what the audiophile market or community is. There is nothing "deeply troubling" about buying a Sennheiser HD600 or an AKG K702 or buying a DAC or an AMP to listen to audio if you enjoy doing that.

> 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.

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”.

In my view the audiophile £500+ Ethernet cables are more than borderline fraud.

Modern music is usually heavily distorted on purpose at the mix step, I mean what's the point of buying equipment with high fidelity to listen to layered synth or auto-tuned voices? Recording engineers don't use audiophile gear, and it's no surprise when you have seen a typical guitar signal chain. Being able to discern instruments and layers with clarity and definition take years, yet I'm always amazed at what people failing to recognize the most basic things or issues, or do a basic EQ, will spend money on.

You can leave out the 'borderline'. Oh, and 'gold plated' is a synonym for 'you are being ripped off' as well as 'you are clueless'.

I was an Apple Music subscriber listening music on AirPods until I bought a pair of studio reference monitors for 700 USD equivalent (Yamaha HS8). The joy of listening for hours without pain or fatigue from these while WFH is great. These ays my AirPods run out of battery and cut out in the middle of a meeting. The need for all kinds of portable battery powered devices have significantly gone down while working from home.

I like this. Headphones as wine, basically.

> I always find the audiophile market to be borderline fraud

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-...

I've never met an audiophile who would be surprised by that. They'd regard Monster the way IPA drinkers think of Michelob Ultra Pure Gold.

"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."

That sounds like Apple though ...'I pay for fewer ports!'

(This subthread was originally a child of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25345134.)

I don't get replies like this. I tried a bunch of high-end headphones through a switchable amp and I bought the one I thought had the best qualities I was looking for. There was a clear and huge difference in quality and character between each headphone but I didn't need the most expensive one (Sennheiser 650 I believe) because it sounded too nice for my purpose (studio). Went for the BD 990's instead.

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.

I guess the expensive headphones price is not that bad if compared to the valve or vacuum tube amplifier :-)

yeah, seems similar to the shutterbugs. Blind camera tests have widely different opinion - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbeEkwlTeqQ.

now you are talking like an audiophile yourself - just kidding :-)

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.

> I always find the audiophile market to be borderline fraud.

Not all of it is crap.

I don't think you need to be an audiophile to notice that my $160 Beyerdynamic DT880 would blow any AirPods out of the water in terms of sound quality. And also comfort honestly.

Presumably you haven’t actually tried the AirPods Max yet.

> Apple is my hero in that regard, where you actually pay for the product experience

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.

I think it is rather naive view. Audio market is an industry with professionals.

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.

These are not the professionals, professionals and people who like to listen to music are completely different bunch apart from audiophiles.

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.

Well, I would consider myself to be an audiophile. I got professional level equipment for about $400 many many years ago. Today it is probably even cheaper. I spend a lot of time on PSU, interference from power grid etc... Solved by $20 car battery...

For an "audiophile" AirPods are ripoff similar to CD demagnetizer.

AirPod Pros are my first Bluetooth headphones which just work and I love the transparency mode. They may not be for you, but they are not a rip off.

I bet I spend 20 or so hours a year researching headphones. My current daily drivers are $11 earbuds and a pair of $80 cans for focused listening. As with most things, there are a vocal few who do obsesses and come across as elitist, but I have a hunch that people like me are the (largely) silent majority.

    but I have a hunch that people like me are the 
    (largely) silent majority.

I've been into the hobby for 5-6 years and I can confirm this is the case in my experience. =)

I'll spend a little on earbuds (AirPods, actually), but I feel you on the headphones. I do a lot of audio and video work, and after extensive research over the last ~decade I've just got literally half a dozen pairs of Sony MDR-V6's around; they're $100, they sound pleasant and also reasonably representative (though not as representative as my monitors, which is to be expected!), and unlike the Beyerdynamic DT-990s they actually fit on my head (I am a problem for hat-makers).

OT:

> hat-makers

Surely you mean haberdashers--they're ground floor! (Thank you, Coil, for Going Up.)

https://youtube.com/watch?v=IcOcNF1S2hk

I mostly wear baseball caps, and what self-respecting haberdasher would lower themselves to that level?

I'm a proud audiophile. For me it was always about the music.

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.

I'm sorry but you seem to have some sort of vendetta against a group you are branding as audiophiles, which shares very little in common with the vast majority of audiophiles.

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.

>want to listen to it in the most accurate way possible.

What does it even supposed to mean?

In a modern sense? I personally want the waves coming out of my equipment to be as similar to the waves stored on my computer.

Are you guessing on the 500ms? Looks like the most recent AirPods Pro can achieve 144ms [0], so I'd imagine the Max to be slightly less.

Not great, but should allow phone conversations without too much fatigue.

[0] https://9to5mac.com/2019/12/22/airpods-latency-test/

Yep, they made up that 500ms number.

I didn't realize the latency on AirPods was that bad. That actually explains a lot of the difficulties I have with phone calls on them. (One of my hats is "audio engineer", and two people on AirPods plus transmission delay has to get up into the 350-450ms range, and that definitely is fatiguing given that my ears are always cued to this.)

Back to holding my phone against my face, I guess.

Yeah, this is crazy that Apple is only using AAC for their codec and not anything like aptX that can get down to 50ms range. I would expect Apple to do better here and even have different low latency codec specifically for voice calls.

> 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?

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