501–510 of 586 posts
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I have them The weight and clamp pressure are too much for me Much prefer lighter Sony or Bose top of line
There is a procedure to lessen the clamp pressure. I did it and was worried I’d break them, but it worked like a charm. Still too heavy, though.
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Isn't this pricing pretty in line with other high end ANC headphones? e.g. Bowers & Wilkins PX8 ($699), Focal Bathys ($849), Sony WH-1000XM6 ($399), Kef Mu7 ($399), Bose QC Ultra ($449)
Or Sennheiser momentum 4, 150 bucks and sound at least as good if not better, have absolutely huge battery compared to tiny apple one, more comfortable and generally work much better with non-apple ecosystem (also apparently they support multi-device pairing but I haven't used that one). Don't pay the novelty price shortly after release, these go down quite a bit after introduction, ie last year Sony are basically th…
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Most offerings (eg Apple Music) already has lossless audio for a while, as does Spotify, as it has been supported for the previous generation of AirPods Max already (ie this is not a new feature) and wirelessly on the AirPods Pro 2. Why they don’t support it wirelessly on the AirPods Max 2, which should be a superior product to the AirPods Pro 2, is beyond me.
If I had to guess, I think it’s marketing — just like adding weights to the insides to make them feel more “premium”. I’d guess that the target audience would argue that real lossless music experience requires high-bandwidth wires, and is not possible over the air without degradation.
I don’t think “it’s just marketing” is the reason, Apple always positioned themselves as the premium option with these things. Being the only wireless lossless headphone would be right on Apple’s expected feature list.
Putting a 2022 chip into the most overpriced headphones and that's the only update is... wild in 2026
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Yeah, the condensation issue was a problem for me too. I ended up having to take them in for repair to Apple several times. The noise cancellation went flakey, the auto-switching went flakey, they would crash [1] if lifted one cup from the side of my head. Apple ended up replacing them completely, but then the new pair eventually developed all the same faults. I hope some of these are addressed in the new models, bec…
[1] Playing audio would stop, the noise cancellation would shut off, they would disconnect from my phone, seemingly reboot, then reconnect again.
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If I had to guess, I think it’s marketing — just like adding weights to the insides to make them feel more “premium”. I’d guess that the target audience would argue that real lossless music experience requires high-bandwidth wires, and is not possible over the air without degradation.
But that’s the thing, apparently it’s not using Bluetooth but actually uses their new wireless chips to transmit the data over radio (maybe it uses WiFi, maybe something else). So it’s not using Bluetooth, which doesn’t have enough bandwidth for lossless. I don’t think “it’s just marketing” is the reason, Apple always positioned themselves as the premium option with these things. Being the only wireless lossless head…
You could still be talking about bluetooth and it would still be “data over radio” technically.
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Isn't this pricing pretty in line with other high end ANC headphones? e.g. Bowers & Wilkins PX8 ($699), Focal Bathys ($849), Sony WH-1000XM6 ($399), Kef Mu7 ($399), Bose QC Ultra ($449)
First off, $150 more isn't a small amount to be considered "in-line" with the others. That's roughly 40% more. The difference is also Apple neither has the audio legacy of those companies nor the quality of those products to warrant that kind of premium. To Apple, it is just another market they can go after, but a lot of those companies built their entire foundations on audio. You are not going to convince me Apple i…
Ex studio tech here. Legacy doesn't cover contracted manufacturing.
I'm not defending apple here, but using chinese drivers (which I assume is a synonym for poor quality) is fine so long as they are binned for performance, and matched/tuned to housing. I'm assuming the mic inside the ear cup is there to do dynamic EQ.
Also the drivers are screwed into a solid aluminium housing, so they aren't glued.
NS10s which are the standard reference mixing speakers were chosen not because they were high quality, but because they were average. If you could get your mix to sound good on those, it'd sound great anywhere.
So yeah, they are expensive. Would I buy them? probably not. I'm reasonably happy with my plantronic jobbies. Are they perfect? no, are they comfortable? yes. Is the active noise cancelling actually effective? also no, but then ANC is only really useful for a small subset of noises types. (even on Sonys. )
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>> As a (sane) audiophile this is something you believe about yourself, but an oxymoron for everyone else.
Do you honestly not believe that there is an audible difference between audio equipment? I think that makes you the insane one
THe biggest difference that most people hear is EQ. (oh these are very bassy, or too clean, etc, etc)
The people that have external DACs are almost certainly hearing a difference in EQ rather than _quality_. Is that a problem? for me I couldn't care less. However when that starts bleeding into advice or gatekeeping, then it becomes an issue.
(I am a former sound technician for both recording studio (analogue and digital) theatre and TV)
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Idk im not sure why they bought Beats aside from marketing hype in the first place...
The Beats brand was a great entrée to an entire market segment that Apple was trying to better access. I'd say it was a masterful acquisition (and integration).
Beats brand basically disappeared after that or at the least has become "uncool".
Apple had iTunes already, they very well could've acqui-hired and improved their service themselves.
Apple music slowly died and is only becoming resurgent now, many years later.
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Reading #2 makes me sad. I had a pair of Bose for probably a decade and tried out Sony and the biggest complaint I have is the lack of a physical off button. The Sony have a known issue where it don’t detect that it’s off of your head and it’s not that obvious that the headphones are on or off. At least a few times a week I put them on in the morning and they have been on all night.
Sony WH 1000 XM4 and WH 1000 XM6 both have physical off buttons and I've also never had a problem with them not turning off due to inactivity. If I take my XM6 off and put them on the desk, they pause music/podcasts and will fully turn off after some minutes (like 15 minutes? not sure, but it's short enough that if I go eat lunch and come back, they turned off automatically).
Currently wearing my XM4s and was really confused by the "physical off button" because ... I'm looking at them and they just don't? Where is it? What?
Then I realised that I'm old and, to me, "physical off button" means a sliding switch, a hardware disconnect, etc. (such as exists on my pair of Plantronics BackBeat PRO 2), not a pushbutton that triggers a software power-down (which the XM4s most certainly do have.)