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The AirPods Pro 3 flight problem

basicappleguy.com

21–30 of 284 posts

Re: The AirPods Pro 3 flight problem

#22
I tried AP Pro 3 but decided to return them in favor of my v2. The v2 felt more comfortable in my ear and were good enough. I was also disappointed the heartbeat monitor only works while exercising.

Re: The AirPods Pro 3 flight problem

#23
I along with many others, have been facing a low frequency noise leak when ANC is fully on and music is playing. https://discussions.apple.com/thread/256148548?sortBy=rank

Without playing any music the ANC is stellar, but this bug means the buds are basically unusable as they require reseating in the ear, or toggling to transparency and back to ANC, after a few seconds of listening (if in an environment which has any sort of constant low freq noise)

Re: The AirPods Pro 3 flight problem

#24
post #14

Interesting, by description seems fixable in software. I wonder if Apple will disclose the root cause, would be awesome to see a proper writeup.

LOL, if they share any insight in this problem it will be along the lines of "you're wearing them wrong".

Re: The AirPods Pro 3 flight problem

#25
post #6

OT but Apple is getting worse and worse in all aspects. I hate the fact that I am locked into their monopoly.

You are locked in your mind only ...

Not sure what the OP meant but I too feel locked into them. I dislike both the company and in some cases the product, but they currently provide the least bad option - almost certainly for laptops and probably for phones.

Re: The AirPods Pro 3 flight problem

#26
The Airpods 2 have a whistle problem for me. Any time someone whistles or anything makes a loud noise I would feel a pressure on my ear that was quite unpleasant and stemming from the airpod. Haven’t tried the 3 but I wonder if it is related.

Re: The AirPods Pro 3 flight problem

#27
A wild guess as to what is happening. I haven’t actually tested this hypothesis so I could be completely wrong.

In feedback systems, the gain is a function of frequency, and typically decreases when going from low frequency to high frequency. This is often accompanied by a phase delay.

So if the overall gain of the system is high enough, there will be some high frequency where the gain is 1, and the phase is 180 degrees. This would result in positive feedback, amplifying noise at that frequency.

Maybe that’s what’s happening in the latest AirPods? If Apple is aggressive cranking up the gain of the noise cancellation system, there’s some high frequency where the noise gets amplified rather than suppressed.

The solution would be to either reduce the gain (which reduces the noise cancellation), or to add some differential gain in the system which pushes out the unity gain frequency to higher frequencies.

Re: The AirPods Pro 3 flight problem

#29
post #18

I suspect this is fixable in firmware. What I heard on a long haul flight was the faint sound of the plane's engines traveling back and forth down a paper towel tube; a hollow, cavernous sound. It must be so tricky to nail these algorithms, but with the data of millions, it should be easier to triangulate and address.

i disagree here - having a feedback loop that makes loud noise instead of cancelling is fundamental failure of their ANC algorithm. There's basically no protection mechanism incase of divergence.

Re: The AirPods Pro 3 flight problem

#30

It’s been doing this since AirPods Pro 1, surprised it took author this long to realize it.

> surprised it took author this long to realize it

I don't think "realize" is the right word here. "Realize" would require them to have been affected by this issue but unaware. Instead, they were not affected with their previous models, only with the new ones.

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