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AirPods don't “just work”

philip.design

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Re: AirPods don't “just work”

#841

Post by NathanielK »

Yajirobe wrote: post #831
mdavis6890 wrote: post #824

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A true professional routes the cable through their shirt, from their neck down to their pocket, to avoid this problem.

A shirt provides too much friction thus there is a constant feeling of having the earphones pulled down (especially when moving the head)

The clips that let you fasten it to the collar of your shirt are life changing. Completely elimates the weight of the rest of the cord from your ears and any weirdness when you move your head. I wish more headphones and IEMs came with one in the box.

Re: AirPods don't “just work”

#842

Post by astrange »

ho_schi wrote: post #564

3.5 mm jack Nasty. Yes ;) I'm sorry but it solves these problems and I think most of us have more prominent issues. Bluetooth - and even overpriced Apple products - are usually working well with one connection only. And the headset profile needs to sacrifice quality for voice input. This is to large degrees a question about priority of the user. If you need good or even excellent quality - opt for a good headset and…

3.5mm is not anywhere near as standardized as Bluetooth.

- no standard way to have a microphone

- balanced vs unbalanced cables are electrically different (and can damage the headphone)

- high and low impedance headphones are also electrically different (affecting sound quality and volume)

- phone can't implement safe hearing limit laws or any of the hearing health features because it doesn't know how loud the headphones are

Plus there's cable microphonics and the ports on both sides can wear out.

Re: AirPods don't “just work”

#843

Post by vineyardmike »

smoldesu wrote: post #728
TylerE wrote: post #687

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to wonder if it's time to just say screw Bluetooth, and deploy a new standard that's specially oriented for audio. Requirements aren't crazy. It just needs to support uncompressed 96/24, full duplex.

I know some people have experimented with WiFi direct for that, but I'm not really familiar with it's limitations besides "you have to be hooked up to a router for it to work". One thing's for certain though, if someone made a pair of lossless cans that could "find" devices over arbitrary WiFi networks, I'd probably switch just for the improvement in latency alone.

I've long wished for a Wifi headset that you could Airplay/cast to

Re: AirPods don't “just work”

#844

Post by kzemek »

mdavis6890 wrote: post #826
Gigachad wrote: post #789

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even for desk use, wired headphones feel like being leashed to the desk. It's amazing to be in a meeting and then be able to just mute yourself and walk off to have a drink while still listening in.

Until you get just far enough away that they disconnect and your internal computer speakers start blasting the meeting conversation through the room.

Airpods connected to an Apple device have uncanny range compared to what I'm used to with other bluetooth pairings

Re: AirPods don't “just work”

#845

Post by marcan_42 »

vkou wrote: post #822
nsxwolf wrote: post #733

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like "workarounds become a reflex". This is a very succinct way of describing one of the causes of why people often claim to have no issues using something that universally has issues. A great example is the gaming PC vs gaming console war. PC gamers often seem to refuse to admit there's untold little quirks you have to deal with when using a general-purpose operating system and modular hardware to play games. They…

> PC gamers often seem to refuse to admit there's untold little quirks you have to deal with when using a general-purpose operating system and modular hardware to play games. They don't notice the workarounds they are continuously employing, because it's become a reflex. Not just a reflex, a cargo-cult reflex. Look at the litany of optimization/debugging nonsense that is parroted across the internet. Registry fiddlin…

That one's actually a good argument for open source software, in my experience. While the cargo-cult culture exists everywhere less experienced users are involved, in FOSS land there's a decent chance some developer or power user (any developer, not just a project member) will stumble upon the problem and either figure out the real issue themselves or coordinate with the project devs to do so. I've done this many, many times over the years. Complete nonsense cargo-cult stuff doesn't tend to survive forever in this ecosystem, because someone eventually realizes it's nonsense.

In Windows land? Decades can go by without anyone knowing what's going on, unless someone motivated enough to reverse engineer the binaries involved shows up and finds the issue. That isn't very common. Though when it happens it can be hilarious [1].

[1] https://nee.lv/2021/02/28/How-I-cut-GTA-Online-loading-times...

Re: AirPods don't “just work”

#846

Post by climb_stealth »

TylerE wrote: post #687
chipotle_coyote wrote: post #585

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know about "every other Bluetooth," but I certainly experience different problems with other Bluetooth devices. :) My regular experiences: - The AirPods Pro and AirPods Max generally work well. I've experienced most of the annoyances the OP lists occasionally, but not regularly, although the "autoselect the device want you want" outsmarts itself semi-regularly. (Not quite enough to make me disable it, but it'…

I have to wonder if it's time to just say screw Bluetooth, and deploy a new standard that's specially oriented for audio. Requirements aren't crazy. It just needs to support uncompressed 96/24, full duplex.

Bluetooth / BLE 5.2 is bringing in a lot of functionality and standardisation for audio scenarios. Hopefully this will improve things.

Previously there hasn't really been much official support and implementations are messy and differ across platforms.

Source: have worked with various BLE stacks. Getting this stuff working well is difficult. I have much respect for companies that actually get it to work reliably.

Funnily enough, I try to avoid Bluetooth as much as possible and everything is wired on my setups.

Re: AirPods don't “just work”

#847

Post by varamocs »

jdminhbg wrote: post #599
ho_schi wrote: post #564

3.5 mm jack Nasty. Yes ;) I'm sorry but it solves these problems and I think most of us have more prominent issues. Bluetooth - and even overpriced Apple products - are usually working well with one connection only. And the headset profile needs to sacrifice quality for voice input. This is to large degrees a question about priority of the user. If you need good or even excellent quality - opt for a good headset and…

None of the AirPod annoyances are as bad as having your headphones yanked violently out of your ears when the 3.5mm cable catches on a door handle.

That's debatable. As far as I'm concerned I prefer being annoyed by my occasional lack of care rather than wondering what software quirk makes my phone call come out of the wrong device. At least I can identify the cause quickly and make my best to avoid the issue.

Re: AirPods don't “just work”

#848

Post by hyakosm »

husamia wrote: post #837

I have the best Sony noise cancelling earbuds and headphones. I thought the AirPods are better but from what you describe. I feel Sony did a pretty good job.

I have the Sony XM4 headphones but it's not perfect. It takes nearly 30 seconds to connect to the computer with the voice saying "Power on", "Device 1 connected", "Device 2 connected". When I restart the computer, I must restart the headphones manually and wait. And Sony has not released a MacOS software to manage them.

Re: AirPods don't “just work”

#849

Post by nvarsj »

My first gen AirPods had the annoying habit of simply not playing audio about 5% of the time despite showing as connected in Bluetooth and everything. I still have memories of standing in the rain, at dark, after work, trying to un-pair and re-pair just to get them to play some damn music. Other than that they worked well.

Re: AirPods don't “just work”

#850

Post by Daneel_ »

Gigachad wrote: post #787
frosted-flakes wrote: post #743

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It rotates and has no direction, so you can untwist your headphone wire without unplugging it, and plugging it in is foolproof.

It had some issues where in unplugging and plugging the cable would cause voltage spikes because the pins would get dragged across the wrong connectors and not all be disconnected at once. Which is why you hear that pop when using loudspeakers and (un)plugging the cable. This apparently lead to damage of the speaker over time as well.

Which many devices solved by not sending output to the connector until after it sensed resistance on the pins, then enabled the audio output. So, another problem solved by 3.5mm jacks!

God I miss having a real connector on my phone :(

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