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AirPods Max

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Re: AirPods Max

#601

Post by propelol »

gwd wrote: post #192
kishinmanglani wrote: post #132

I'm a sucker. I just bought them. I love being able to switch between my iPhone and my Mac on my AirPods. I have the Sony MX3's, and they are great. I don't like toggling between devices and having it automatically connect to my last used device, have to disconnect it from one, blah, blah. This is what Apple does. They raise prices. People are stunned initially. Others follow, then those prices are the norm. iPhone w…

My Bose QC35's connect to both my Macbook & my iPhone at the same time. Hit play on either one, and sound comes out. Listening to something on my laptop and someone calls? It rings and I can answer. I'm sure the AirPods Max will be pretty awesome in its own way though.

It becomes almost unusable when you connect the third device.

Re: AirPods Max

#602

Post by janekm »

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…

Have another look at that internals picture (which is a render so take it with a grain of salt), they appear to be using an extremely unconventional arrangement of a rigid cone driven by two linear motors mounted at 45 degree angles to the driver axis. A rigid cone is challenging but a goal in many high-priced designs (less so for headphones but definitely in speaker drivers with say carbon fibre drivers).

Dual actuators mounted like that could be interesting for spatial audio and may also be used to overcome some of the challenges with suspending rigid driver cones.

In other words it should be interesting to see the reviews...

Re: AirPods Max

#603

Post by theincredulousk »

simias wrote: post #550
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 quali…

ehhh I'd say mostly solved. The problem of turning a recording into a perfect sound-wave replication is actually not easy, because the physical world is annoying with heat and friction and and physics.

I'd say 24/96 is comfortably the "end game solved problem" quality for source recordings though, not CD. Even if it is just for the baseline safety margin that it is easier to implement perfect filters with no transition bands anywhere near the audible frequencies, and that additional bit precision has no downside unless you get into accuracy problems with noise on the recording side.

From the speaker point of view, I think IEMs are the closest to being "solved", since the tiny drivers minimize the physics issues with larger drivers, they are probably closest to pure reproduction. For full-size speakers etc., pure reproduction can be accomplished for certain frequency ranges by individual drivers, but over the full range it is not so "solved", e.g. with bass there is often a physics issue with the kinetics of moving a large driver cone in perfect phase-sync with the relatively tiny and light tweeter.

I've actually been wondering if speaker cones are a possible application for graphene.

Re: AirPods Max

#604

Post by [deleted] »

khalilravanna wrote: post #142
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…

Assuming these compare in fidelity of sound, I think it’s a no brainer for a lot of people. Likely works seamlessly with apple products similar to other airpods and, unlike those other cans, doesn’t require a proper sound system or external amp to drive them. That being said, the fact that they stipulate they only work with apple products is a bit insane to me. I’ll stick with my wireless Sennheisers that I have to c…

[deleted]

Re: AirPods Max

#605

Post by twodave »

buildbuildbuild wrote: post #410

Calling an English expert. Is “AirPods Max” singular or plural? Help. The AirPods Max is a headphone. AirPods Max are headphones. I saw two AirPods Maxes.

I feel like it's easier if you add an apostrophe: Airpods' Max

Re: AirPods Max

#606

Post by emcq »

It feels like we are seeing the result of diminishing returns with technology advancement.

To make a product that Apple believes is significantly better than the competition they had to design a very intricate solution that includes:

* High end look and feel not similar to the bulk of their products with lots of textile webbing and memory foam ear cups. These get way more wear and tear than normal electronics being exposed to sweat, sunscreen, etc. On top of that these must be safe for long skin exposure and comfortable across many head shapes and sizes. * High quality magnets with custom speaker design for low THD and large frequency range. * 2 custom ASICs built for sound processing and low power bluetooth and 10 audio cores each. * 10 microphone array for ANC and wind noise cancelation. * Multiple accelerometers + gyros head tracking with spatial audio.

It you remove one of those components, I'd be surprised if Apple still shipped this. At least 40 people worked on designing and engineering this new headphone. There are not many companies in the world with the right kind of talent for this and Apple happens to be one of them.

Re: AirPods Max

#608

Post by novok »

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…

My other disappointment is how they didn't use this to improve bluetooth too.

They could of used this to add a new set of proprietary bluetooth protocols to improve the audio quality of voice calls and general listening. BT microphone + headphone streaming is fairly high latency and low fidelity. Same with general audio. Could of called it Apple Bluetooth HD or something similar.

Missed opportunity.

Re: AirPods Max

#609

Post by ericpauley »

AndrewStephens wrote: post #377
salimmadjd wrote: post #203

For those of you who follow the industry closely. Is this a prelude to Apple’s VR glasses? > Using the gyroscope and accelerometer in AirPods Max and iPhone or iPad, spatial audio tracks the motion of a user’s head as well as the device, compares the motion data, then remaps the sound field so it stays anchored to the device, even as the user’s head moves.

Ding Ding Ding, we have the correct answer. These headphones are way over-engineered even by Apple standards. There is no reason for headphones to have a gyroscope/accelerator combination except to enable VR or AR audio in conjunction with their existing ARKit. From my reading of the quoted paragraph, it appears these headphones will play system sounds (alerts, siri, etc) in such a way that they appear to emanate fro…

Keep in mind the Airpods Pro also have a gyroscope and accelerometer.

Re: AirPods Max

#610

Post by julius_set »

Lol this costs more than a Xbox Series X or PS5 for comparison and with Xbox Game Pass you’re at same value as AirPods Max but with hours and hours of entertainment. This isn’t worth $550 probably $200-$300 around AirPods Pro price.
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