Is Bluetooth holding back Apple's AirPods? We asked the man who made them
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First one was that you can't see a charge percent by default, but I managed to fix it by installing an app from Play Store. Second one is that sometimes, when they connect to my phone, volume somehow glitches, so even if it's on the half the strength, you can barely hear them.
I don't know why the whole ecosystem is so fucked up, even AAC ~256kbps can pass double blind test against lossless source, assuming properly encoded and decoded - this assumption is not fulfilled in a slightest in Bluetooth land.
P.S. I really want to see some good and open codec, like .opus, properly implemented - this will close major source of frustration for everyone involved and will drive whole industry forward
At 460kbps it's very very similar to LDAC at 990kbps.
It's also unlike AAC a truly adaptive codec.
If you really need it AptX also has a lossless mode iirc.
The best codec would obviously be to just use Opus, yeah. But AptX adaptive pretty much solves Bluetooth audio.
Re: solve - as long as there are licensing issues, it can't solve BT Audio even if it was such great codec
P.S. Random link from google with measurements of some actual device using AptX, AAC, LDAC
https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/t...
The signal-to-noise ratio is lower than CD quality but still good enough so that noise is not audible:
http://soundexpert.org/articles/-/blogs/audio-quality-of-blu...
Good luck finding a system that can play back LHDC though. At least thr LDAC encoder is free (to my knwoledge) and Android and PipeWire have support for it. LHDC, you'd better get the one of three phones that support it (from Huawei, Xiaomi, maybe OnePlus I think). I mean, Savitech has their forked fluoride Bluetooth stack + aarch64 LHDC binary blob and wrapper library source code on GitLab but I guess you'd have to hack something together to try it.
I'm very much in favour of Opus on Bluetooth and if you browse Reddit you will find someone has attempted to work on it but no details past that: https://www.reddit.com/r/hardware/comments/enad1t/comment/fd....
realistically speaking latency only matters in games/calls. For any sort of media playback you can just delay the video stream to compensate.
It seems to me like some of the big constraints on codec choice are power, latency and then quality. Maybe “spectral efficiency” too, but I don’t really know.
Could be why they are using a high rate lossless codec? Maybe said codec is super efficient to encode on a tiny airpod with a tiny power source?
I guess what I’m saying is maybe there are additional constraints specific to this problem domain that aren't a concern for the rest of us?
That doesn’t mean it can’t be an unencumbered, open source codec though. It just might mean the “common” ones out there don’t fit the constraints of the system.
https://mostechtips.com/how-to-fix-bluetooth-headset-poor-qu...
Personally I never use headsets for calls, but I also never make calls. I only use headphones for music (and would never touch airpods with a 10 foot pole)
My earphone system when out and about are Shure KSE1200 tuned to Harman IE, electrostats that are easily the best in the world when PEQ’ed. I also use AirPods Pro in a pinch. They’re pretty good - even from an audiophile perspective for those who care about proper engineering - I’d give them an A for their tuning and a B for technicalities… which surely could be improved off Bluetooth. They are decently well reviewed AFA tuning on places like Rtings, Crinacle, and are well regarded for the type of device they are on Head-fi.
If you spent any time on ASR you’d know the vast majority of headphones have highly flawed FR, even the very high end. I’d prefer to listen to the lowly AirPods Pro, at least without hefty amounts of PEQ, over most headphones. Fwiw I found head-fi nearly 20 years ago, have been to several CanJams, have run my own meets, and probably owned over $50k in headphone rigs over the years... I know what what the 'best' sounds like.
Edit: shame about the downvote, but saying "wouldn't touch with a 10 foot pole" is a kneejerk thing to say that has no basis in their actual performance or engineering.
I personally use a qudelix with Dan Clark aeon rt. For in ear I use tin audio p(1 or 2, can't remember off the top of my head) and from my experiences the original airpods can't even come close to the tin HiFi planar in ears (yes they do have their flaws, but tinny is not one of them)
I never use my airpods max with my iPhone. Likewise I never use my regular airpods with my macbook. But whenever I put them on, no matter what options I check like "pair with last device", it pairs with the wrong device. I have removed the airpods max from my iPhone but Apple will just add it back.
Things like this are why I don't want to use apple's account services at all.
(1) Battery is nearly useless.
(2) The vendor decided to artificially slow the device with forced updates, or worse, the vendor decided to publish a list of CVEs and then declare your device ineligible for the necessary security updates going forward.
The earpiece craze started long before. I remember my mono-audio Samsung earpiece that went into one ear and worked perfectly from a decade before Airpods. The samsung charged with a simple USB cable, too.
Technological limitations caused that to be shelved until much later.
Most people I know use only one airpod at a time. That applies to my two teens in highschool and a multitude of professionals I work with. The same people a decade earlier would just be using the Samsung mono ear pieces or the multitude of other ones that existed.
They are a bit of an improvement over some devices out there, but they are probably a downgrade from Bose bluetooth devices I have owned temporarily (I returned them to exchange for a wired buds pair).
I think you are giving Apple too much credit. I would say Airpods have good marketing and it is smart to give them away for free with their other products to create or perpetuate an illusion of popularity.
But once every two weeks or so, the phones (or at least one of them) decide they aren't having any of it and just refuse to pair, and I have to spend the whole morning trying to figure out what went wrong. Bluetooth and I are blood enemies on those days!
I think Powerbeats had connectivity problems with the case where sometime the pins didn’t quite touch.
No you're confused - the point is it's better quality.
There's no limited bandwidth, and it's physically a larger microphone than the very limited micro one in your headset. It picks up the same background noise that its geometry can't eliminate, and can do the same processing to try to remove it.
Those are tiny microphones in your headset, and there's only two of them, sending back a mono signal! A MacBook Pro has an array of three much larger, higher-quality microphones, with high SNR and directional beamforming and the ability to do proper noise cancellation. They're also on a hardware bus to your system. The microphones in a headset just don't compete.
Try it yourself!
It has rudimentary autofocus and a microphone that handily beats everything that is built in to my other devices.
$25, decent lighting and sitting in a room with lots of fabric in it was all it took to be a video conference king.
I also don't work in tech, so the video quality bar wasn't set very high by my colleagues.
Something allows a device to select what it connects with. I have a laptop, tablet and phone with me most of the time and managing the connection by disconnecting via the laptop/phone/tablet/car/whaever is silly - sometimes you have to kill bluetooth on two or three devices to get the device you want connected.
Something that has high quality audio in headset mode.
Something that makes data sharing easy. Having 500 different apps that must be the same on both ends of the connection so send a file or three is silly.
Every dumbphone around 2005 was able to share, and receive files, use HID devices, and put a lot of context to things like remote control info.
Apple famously was unable to get proper BT keyboard support for 5 years. Nor still it supports OBEX.
Have you ever tried Bluetooth File Transfer for anything substantial? It's snail speed in the real world. Nothing like AirDrop. It's almost unusable in 2021. A video would take minutes to transfer.
And if Apple wanted more bandwidth, at lower power, they had just to put lawyers to destroy UWB patent trolls.
That's nice. It will be nicer when I can pair my phone with my laptop and move big files quickly. Long story short: faster bluetooth file transfer that I can't use is not useful to me.
The issue isn't just the headphones. It's the way bluetooth devices cannot manage what they connect to. A classic: I'm listening to music with headphones in my bedroom. My wife starts the car, and my phone automatically switches to the car. It's crazy, and the even the best headphones in the world (and maybe airpods are) can't fix this mess.
What's wrong with the current process? If turn on a bluetooth device (eg. bluetooth headphones) and it connects to a random one you don't want (eg. your tablet rather than your smartphone), then you can rectify that by going to your smartphone and connecting to that device. It's a bit of a hassle, but it's certainly less of a hassle than going around turning off all bluetooth devices in the vicinity, or trying to get device selection working on a bluetooth headphone (weird tap combinations? voice recognition?).
It's obvious that Apple has been making moves to their own PAN solution for years (look at the unused UWB stuff).
I think it would be cool if HRTF options were exposed to the user. Most people don't care, but I would find it fun to play around with speaker positions and simulated room size.
This sure sounds like something Apple would do!
It's the natural progression when there is a more open competitor: if you want to keep your walled garden relevant you need to keep the alternatives less alluring.
That's my only complaint with my £33 (vs. £109-£239 Apple AirPods) Anker 'Soundcore Life P2' wireless earbuds. Probably would pay a bit more for that to be easier, but not AirPods more, find it baffling how popular they are (or became/continue to be after the arrival of clones anyway) given the price.
Occasionally you will find an app on a device that claims to be playing audio when it’s not, and your AirPods get hijacked, but it’s easy enough to switch back and forth when that happens.
If they're all Apple devices, yes. When I select AirPlay on my iPad, iPhones†, or AppleTV; or Sound on any of my Macs, all of my AirPods† show up and can be selected.
† Multiple iPhones and AirPods because I keep work and personal devices distinct.
I bought mine originally because I was getting fed up of the wires pulling me around when running. I went for AirPods only because I am paying for the integration, QA and ecosystem and I am more than satisfied with what I paid.
The other side of the coin is the people who perpetually drop out of voice conferences and make apologies at work who "refuse to drink the apple Kool aid".
Whenever I want to switch to my Windows laptop, I just click AirPods in the list and it connects instantly. Same when I want to switch back to an Apple device.
The automatic switching is annoying when you use multiple devices simultaneously. Eg. when the kids are watching something on the iPad, and I put in my AirPods because I want to listen to some music on my phone, suddenly I hear audio from the iPad and my kids complain that the audio is gone.
(I've gone back to using wired headphones at home for this reason)
Then they make it harder to avoid switching between devices. For instance if you're on your laptop waiting for a call and want to check some link on your phone, if it ever happens to have audio in any way or form it will take the connection from your laptop, and you'll have to reswitch them when your call starts.
Same if you're listening to something on your iPad and a call comes on your phone . Your guess is as good as mine about how it will go.
In the end I bought separate headphones for each devices and while I had them the airpods only paired with my phone to avoid annoying surprises.
I told my colleagues that got airpods that they will basically be a subscription. That was not the case, at least not they way I thought. They just bought new ones because replacing the battery at apple was too expensive.
Yes
Like linux used only half of whats available in headset modes for years (and just very recently fixed it).
There is different quality and latency
Most of the issue comes from the issue mentioned in this tutorial. Headset with mic is limited in a way that just audio out is not
> The decoder design remains proprietary.
(c) wiki
Want real quality in wireless an earbud? Look for something called an In Ear Monitor (IEM). The abandon data links rely on oldschool radio frequencies. A decent rig will start at about 1000$.
There’s a lot of devices (AirPod pro, WH-1000XM4, Quiet Comfort 45, below the $300 price point that offer * Bluetooth * Active Noise Cancellation * Good microphones for calls * Pretty good sound quality
These devices offer fantastic convenience, sound pretty good, and are generally affordable. Some of them even have a headphone jack. They compare to a Wi-Fi device to me, the net connection will never be as good as a wired, but the convince factor is “good enough”
Instead of downvoting, how about making an argument for why I'm incorrect
I can tell you that I've had conversations with people who sound like the way you're writing and they're never worth the stress or the electrons perturbed. It's almost 2022 and the world is ever more grim. If I'm going to engage with somebody who wants a fight, I prefer it to be about something that matters. Not one's estimation of "trash speakers".
So I don't, I downvote, and I move on. I assume that's pretty normal.
Hearing even something like Bose is world's better, it seems to me like people who think original airpod audio is acceptable haven't listened to anything beyond the audio from the built in speakers on their TV
Changing the Bluetooth standard would not improve the original airpods which is my entire point.
Yes I sound combative, but only because this thread is comparing airpod audio against what? Nothing at all? The bar is apparently super low if someone thinks that original airpods are acceptable, it would make more sense to me to actually set the bar at a place with even decent reproduction across the frequency spectrum
Go on with your high-and-mighty "I've got better things to argue about" shtick, but don't say things and then just expect people to leave you alone because you don't happen to care about it. Some people want to get their money's worth out of a pair of headphones, and Airpods are just not it.
Forgive me if I misunderstand but it seems as though you're taking my post as some sort of appreciation for mediocre audio quality, and that isn't the point. It's not that there are "better" things to argue about--it's that there are less grinding people to discuss things with. It's not being "high and mighty" to not engage with people who are doing their best to make shitty the experience of engaging with them. The OP wanted to know why they were getting downvoted and the behavior, not the position, is the problem.
I'm far from perfect and I can be exhausting to deal with at times; I recognize this and I try to lay off the throttle. But I feel like HN is the only place I hang out on the internet where I find people who unironically act this way and then complain that nobody wants to interact with them. I may be very fortunate in that regard.
Is that not something to be angry about though? They're not $20 pack-in earbuds, they're $170 top-of-their-price-class accessories, they have every right to sound good or even great! Apple has billions of dollars in R&D, they deserve to figure out how to make their audio sound like a not-mess. Sony did it great, Bose does it well, even Jabra makes good-sounding earbuds at-or-below that price figure. So again, I stand by them sounding not good.
> I feel like HN is the only place I hang out on the internet where I find people who unironically act this way and then complain that nobody wants to interact with them.
Well, I'm certainly not mad if nobody is interacting with me :p Not sure where you're pulling that from, but I have yet to see it. Nitpicking, on the other hand, is what nerds do. It's just part of culture for people with a birds-eye view of a landscape to tell others when they're being taken for a ride; with Airpods, I think it's a little obvious that they're priced ridiculously for what they are. Next up I expect people to defend the surplus since they're a "fashion accessory" or the like...
AirPods excel at a select few things. They sound passable enough for the general population, but they are a UX dream compared to what came before them.
Their real killer feature to me is their microphone performance and overall convenience for making phone calls. They go from off to connected and ready in time to answer the phone, without fuss or button pressing.
This, with its pocket sized packaging and generally decent enough music playback make it a good value proposition.
For the Pro model, they also have the most natural transparency mode I’ve ever heard, and they switch back and forth between modes quickly, which again helps for phone calls.
I think the idea that the AirPods audio quality “sucks” is an exaggeration. The intention was to have passable audio quality that the majority of people are fine with. It’s all the other stuff that makes the product a hit.
That's the issue for a lot of people, myself included. At their price point, Airpods just don't compete with other earbuds in their price category. The "classic" Airpods line sounds pretty pitiful, and it's a little angering to listen to them and realize that this is the sound millions of other people are working with. Microphone performance in particular actually disappoints me; the wired Earpods had noticably better mic quality, and they only cost what, 20 bucks? Couple that with pretty uncharacteristically bad battery life, slippery cases and enclosure, not even an option for rubber ear tips... it's just a bit of a scam. Especially for $170.
The Airpods Pros are a little more understandable, but they're not really remarkable headphones. At least not $250 remarkable, to my ear. Don't even get me started on how "remarkable" the Airpods Max would have to be to justify a $500 price tag to listen to lossy, laggy Bluetooth audio.
> pure sound quality isn’t the main attraction
About 20 years, Apple made the iPod so that people could take CD-quality music on the go without compromising on the amount of music you could take with you. There was a time when Apple made products that did care about the quality of sound, the overall experience, and the genuine fidelity of what you listened to. Why do they need to regress? Why can't they just deliver a good pair of wireless earbuds to the masses? They've got some of the largest acoustic engineering teams in the world, I really do expect better from them, even on their $170 "budget" earbuds; they're a luxury company, it's okay to hold them accountable for things like this. They have billions of dollars in unspent research dollars, may as well tell them to put it where it counts.