Apple AirPods Max Review (Noise Cancelling Headphone)

[abdo123]

??? I had fixture variations. I noted that in the review. I spent at least 15 minutes trying to get smooth bass response.

but you also said the headphones adjusted the response in real time to fix it right?

Sorry i must have interpreted it incorrectly then, as Oratory also says that adaptive EQ is mitigating seating variation.

 

[Merkurio]

Dear @amirm with this kind of gear that involves too much digital wizardry... Wouldn’t be better to not rush the reviews until everything is polished ?
This aint the first time an item has been measured and shipped back, and the the members then start asking for interesting change of settings, or explaining the different possibilities that may or not change the measures data. In this particular case, transparency mode.

I agree with this, at least with "hot" stuff that many people are interested in, such as the AirPods.

 

[abdo123]

Okay the response is apparently textbook perfect at Vocal Range moderate settings, with support for Dolby Atmos and vanishingly low distortion I think I will put this on my purchase list.

 

[mononoaware]

Dear @amirm with this kind of gear that involves too much digital wizardry... Wouldn’t be better to not rush the reviews until everything is polished ?
This aint the first time an item has been measured and shipped back, and the the members then start asking for interesting change of settings, or explaining the different possibilities that may or not change the measures data. In this particular case, transparency mode.

Does this (image below) help answer some questions?

Already measured by Oratory:

View attachment 146207

Looks like 'Vocal Range - moderate' is the best (still not great), and ANC off is the worst.

 

[MZKM]

Too bad you don’t have an iPhone to test out Spatial Audio and Head Tracking. I have the AirPods Pro that I got during a promo, and the head tracking is really cool, it only works with tv/movies with Atmos, but it keeps the center channel dialogue spatially centered with your device, meaning if you turn your head to the left the dialogue pans to your right ear, like if you were using surround sound speaker system. Sadly the shape of the earphone is too large for my ears (pushes on my “crus of helix”) and I get physical discomfort in ~10min of use.

 

[abdo123]

Too bad you don’t have an iPhone to test out Spatial Audio and Head Tracking. I have the AirPods Pro that I got during a promo, and the head tracking is really cool, it only works with tv/movies with Atmos, but it keeps the center channel dialogue spatially centered with your device, meaning if you turn your head to the left the dialogue pans to your right ear, makes it more lifelike. Sadly the shape of the earphone is too large for my ears (pushes on my “crus of helix”) and I get physical discomfort in ~10min of use.

Giveaway when?

 

[JJB70]

I think these are too expensive for what they are and I think some of the design choices are bizarre (such as the case). Their ANC is excellent, but so is the ANC on much cheaper Sony, Bose and Razer headphones (many headphone enthusiasts seem desperate to imagine the Razer Opus is terrible). On sound, the tuning is very consumer-ish with way too much bass for me but I find that about a lot of headphones. For what they do I think they do it very well. I don't know but I am guessing Apple applied a rational process to the design process and didn't end up with the end product by accident. I have already said I find some of these choices weird but I am not going to accuse Apple of being stupid or not knowing their stuff. I suspect that they know their market.

 

[staticV3]

t doesn't make sense to test Apple products using Android and Windows. Sea fish will not swim in fresh water

In what ways are you expecting the measurements to change by using an iPhone as source device?
What is your assumption based on? Just "intuition"?

 

[abdo123]

In what ways are you expecting the measurements to change by using an iPhone as source device?
What is your assumption based on? Just "intuition"?

Apple has a headphone companion app in which you can apply EQ to arrive at different target responses.

Since this is such an easy thing to do, it's fair that it is included in the review.

 

[GaryH]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1343323936801644544

You seem to have missed his follow-up tweet:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1343462989303836673

The simplest explanation is usually the correct one In this case, poor unit variation.

I can only notice that sometimes even simply changing the pinna (ceteris paribus ? I'm not sure) seemed to result in quite a big difference :

https://twitter.com/x/status/1368458551618805760

Looks like the difference in predicted preference rating is just 4 points, which is insignificant.

 

[GaryH]

But it doesn't look at all like what we see here, how could that be?

Looks fairly similar to me (red curve), except for a higher 5 kHz peak, which is likely just down to unit variation (see above tweet from Oratory).

 

[MayaTlab]

I do wonder whether the base driver config is poor because it was designed to be easier to digitally alter it, or because they just didn't care because it was never going to be used without digital processing.

This is very common nowadays, especially in Wireless headphones.
Driver is most likely something OEM, but there are good OEM drivers as well.
Apple being Apple with R&D etc I would expect they chose a good driver.

The driver is highly unlikely to be anything even close to OEM given Apple's track record and its appearance :

And it's also highly unlikely to be "poor" given the THD results.

What is likely though is that the acoustic design is very specifically engineered with a feedback mechanism in mind. Oratory1990 suggested I don't remember where that a design made to facilitate the engineering of the ANC filters may be compromised when used passively.
Apple has a patent on the use of the feedback circuit ("Adaptive EQ") even when ANC is off, and I suspect that the same applies for Bose :

https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/b4/45/de/d2f56713e758e2/US20140341388A1.pdf
Could be the reason why regardless of whether you're in ANC, transparency or off modes the measurements are roughly the same (but since the algorithm is a little different it might behave a little bit differently when ANC is off with narrow signals).

 

[mononoaware]

Apple has a headphone companion app

Rather than it’s own App (like the Apple Watch) Apple’s “Headphone” settings are buried in the “Accessibilty>Audio/Visual>Headphone Accomodations” section of the Settings App.
In fact most iPhone users do not even know it is there. I found out about it from a short YouTube video.
The 3 available settings are quite vague and only have 2 or 3 options per setting.
(As confirmed by a previous post Oratory’s measurements show Vocal Range - Moderate to bring it closest to the target)
And this is not to be confused with the EQ presets in “Settings>Music>EQ” which only applies to playback in the Music App.

I can access “Headphone accomodations” on the iPhone, but apparently it only has effect when you have Apple Airpods connected.

 

[mononoaware]

The driver is highly unlikely to be anything even close to OEM given Apple's track record and its appearance :

Large OEM manufacturers such as Foster (Fostex) have commission based production where a company will approach them and tell them specifically what they need, and Foster will design and produce the drivers (often based on an internal/shelved design).
So it can be both OEM and unique to Apple, even if it is mainly just in appearance.

But I may be under estimating Apple’s commitment and it is possible Apple did all their own R&D.
What were the drivers used in the HomePod ?

 

[staticV3]

Apple has a headphone companion app in which you can apply EQ to arrive at different target responses.

Since this is such an easy thing to do, it's fair that it is included in the review.

I disagree. The WH-1000XM4, Bose NC700, and Drop Panda also offer hardware EQ configurable from your phone but also didn't get a chance to have their frequency response corrected by Amir. Why should this headphone?

 

[MayaTlab]

You seem to have missed his follow-up tweet:
The simplest explanation is usually the correct one In this case, poor unit variation.

Oratory's original post was meant as an illustration of the seatings to seating variation he experienced (and of Adaptive EQ's behaviour at lower frequencies), which is what I was commenting on. Not on the specific shape of the FR, which in the case of the APM at higher frequencies so far is all over the place with very little consistency between measurements.
While it could be a question of sample variation, I happen to have measured several of them during the same session.
Four different APM cups measured during the same session, 2 averages of five measurements for each (so 8 traces in total) :

In all case it wasn't enough to significantly alter the location of the peaks.

Looks like the difference in predicted preference rating is just 4 points, which is insignificant.

I'm not certain how you could read that precisely. But in the ear canal gain region the difference in dB is across a large bandwidth and above threshold of audibility. Above 5kHz the results are completely different.

 

[GaryH]

It's very bold of Amir to give the only headphone with no fixture variation using Adaptive EQ a headless panther.

I mean it has very similar measurements to his daily headphones the Aeon RT

View attachment 146213

Yes they do have very similar measurements:

But your conclusion is the wrong way round. What's bold (read: inexplicable and unjustified) is the praise heaped on the Aeon RT. I can't see anything in the measurements to warrant it. The APM in some areas is actually slightly better, without the Aeon RT's wonky upper bass / lower midrange, 6 kHz peak, and the RT has worse channel matching to boot. They're both pretty mediocre though.

 

[MayaTlab]

But I may be under estimating Apple’s commitment and it is possible Apple did all their own R&D.
What were the drivers used in the HomePod ?

I think you are .
Bespoke drivers too for the HomePod (https://www.52audio.com/archives/18235.html). In fact all of Apple's devices use bespoke drivers for the most part. Apple has long been interested in sound / acoustics and has a full R&D team devoted to it. Whether that results in good sounding products... is a different thing. They're working under design and product types constraints. Personally I'm routinely disappointed by Apple's audio focused products... but also frequently less so than other companies working under the same constraints.

 

[abdo123]

They're both mediocre headphones though.

I don't think so, it has better L/R matching than the Aeon RT, it has comparably low distortion, it is a click away from textbook perfect response using the headphone companion app, and it supports Dolby Atmos, Noise cancelation, and it pretty much have seamless use and integration in the apple eco system. there is nothing mediocre about it to be honest.

I think the problem is with headphones is that bar is so low to begin with, there is nothing mediocre about either of them in that context.

 

[GaryH]

Okay the response is apparently textbook perfect at Vocal Range moderate settings, with support for Dolby Atmos and vanishingly low distortion I think I will put this on my purchase list.

View attachment 146232

Hardly 'textbook perfect', with a significant lack of treble energy between 5 and 10 kHz (with high-Q troughs and peaks to boot which will be impossible to accurately EQ out), more obvious on a graph that hasn't had its aspect ratio compressed vertically / stretched horizontally: