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AirPods Pro (2nd Generation)

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Re: AirPods Pro (2nd Generation)

#421

Post by visarga »

s3r3nity wrote: post #179
cafed00d wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of this has a super simple explanation: the shitty products always have org structures that treat software dev as shitty cost centers. It took a long time to realize that the most compelling devices have good, well maintained software. I don’t mean to say that software devs are geniuses or that these orgs have to hire the best of the best. No, they just need to create an org that prioritizes software dev. Low att…

I think you're 85-90% right - but I wouldn't undersell the impact of Apple's proprietary W1 / H1 / H2 chips in their headphones either.

Oh, so they make their own chips, they make both AirPods and MacBook, the OS, but then why do they fail to connect 20% of the time? I think the product should be capable of making sound 99.9%, not 80% of the time. AirPods might be the king of BT devices but it's a beggar in the house of wired.

Re: AirPods Pro (2nd Generation)

#422

Post by xyzzy_plugh »

I hope these are better for calls. We've debated banning AirPods at my workplace because the mics are so awful.

I tried AirPods but eventually landed on the new Pixel Buds, which are incredible.

Sony's WF-1000MX4s are good too, and I'm still using my Bose QC 35 II as daily drivers (pun intended, I guess).

Re: AirPods Pro (2nd Generation)

#423

Post by makeitdouble »

robertwt7 wrote: post #319

Airpods is one of the invention that you don’t know you need it but when you buy it, you know it’s good and it just works seamlessly It mentioned in the page that it’ll support high fidelity audio? Does this mean that they came up with new encoding for wireless transmission? Possibly something better than AAC?

Do we still call it an invention when it’s the proprietary and fully integrated take on an existing job to be done ?

It’s kinda like saying Google invented the Pixel phone and it’s so well integrated and working seamlessly in the Google ecosystem.

Re: AirPods Pro (2nd Generation)

#424

Post by siquick »

keepquestioning wrote: post #101
w-m wrote: post #63

Personalized Spatial Audio has me really excited ( https://youtu.be/ux6zXguiqxM?t=2739 ). The idea is to map your ears / head with the depth camera of the iPhone, to create a personal profile. 10 years ago I played around with binaural microphones, the kind that you stick in your own ears to record the true sound profile. Closing your eyes and playing back these recordings is just incredible. You will be completely f…

There was a company that did this. Whatever happened to them? Nura I think. Maybe they got bought out by Apple. Surprised they are not suing.

Nura is still going and are miles ahead of anything Apple are doing sound quality wise. I’ve got both the Nuraphones and the Nurabuds and listening to anything else in a similar price range is such a step down. You can also use Spatial on them if that’s your thing.

New ones coming out soon

https://www.nurasound.com/

Re: AirPods Pro (2nd Generation)

#425

Post by efficax »

Angostura wrote: post #186

The one thing that would have made me upgrade is the promise that I could use the Pros with my Mac on a Teams/Zoom cal and not sound like I was talking on a 1970s landline.

you’re underestimating how good pots call quality was before digital switching and voice compression

Re: AirPods Pro (2nd Generation)

#426

Post by makeitdouble »

js2 wrote: post #184
erikpukinskis wrote: post #3

I would love to buy AirPods one day, but I have just had too many experiences telling someone on Zoom they sound like they’re under water, and they say, “hold on a sec that’s my AirPods.” If Apple could fix that issue, this would be a nice product! Unfortunately I don’t know how Apple could ever signal to me that they had fixed that issue.

It's a limitation of Bluetooth's available bandwidth, especially with bidirectional audio. Apple added support for an improved speech codec, AAC-ELD, to the 3rd gen AirPods last year: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2021/10/introducing-the-next-... AAC-ELD support was also apparently added to existing AirPods Pro and Max at the same time: https://medium.marco.zone/apple-implemented-the-biggest-impr... I'm not sure whe…

> It's a limitation of Bluetooth's available bandwidth

Other bluetooth headsets work fine, that can’t be the excuse

Re: AirPods Pro (2nd Generation)

#429

Post by dmtroyer »

cube2222 wrote: post #86
hardwaregeek wrote: post #26

It's wild how much money Apple has made from Bluetooth headphones that don't suck. That's literally it. They're portable, pair easily and (somewhat) work with multiple devices. I have top of the line Bose Bluetooth headphones that still, in 2022, have issues with multiple devices. I can't count how many times I've started playing music on my iPhone only to realize that the headphones think my laptop is playing, so th…

Yeah. I remember my reason for switching to AirPods Max. My Sony xm3 kept connecting to the laptop in my backpack - which was asleep - when I was getting on my bike. I had to unpair my phone and re-pair it to force it to "own" the headphones. It was such a pita. That really was the biggest value add of the Apple headphones, and it works absolutely great. It almost (a 99.5%+ kind of almost) always connects to the devi…

I generally just put my XM3s straight into pairing mode and then select them from the device I want to use them on. Otherwise they are bound to pair to the wrong device, usually my sleeping mbp.

Re: AirPods Pro (2nd Generation)

#430

Post by trts »

robertwt7 wrote: post #319

Airpods is one of the invention that you don’t know you need it but when you buy it, you know it’s good and it just works seamlessly It mentioned in the page that it’ll support high fidelity audio? Does this mean that they came up with new encoding for wireless transmission? Possibly something better than AAC?

My Airpods pro are the only consumer good I've purchased that on a dollar per utility basis, outranks the previous #1, my bicycle.

Before, it seemed silly to have $200 headphones that could fall out of your ears and disappear. The pros fixed that, and also to some degree liberated me from my phone. It's easy now to leave my phone across the house and take calls or ask Siri to play a specific podcast, song, or album. The range is incredible compared to other bluetooth headsets.

It's almost unbelievable that this is occurring in the same lifetime where I registered for college classes by touchtone on a landline.

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