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Comment by auggierose | Hacker News Reader

I've used them since the day they came out, and they are on my head basically 50% of my non-sleeping time. Good buy.

They don't feel heavy at all, I love the physical design, music sounds great. I hope spatial sound comes to Apple TV, I find it kind of pointless to have spatial sound depending on the position of the iPad / iPhone, I'd rather have spatial sound encoded in the content I am listening to, for example when watching a movie.

In the beginning I thought that the case is bad, but I actually got used to it now. Compared to my Sony-XM3 case, this is a case I ACTUALLY USE. The only stupid thing is that the little hole/nudge in the case for charging doesn't align properly because I've adjusted the AirPods to my head. Oh well. That's really the only thing I can complain about, so that should tell you how f** great they are.

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I really don't understand why spatial audio has to depend on the device having gyro (mems).

I often stick my ipad under my monitor, plug it in, and then pop the headphones on. The ipad doesn't move. It doesn't need to move - for the next two hours, it's a dongle, a very flat appletv.

Spatial audio still works like this. If I pause, look away, and unpause - where I was looking when I unpaused is the new centre. It's not depending on the ipad's position at all, just origin plus delta.

I get that the iphone/ipad need more than this, in-case the device is moving too. But it's not a hard requirement. If the device doesn't move (eg, my appletv hasn't moved for 3 years), then it doesn't need a gyro/mems to tell you it hasn't moved. I think you can safely assume my TV hasn't moved, and if it has - pause and unpause still fixes it.

And agreed on your main point, if I'm home, and awake, I'm probably wearing my Max. I can only speak for my own head, as it's the only one I've tried, but I'm digging them. The foam pads seem to solve the "burning ears" problem I have with extended usage of leather headphones.

The spatial audio processing is done on the mobile device, not the headphones.

Which has made me seriously wonder if it's not actually about a gyro/accelerometer on the device, but did Apple just design the code to run specifically on certain A chips?

From the support page [1] for spatial audio, from the list of supported mobile devices you can basically deduce that it requires an A10 chip or later.

Which would explain why Intel Macs aren't supported. The only thing it doesn't explain is why the Apple TV 5th gen (4K) doesn't support it, which does have the A10. But I swear I'm holding out hope that a software update this year will bring spatial audio to the M1 Macs and the Apple TV 5th gen. I just for the life of me can't imagine why they wouldn't.

[1] https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT211775

Indeed, it must be one of the compute units available on the newer Apple processors. My iPad Pro 2nd gen also doesn't support it. I really hoope that they upgrade the Apple TV to support spacial audio soon. It really is a nice feature. Also, Mac support would be great. The bigger the screen, the more likely you are watching movies on it.

While they are at it, Apple finally should properly support homepods on macOS. They still aren't shown as pairs - at least on Catalina.

Can you comment on the clamping force? I just got them, and this is by far my biggest complaint.

I often forget that I have them on, so actually never noticed a clamping force as a negative. But I like that they are staying nicely fixed to my head.

If you are not happy with how they feel I would send them back. Too much money for headphones you don't like to wear!

This thread suggests a “fix” for the clamping force and includes another anecdote take from an “audiophile.”

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/airpods-max-too-tight-o...

This. I almost returned mine since I couldn't stand the pressure for more than about 20 minutes. As a last resort I stretched it out overnight between some books and they're now perfect. They're on my head 8 hours a day 5 days a week. I take them off for lunch for about an hour.

I'm using my Airpod Max since late December and the clamping force definetly gets better. However, I still have some issues wearing them with my reading glasses. But since I wear contact lenses most of the time, it's not really a problem.

I returned mine since the force was too much to bear for even 15 minutes.

May I ask what you use them for throughout your day? Music? Calls? Games?

Undisturbed home office, Music, TV

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