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AirPods Max

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Re: AirPods Max

#541

Post by ogre_codes »

eertami wrote: post #113

$549!? That puts it in the same price category as: Sennheiser HD660S, Audeze LCD-1, Beyerdynamic DT1770/1990, Grado RS2e, among many many others. Honestly, I don't understand why you would buy these when there are a lot of established professional audio companies offering better sound at a cheaper price. At least airpods have a unique selling point in their portability and ux but I don't see how this benefits over-ea…

> Sennheiser HD660S, Audeze LCD-1

These are wired headphones that lack ANC.

Haven't listened to them, but just looking at the features it's pretty obvious these aren't for the same people. Apple's cans are Wireless high quality headphones with Active Noise Cancellation, transparency mode, and seamless switching. The only thing they have in common with the ones you listed is "Headphones".

This is all setting aside the fact that you are prejudging audio quality of a product nobody has reviewed.

I suspect there are a ton of people like me who are just fine with good sound and very interested in getting wireless noise cancelling headphones.

Re: AirPods Max

#542

Post by lameiam »

Having just bought a pair of DT 1770 pros, I will be really interested to see how these compare. Also, how they will interact with my DAC/HeadPhone amp.

Re: AirPods Max

#543

Post by willbutler »

layoutIfNeeded wrote: post #96

>incredible high-fidelity audio You mean a headphone that doesn't support lossless audio? Lol!

This. There doesn't seem to be any mention of a lossless codec over Bluetooth 5.0. Why spend so much effort on sound quality on the device if the source is lossy?

Re: AirPods Max

#544

Post by [deleted] »

temporallobe wrote: post #518
eertami wrote: post #113

$549!? That puts it in the same price category as: Sennheiser HD660S, Audeze LCD-1, Beyerdynamic DT1770/1990, Grado RS2e, among many many others. Honestly, I don't understand why you would buy these when there are a lot of established professional audio companies offering better sound at a cheaper price. At least airpods have a unique selling point in their portability and ux but I don't see how this benefits over-ea…

For the record, the best headphones in the world are the Sony MDR-7506s, which sell for less than $100 in the US. These are well-known in the audio production and musician world and are prized for their accuracy, frequency response, comfort, and output. I’ve tried plenty of other high-end cans including a few $1000+ audiophile-realm models but just didn’t connect with any of them. In fact, I’ve owned many pairs over…

[deleted]

Re: AirPods Max

#545

Post by ascagnel_ »

bborud wrote: post #450

I've spent a lot of money on earphones over the last 10 years in order to try to find a pair that doesn't suck. Audio quality is perhaps fourth on the list of deciding factors. It doesn't matter how good headphones sound if they are painful to wear, have impractical misfeatures or are too expensive. If these fit my head and I can wear them for 12 hours straight, they may be worth the money. I'd pay $550 for that. How…

> However, this is Apple. Which means it is likely they will find some clever way of making these headphones obsolete. Or they will break in some unfixable, or expensive to repair, way.

It's Apple -- they'll keep iterating on it, come out with a better model at the same price at right around the same time the battery wear in your current model will make you choose between an expensive battery replacement or just getting the new version.

Re: AirPods Max

#546

Post by c1b »

hajile wrote: post #289
mrtksn wrote: post #162

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 lifte…

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 head…

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.

Re: AirPods Max

#547

Post by [deleted] »

eertami wrote: post #113

$549!? That puts it in the same price category as: Sennheiser HD660S, Audeze LCD-1, Beyerdynamic DT1770/1990, Grado RS2e, among many many others. Honestly, I don't understand why you would buy these when there are a lot of established professional audio companies offering better sound at a cheaper price. At least airpods have a unique selling point in their portability and ux but I don't see how this benefits over-ea…

[deleted]

Re: AirPods Max

#548

Post by dheera »

mrtksn wrote: post #162

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 lifte…

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.

Re: AirPods Max

#549

Post by yalogin »

eertami wrote: post #113

$549!? That puts it in the same price category as: Sennheiser HD660S, Audeze LCD-1, Beyerdynamic DT1770/1990, Grado RS2e, among many many others. Honestly, I don't understand why you would buy these when there are a lot of established professional audio companies offering better sound at a cheaper price. At least airpods have a unique selling point in their portability and ux but I don't see how this benefits over-ea…

I don't understand the higher end audio space and may be that's why, I don't quite understand your statement.

What makes these other companies good at audio that Apple cannot match? They are a huge company that have been making audio products for a really long time and (no matter what one thinks of them) they own Beats too. So I actually say, if Sennheiser and others can do it Apple can do it better, not just because of their approach but also because of their SW/HW integration story.

Re: AirPods Max

#550

Post by simias »

eertami wrote: post #113

$549!? That puts it in the same price category as: Sennheiser HD660S, Audeze LCD-1, Beyerdynamic DT1770/1990, Grado RS2e, among many many others. Honestly, I don't understand why you would buy these when there are a lot of established professional audio companies offering better sound at a cheaper price. At least airpods have a unique selling point in their portability and ux but I don't see how this benefits over-ea…

It might be a bit of a hot take but from my point of view audio is mostly a solved problem. It's not like video where we still have trade-offs in terms of quality due to the huge bandwidth and processing involved for very high resolutions as well as the difficulty of reproducing very high dynamic ranges and framerates.

None of this is relevant for audio. Despite what some audiocultists would have you believe CD quality is basically as good as it gets, you cover effectively 100% of the (normal) human hearing range, both in frequency range and dynamics. Ok, ok, technically not 100% of the dynamics, but few people care to listen to "distant ventilator on a quiet night" followed by "Airbus A380 taking off from the point of view of the jet turbine".

Of course the quality of reproduction matters a lot, playing a CD through cheap $5 earphones is not going to sound great. But even there the cost of decent quality electronics keeps dropping and dropping. You can get a good quality DAC for a trivial amount of money (and stand alone DACs are still usually overpriced because they're for the niche/enthusiast/pro market, everybody else uses whatever their smartphones/laptop/desktop has integrated).

Buying ultra high-end, ultra-expensive "audiophile" equipment these days is effectively like buying mechanical watches. It's because you like the luxury and craftsmanship, or you're making a fashion statement. Apple knows that, hence these AirPods. If you're about function over form you'd sooner get a cheapo Casio quartz watch.

And there's nothing wrong with that, it just annoys me when audiophiles try to justify their fashion statements with pseudo-science.

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