Hacker News Reader

Comment by grech | Hacker News Reader

This may be a normie response - but Apple Airpods Pro are one of the best products I've used. After years of using several bluetooth headsets that get finicky (with connections that is), having a set that just connects and works every single time is refreshing. They really changed my behavior - I went from not liking phone conversations at all (getting agitated after a few minutes)to comfortably having long phone calls. I would replace mine immediately if they were lost / broken.

View on HN

I agree, unfortunately however I've recently developed worsening tinnitus that I've attributed to them. There appear to be several others who have a similar experience[0].

I've stopped using them in favor of my over-ear VModas the past couple weeks and my tinnitus is significantly better. I rarely listen to music loud and the volume only seldom goes over 50% so I'm having a hard time attributing it to excess listening volume.

[0]: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250886390

I’m curious, did the amount of time you used go up significantly with the airpod pros? I enjoy mine so much I use them for multiple hours every day, which is quite a shift in usage compared to the other awful earbuds I would use before.

Yes, most definitely hence why I also began to wonder, if the increased usage time may come with caveats.

This is just a thought, but I pondered that the noice-cancelling is further worsening ear health. I'd argue that AirPodsPro NC causes this because it feeds additional sound in (ie. cancelling) which takes an extra toll on your hearing. Again, just a thought. I have no science to back this up.

This is something I've been concerned about for quite some time with nose-cancelling in-ears.

Being an avid user of my AirPodsPro for commutes, working out and just taking calls in general, I figured that the constant noise cancellation, and tight seal in the ear canal, might cause tinnitus.

I haven't experienced any symptoms yet but I fear that prolonged use will further highten the chances of such a diagnosis. I'm sorry to hear that you might be experiencing tinnitus from AirPodsPro use, but I can't say that it haven't cross my mind, that it would lead to that.

Interesting. I returned my airpod pros because I kept losing them and/or their case, and had anxiety until I found them. And I knew it was only a matter of time before I didn't find them again. Also, the audio quality on the other end of my calls was actively bad. I've reverted to wired earbuds with a mic in the cable, and am (very) grateful I was stubborn about keeping the 3.5mm headphone jack on whatever phone I'm using. (Perhaps my experience would have been better with an iPhone, but there is no way I'm buying an iPhone, for lots of reasons.)

If you are losing them at home, they can make a small sound through the Find iPhone page in iCloud.

Does that actually work when they are in the case? I haven’t gotten it to…

Sadly, you can't setup find my.. for them if you don't have an iPhone, which seems blatantly anticompetitive behavior from Apple.

Yes! They're so easy to misplace. I lost my first pair of Airpods Pro, so I picked up a Catalyst Case [0] for them that I can clip onto my belt loop or messenger bag. Much more peace of mind. Haven't come close to losing them since.

[0] https://www.apple.com/shop/product/HP0B2ZM/A/catalyst-waterp...

Since the latest iOS minor version (some time in the last month or so), certain models of AirPods are integrated in the Find My network, meaning if you lose them, other (participating) iPhones in the area (~1b worldwide) will report their location as they go past. Meaning they should be much harder to lose.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207581 https://www.theverge.com/2021/10/5/22711557/apple-lost-airpo...

Speaking of, the Find My network also seems excellently designed. Reminds you if/when you leave any tagged item (keys, wallet, etc) behind.

I bought Airpods soon after they came out, and got a pair of Airpods Pro just a couple of years ago as a gift for my girlfriend.

I just switched back to a pair of $50 IEMs (Tin T2 Pros) with a replaceable MMCX cable and foam tips. Fortunately I use a phone that has a jack.

The removal of the headphone jack is an absolute crime. Everyone I know struggles with Bluetooth regularly, but even the Apple models with special pairing chips don’t ALWAYS behave. Meanwhile, I do have to deal with a cable on these IEMs… but honestly, after 2+ years of suffering with Bluetooth, I’m more than happy with that tradeoff.

By the way, the headphones I have now are absolutely fantastic. Especially with the foam tips, noise cancellation is just about as good as my Airpod Pros, and I can either wear them like normal headphones, or hooked above the ear, to keep them more secure (mostly while running).

They’re also built out of solid aluminum like absolute tanks.

If anybody is skeptical about Bluetooth headphones, please seek out phones with the jack and try out something like these IEMs. I think you’ll be very happy.

or/and Try something like FiiO BTR5.

I agree with this. I remember buying mine in a busy part of SF. I opened them on the street and my iPhone instantly recognized them and paired. I didn’t even need to open the Bluetooth settings menu. Then, as soon as I put them on, the street I was on, which was so busy and chaotic just prior, became dead silent. I hadn’t experienced magic like that in a long while.

Sounds great, I bought a pair just yesterday ;-)

I am really looking forward to trying them out. So far I have $40 NoName true-wireless headphones [1] and Sennheiser over-ear ANC headpones (MB660). I really like those $40 headphones, but sadly they last for 4-5 hours only and I reach that limit a few times per week. But since the true wireless headphones feel very different to the over-ear headphones, I decided to buy another pair and wanted to try out some high quality ANC in-ear headphones.

Given the factor 5 price difference and the fact that I am quite happy with my current headphones, I am very interested how the Apple AirPods Pro will perform.

[1] HolyHigh BE1018. They look exactly like these: https://www.amazon.com/-/en/dp/B07XFMHQDP

I much prefer the regular/original Airpods with the tapping instead of pinching.

Whoever designed pinching, obviously doesn't listen to books or podcasts. Three pinches to skip back 15 seconds? No thanks.

They also don't have winter. Trying pinching with a stocking cap on.

I hear the latency is high, which is a challenge for all wireless earphones. So good for music and calls, but not for videos, games, singing. Do I understand correctly? :-)

“It depends”, it’s not high latency enough to notice on calls, music is obviously fine- but it’s not going to be able to keep up with a graded DAC+Mic in a professional setting (like a recording studio).

I haven’t tried it for video editing, though I suspect it might cause your scrobbing to stutter because macos will “pause” media playback until the headphones have been instructed to play, so you don’t have desync issues.

But that’s not what it competes against.

There’s no noticeable latency when using the phone/iPad, Mac as a normal consumer, calls, music, video conferencing.

The basic AirPods are the lowest latency Bluetooth headphones I have tried. In A2DP mode the latency is somewhere around 30ms that is almost good enough for playing an instrument through them but certainly good enough for games or phone calls. The theoretical minimum for AAC is around 21ms. For calls the problem is that somehow Apple didn't invent a proprietary extension so you're stuck with HFP sound quality.

That is good indeed. I was reading that the numbers are higher than 200 ms.

https://semiserious.blog/airpods-pro

Is the latency under A2DP mode specified somewhere?

My numbers are from measuring round trip latency through headphones and phone's built in mic and then basically guessing which part is input and which part output latency (they're both small). 200ms is certainly in line with most Bluetooth headphones. I'm not sure what the guy is doing differently from the app I'm working on, but for us AirPods are clearly the lowest latency choice.

EDIT: Ignore what I wrote below and see the update. I'm getting similar latency numbers.

Generally, the guy is getting so massive latencies that I suspect he's doing something wrong. The app I'm working on has MIDI to wired audio latency around 10ms when audio buffer size is dropped to 128 samples, so 70ms sounds really excessive. Touchscreen is both slow and the timing is all over the place (try playing drums in GarageBand to see) so it might explain some of it.

Great! Thanks.

Ok, I'll take back what I wrote above. I tried the measurement again and got 197ms round trip for the same 2nd gen AirPods and iPad Mini4 running current iOS. It's not the worst, but certainly not better than most of Bluetooth headphones. I'm not sure why I got the low number before and whether it was a measurement error or changed in a software update.

No worries. Thanks for updating.

From what I am reading, the best of the Bluetooth headphones are claiming say 120 ms, and some have as high as 300 ms.

I just hope manufacturers keep making wired ones with active noise cancellation (ANC). Already it seems ANC is seen less often for wired ones than for the wireless ones.

My guess is that since ANC already needs DSP and small headphone amp, it doesn't cost much to add a Bluetooth receiver. Removing the cable input socket and ADC could even recover some of the cost. On the other hand, it seems that there's limited market for wired headphones right now.

Replying to myself since I can't edit the post above: I can't reproduce the low number any more. With current iOS I get 197ms which is not worse than competition but not that good either.

I wonder why latency issue on video playback isn't solved in major platforms. Just also delay video along with audio.

I’ve owned both the pro and the max. Returned the max because the pro has noticeably superior noise canceling. Also weight + portability.

> I went from not liking phone conversations at all (getting agitated after a few minutes)to comfortably having long phone calls

I love my Airpods. One of my favorite products of all time. But I've found them to be totally useless on calls. I'm on my third pair -- that's another thing: they wear out if you use them a lot -- and I've had 3 different phones in the meantime and nobody can ever hear me when I talk on them. I've tested it myself and they make the speaker sound very quiet and far away. It must not affect everyone, because I see people using them for phone calls, but I've never been able to make that function work.

I can’t bring myself to spend this much money on a device that has worse mic audio than my free airpods. And it’s the same for all wireless buds, the mic is just in the wrong position.

Useful observations, but is this really a comment on design? The key feature, a robust connection, is just software/firmware quality.

I don’t quite understand this comment.

As a customer, I don’t care what a firmware is or if it’s the best software or if it runs in Azure or iCloud. To me, it just works. I don’t care how. The fact that it works way better than competitor products I tried over the years is enough to say it’s well defined.

The key is a frictionless experience.

The topic of discussion isn't product performance, it's design. If a certain car model has a high top speed, this may be suggestive evidence that the engine is well designed, but the top speed itself is not considered an example good design. So it would be fine if we had something to say about the design of the Apple software that produced the reliable Bluetooth connection, but just the fact that something doesn't break isn't good design.

That's my understanding anyway.

> If a certain car model has a high top speed, this may be suggestive evidence that the engine is well designed, but the top speed itself is not considered an example good design.

I don’t think this is a useful analogy. Top speed is a randomly picked metric, which presumably most car buyers don’t care for.

Once you get into the exotic super car car segment, then one could say that a super car that only tops out at 60mph or is 0-60 in 8 seconds is poorly designed… and more so if they care about performance over other measures (reliability, crash safety, fuel efficiency, comfort, etc).

A design document has both functional and non functional requirements.

> but just the fact that something doesn't break isn't good design.

If your non functional requirements optimize for reliability and consistency, and that’s exactly what your implementation does while making reasonable trade offs, that’s the exact hallmark of not just a good but great design.

> I don’t think this is a useful analogy. Top speed is a randomly picked metric, which presumably most car buyers don’t care for.

My comment applies to any metric that is an unalloyed good, not just top speed. Saying "AWS has high up-time" or "This car rarely needs repairs" or "I never spill coffee with this cup" are suggestive that something has been designed well, but they are not themselves substantive comments about the design. For that you'd have to say how they achieved those things. It's the difference between a goal and the method.

> that’s the exact hallmark of not just a good but great design.

Talking about trade-offs between goals would be substantive discussion of design. That one metric got high marks without saying anything about how is not.

I don't think this digression into semantics has reached diminishing returns.

The hardest part is making it look easy.

Firmware and software that influences user experience is absolutely valid for a design discussion.

Prioritizing ease of connection was a design decision, and not one that’s inevitable (see a dozen other duly wireless earbuds that don’t do it as well).

I agree that if the prioritization decision was made as a trade-off then this could be a question of design, but something would need to be said about that. Saying "I like the design of my car because it goes fast" doesn't really make sense unless you bring up what was changed (e.g., the aerodynamics, or the missing backseats, or whatever).

You think a car going fast (faster than most others) is not part of the designed user experience of that car?

Speed is part of the user experience, and good user experience is the goal of, and usually relies on, good design. But the result -- speed -- is not itself design. Otherwise there would be no distinction between good products and good design.

And I would rank them near the bottom because they don't fit in my ears without causing significant pain within a few minutes.

Even with the 3 different tip sizes? The old EarPods/AirPods worked alright in my ears but never great. The Pros have been fantastic for me personally.

Not the OP, but I have the same issue. Tried the 3 original tip sizes as well as 3rd party foam tips - no use, they either hurt after a short while or don't seal properly, causing ANC to barely work at all and the headphones to fall out when jogging or doing exercise. Guess my ears are not shaped for the Pros, or any in-ear earbuds for that matter - it has always been the same story with any brand I tried over the years.

However, the 1st/2nd gen "base" AirPods are a perfect fit for me, so I just ordered a new pair to replace my 3 years old 1st gen with almost completely failed batteries. Would've used something like Podswap, but unfortunately no such service is available in my country that I could find.

If they are the original version consider getting them tested at the store to see if they are covered by the recall. Free replacement with the new model (apparently with improved adhesives).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com