Airpods Max Sucked for Me | Hacker News Reader

Airpods Max Sucked for Me

mattfarrugia.com

65 pointsmfarrugia41 comments

Audio / bluetooth on macs is currently a total disaster. My newer macs - mainly a 2019 15" - have some truly bizarre behaviors around these. One example is that if I switch 3.5mm audio cables too quickly it starts routing audio to my HDMI monitor instead. Macs still can't control the volume of HDMI audio out so that means I get hit with a max volume blast. I have to detach one cable, wait 60 seconds, and attach the other to avoid this.

Like the author describes, activating the mic on bluetooth headsets on my mac - airpods or 3rd party - brings the audio bitrate down to a quality comparable to AM radio. Strangely, I can use the airpods to make calls on my Android phone with little issue.

Audio aside, I routinely encounter bluetooth devices that just won't work with my mac. For example keyboards that send just a few keystrokes then bug out or mice that lag and teleport all over the screen.

The most infuriating part is that I can attach a USB bluetooth adapter and use it instead of the builtin mac one and all of these problems go away. But am I going to carry around a port adapter and a dongle so I can use a feature that I paid for in my laptop anyway? As if. Furthermore none of these accessories have trouble with other computers - even older macs!

/rant

> activating the mic on bluetooth headsets [...] brings the audio bitrate down to a quality comparable to AM radio

This is actually an artifact of the BT profile used. It is the same for most bluetooth headsets (all I know), and the same for all operating systems I know. Usually most people don't realize because when they enable the mic they're listening to... well, other people (definitely not music) and human voice sounds quite good at these bitrates. Good operating systems will just pause the music when you switch to the headset profile so that you don't hear it heavily compressed (until you finish the call and disable the mic).

It won't matter which "BT version" your adapter is using. 2.0, 4.0, 4.2 or 5.0. The headset profiles have remained unchanged for decades.

There is something new in 5.x -- the "LE Audio" profiles -- but I know no headset using it yet. And then there's the myriad of propietary extensions. Most of them are snake oil; your mileage may vary. But then again when using proprietary extensions BT version does not really matter either.

I don't really care about the nitty gritty. The fact that it's even possible on something that's supposed to be high-end, is ridiculous.

I'm not so sure. I mainly used the airpods as a mic for Zoom calls so the content is voice either way. The quality degradation is drastic enough that I don't even try to use the Airpods on my computer for voice calls anymore. However, they're still my go-to for use with my phone and it doesn't seem nearly as bad there. Yes, they have different modes for mic on vs mic off but on my phone they are usable.

I'm curious as to why the same BT profile achieved 8kHz to my Big Sur Mac with a Bluetooth 4.0 chipset, 16 kHz to a Big Sur MacBook with a Bluetooth 4.2 chipset and 24 kHz to the iPhone 11 Pro with a 5.0 chipset (and the other custom Apple chips of course). Any ideas?

How do you measure that? Most likely this is some Apple propietary sheninangs so all bets are off. They are probably limiting things in software for reasons.

It is highly unlikely to be related to the BT version itself. There have been no bandwidth improvements to classic Bluetooth for decades. And Apple is unlikely to use LE Audio since BT 4.0 didn't had the required bandwidth for even full duplex 8kHz.

If you drag a Voice Memo to the finder you can find it under Get Info > More Info. This is handy because it syncs the memos from the iPhone back to the Mac for direct comparison. You can also see the it being negotiated in the debug console for both Mac and iPhone or in the Bluetooth Explorer audio graph for the Mac.

Also experiencing similar headaches with MacBookPro and 3.5mm headphone jack, HDMI, and using Bluetooth midi devices - sounds crazy to try reading all these other problems with vanilla setups. It did use to “just work”.

I've had a lot of problems with USB DACs as well. I frequently find that audio degrades into a kind of stuttering or static that doesn't go away until a reboot. I've experienced this with multiple DACs (Aune, Centrance, O2, and Presonus) on multiple machines (iMac 5K, 16" MacBook Pro, and hackintosh). I feel like it's worse in recent versions of macOS (say, High Sierra and later), but it's intermittent, so it's hard to say.

I always wondered whether Linux would become MacOS faster than MacOS could become Linux, but I honestly never expected it would be MacOS that would be the one with unrepairably buggy sound device quirks, no support for features of advertised display specs like MST, a condition that requires logic board replacemnt when you try to use the GPU after the battery fully discharges because of T2/BridgeOS, and power/USB problems that cause the computer to crash if you plug/unplug mouse and keyboard while docked over USB-C.

I fixed most of these things running Linux on my MacBook Pro, but if I didn't care whether or not my computer worked, I wouldn't have chosen Apple.

I had a long but with a FiiO USB Dac where it's drop the volume of one audio channel. I'd have to go into MIDI settings and even it back out.

Here's an online version. Article is currently down probably because of high traffic https://web.archive.org/web/20210125171819/https://mattfarru...

I admit that my requirements are not the standard ones, I just thought this might be useful info for other people who, like me, thought they'd be perfect for working from home

It seems like your server can't handle the traffic.

It's a good article, thank you for writing it!

It is frustrating how opaque bluetooth is. A lot of regular folks would have no idea that getting a newer Mac would improve their airpods microphone quality.

For what it's worth I have found the NC 700's to have a much better microphone quality when in self voice mode. It's explained here: https://www.gearpatrol.com/tech/audio/a594565/bose-noise-can...

Yes the microphone was better. My Bluetooth 4.0 adapter still resulted in an 8kHz duplex connection to them though

Improve? Mic, perhaps, but my range and connection reliability have gone down the toilet with a new Macbook air, compared to my pre-USB-c version. I can’t get more than 3’ from it without the audio cutting out. The same headphones can get 100’+ with my iPhone SE.

In case anyone cares, the Jabra Evolve2 85s arrived today. They definitely sound worse for music listening but I'll keep them because the USB Bluetooth dongle fixes the 8kHz problem, they work wired over USB and they cut out the event noise in the house. YMMV.

Do you use the Fenvi bluetooth adaptor or an Bluetooth chip pulled from a genuine Mac? The fenvi adaptor in my experience is bad, it have high interference.

Bluetooth on Macs is infuriatingly broken, even with Apple's own products. I have the AirPods Pro with a 2019 13" MBP and run into similar issues: if I'm just listening to music, everything is fine. As soon as the microphones come on to do a call, the audio quality goes down the tube and there is a loud crackling noise in the right AirPod that never goes away (and I know this isn't the crackling problem with AirPods Pro in general, because I already had mine replaced to fix that issue, and they work fine on all other devices). I end up having to take the right one out, which defeats the entire purpose of having ANC headphones.

Not had that one. The annoying one for me is the switching between the Mac and the iPhone. Never connects to the correct device ever. If I answer a call I have to spend 10 seconds debugging it and reconnecting.

This isn't the bluetooth, it's a known problem with the AirPods Pro. I used the regular AirPods (with no issues) for a year before getting AirPods Pro, which I then used for a couple months before the increasingly bad audio issues made them completely unusable. I ended up buying a new pair of the regular AirPods and, again, no issues.

I read somewhere that it was an early-batch problem and that it's been fixed in newer iterations of the Pro, but there's no way I'm going to spend money on them again just to find out. The AirPods Pro are the only Apple device I've ever been totally and completely disappointed with. The regular AirPods remain one of the most unambiguously-good Apple devices I've bought.

I had mine replaced under warranty because of this. The specific problem only appears in the active noise cancelling or transparency modes. Can also test it by touching the pod. Ones with the problem will make crackling noises in active modes.

Agreed. On my iMac Pro, both AirPods and AirPods Pro had serious reliability issues. Occasionally during calls I would end up having skipping audio issues, and my bluetooth magic trackpad would also stutter when these issues were ongoing. Sometimes the bluetooth driver would seemingly crash, everything would reconnect, and it would be fine.

The workaround I discovered was that if I plugged in my bluetooth trackpad via USB during a call, these issues would basically never happen.

Not to mention all the other general issues with them failing to stay connected to my Mac, or failing to connect initially. These issues also happened on multiple MacBook Pros, including new top-of-the-line 16" models. Whereas I have basically zero problems with AirPods on my iPhone or AppleTV.

In short: the macOS bluetooth stack has some serious shortcomings that aren't present in iOS.

Bluetooth is infuriatingly broken. Headphones work sometimes and not others. My car sometimes connects to my phone and other times not. Doing Bluetooth voice chat on discord with some games breaks game audio completely.

The most reliable Bluetooth I've found is a hardware device that pretends to be a USB sound card and connects to my headphones via Bluetooth. Anything with a full operating system seems like a disaster.

From the article linked to in the posted article, a paragrah explaining why when Apple “fixed” AirPods Pros giving some people this ear discomfort, others of us were pissed off the noise cancelling had been dialed way back:

> ”The bottom line is, the eardrum suck phenomenon isn’t directly caused by highly effective noise canceling. It’s a side effect caused by the filter required to achieve highly effective noise canceling without encountering feedback problems. So it appears we may always have this tradeoff -- the headphones with the best noise canceling will produce the strongest eardrum suck effect.”

— “Eardrum Suck, Mystery Solved” - https://www.soundstagesolo.com/index.php/features/178-eardru...

I've messed with this a lot, and the best setup I've come up with is:

- Etymotic ER4SR earbuds

- Laptop mic(s)

- Do some weird thing for my iPhone (Airpods, Earpods, dongle to my Etymotics)

I've never had noise cancellation be anywhere near as effective as a good ear seal, and I absolutely do not trust it to not malfunction and damage my hearing. Noise cancellation and high quality sounds are essentially orthogonal anyway so, it's an easy choice.

Unfortunately sound quality almost always means giving up a mic and wireless too. Etymotic has a neckbuds adapter but you can't replace the cables, which means its lifespan is something around a year. There are some great Bluetooth converters, but since they're almost exactly like plugging into a phone I don't really see the point.

There are some aftermarket cables you can buy that have mics built in. I messed with this a little but, it turned out that the mics on my laptop were actually pretty good.

So, yeah my setup now is I carry two sets of earbuds around, which actually all things considered is coming away pretty cheap. Can wholeheartedly recommend the ER4SRs too (they make a version w/ a bass boost but, don't crack), replaceable cable, replaceable filters, insanely good sound quality, great support. The immediate feeling of IEMs is pretty uncomfortable, but spend 3-4 months getting tips that are right for your ears and getting used to them. It's been extremely worth it for me, I can focus and do real work in pretty bonkers environments. Plus your battery will never die ;)

If you’re using arbitrary headsets with a desktop Mac for work conferencing from a non-empty household, run don’t walk and subscribe to https://krisp.ai/

> Speak Without Noise: With a single button, the background noise going from you to other call participants will be removed.

> Listen Without Noise: With a single button, the background noise coming from the call participants to you will be removed.

It works beautifully from desktop, in any tool, which makes sense for WFH focus. (Unfortunately they cancelled the dial-up shim number allowing it to work via mobile, which I’d appreciated.)

Much cheaper than dedicated ANC, which doesn’t remove remote noise anyway.

Also: NVIDIA RTX Voice

https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/guides/nvidia-rtx-voice...

I've restarted the ghost server on my $5 a month Droplet :joy: I guess this article was more popular than I expected. Sorry about that.

Audio quality is great but i tried them for a meeting and the mic is terrible... no one can hear me... Enjoyed listening to music with them just don't do that very often

https://twitter.com/jessitron/status/1351199780165316608

> The AirPod Pro has great noise cancellation. But I gotta recommend against them to anyone with small girl-ears or ever classified as soprano.

> They filter my voice as noise unless I lower it.

If you can hold out for Bluetooth 5.2 devices, it includes a new audio codec [0] that might be worth waiting for.

[0]: https://www.bluetooth.com/media/le-audio/le-audio-faqs/

No mention of improved latency or latency figures at all. Until it's in the single digit range, Bluetooth audio will remain a gimmick, unusable in certain cases.

Right now, we're 2 orders of magnitude away from that.

Can confirm re: ANC. It's good if you don't wear glasses. With glasses, it's fine but not better than the Sony WH1000XM3's I had before.

The sound quality is really good and I can actually wear these all day (the XM3s get hot after a few hours), so I put up with it.

Somewhat surprised at the number of negative experiences. I've had them for ~3 weeks and can't believe I didn't buy them sooner. I did go from a wired headset to these for work and they're a game changer. Battery life is excellent. Noise cancelling is great. Yes, it seems to pair to the closest device but pairing is a couple of clicks away.

I have had a bad experience with battery life on my pair.

Context: during the day I use a good desktop DAC/amplifier hooked up to my laptop/desktop and a good quality wired set of headphones, but in the evening when I want to get a break from the computer I use my phone and a Bluetooth headphone.

I use either a Drop Panda or my AirPods Max. Both are very convenient. I’ll listen happily for 2-3 hours in the evening in comfort. I find myself having to charge the Airpods Max every other day, it seems to me like it drains very quickly even when it’s in the case. The panda switches off properly and is always ready to go, I can go a week without charging it with this usage pattern.

When I’ve gone to reach for the Max it’s always very low on battery or dead, even if it’s had very little usage after a charge a day or so before.

If it powered off properly I’d be a lot happier

fwiw these are similar complaints of high tier wireless noise cancelling headphones. Lack of wired fallback for the mic is common enough, I suspect it has to do with the bluetooth SOC on the device.

Your web server sucks for me ;)

Haha - yes. Yes it does.

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