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Some thoughts on the AirPods Max?

DashiellNico

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I have now used the AirPods Max och listened critically for 3 days and here are the takeaways:

+ It has the best sub-bass I've ever heard in any closed or open headphone. It's the best part of this headphone. I never understood what people meant they said a certain headphone has one-nore subbas and now I know. The driver is extremely fast in this region. It can produce notes of subbass I've never heard in a headphone before. Very nice!
+ It's ability to separate vocals from everything else in the recording is impressive.
+ The detail retrieval of this headphone puts it in the same league as $1000+ audiophile headphones
+ The soundstage and imaging is very, very good for a closed headphone

Now for for the cons...

- Vocals are rendered with sibilance and harshness that isn't supposed to be heard by the consumer. Praised headphones like the HD800 is harsh and grating on the ears but audiophiles claim it's "revealing". That's not true in my opinion. When professional sound engineers in the studio mix and master on studio speakers, they don't hear this sibilance and harshness in the final product. Sibilance and harshness is always the fault of the headphone.
- Vocals and the sound in general sounds slightly thinner than it should because the midbass and lower mids are slightly sightly lower than the rest of the FR.
- The upper mids/treble/upper treble section (I'm not sure exactly where it is) sounds noticebly more boosted than the mids and bass. The driver can't properly produce this part of the frequency response for some reason without sounding like someone applied a "treble booster" EQ. The treble has this unrefined quality to it that you hear in every recording. There is this sharp edge that is distracting. This is the biggest flaw of this headphone. Apple would've created something revolutionary if they could refine the uppermids/treble section and bring them to the same standard as the subbass and mids. I don't think it's impossible. The engineers at Apple are very close.

Now that I think about it, this headphone has the same cons and pros as the Sennheier HD58X and HD660S. For those who've heard these two headphones, just like the AirPods Max, they both have great bass and mids but the highs are just.. off. The treble/upper mids aren't refined enough. The treble in particular sticks out like a sore thumb.
 

Frank Dernie

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I have now used the AirPods Max och listened critically for 3 days and here are the takeaways:

+ It has the best sub-bass I've ever heard in any closed or open headphone. It's the best part of this headphone. I never understood what people meant they said a certain headphone has one-nore subbas and now I know. The driver is extremely fast in this region. It can produce notes of subbass I've never heard in a headphone before. Very nice!
+ It's ability to separate vocals from everything else in the recording is impressive.
+ The detail retrieval of this headphone puts it in the same league as $1000+ audiophile headphones
+ The soundstage and imaging is very, very good for a closed headphone

Now for for the cons...

- Vocals are rendered with sibilance and harshness that isn't supposed to be heard by the consumer. Praised headphones like the HD800 is harsh and grating on the ears but audiophiles claim it's "revealing". That's not true in my opinion. When professional sound engineers in the studio mix and master on studio speakers, they don't hear this sibilance and harshness in the final product. Sibilance and harshness is always the fault of the headphone.
- Vocals and the sound in general sounds slightly thinner than it should because the midbass and lower mids are slightly sightly lower than the rest of the FR.
- The upper mids/treble/upper treble section (I'm not sure exactly where it is) sounds noticebly more boosted than the mids and bass. The driver can't properly produce this part of the frequency response for some reason without sounding like someone applied a "treble booster" EQ. The treble has this unrefined quality to it that you hear in every recording. There is this sharp edge that is distracting. This is the biggest flaw of this headphone. Apple would've created something revolutionary if they could refine the uppermids/treble section and bring them to the same standard as the subbass and mids. I don't think it's impossible. The engineers at Apple are very close.

Now that I think about it, this headphone has the same cons and pros as the Sennheier HD58X and HD660S. For those who've heard these two headphones, just like the AirPods Max, they both have great bass and mids but the highs are just.. off. The treble/upper mids aren't refined enough. The treble in particular sticks out like a sore thumb.
Odd.
I have had mine since last December.
Sibilance isn't a problem on any recording I have listened to yet. I have just been listening to a few suspect recordings because of your comment and not noticed anything untoward even on poor recordings (ie no worse than the poor recording has always been - better than average even) with my pair.
Soundstaging and imaging is just as awful as is inherent in headphones with mine, but my expectations are very low.

i am very happy with mine and bought a pair for my daughter for her birthday :)
 

weasels

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I think if the shape is good for your ears, the airpods pro are a good candidate for best bang for your buck in portable audio.

They don't fit in mine, so I went with the Sony WF1000MX3.
 

MusicDude

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Apr 18, 2021
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I love the AirPods Max headphones because they fit really well on my head, offer great noise cancelling, run very long, offer very good microphone quality, and they are perfectly integrated into the Apple ecosystem.

I managed to create a custom profile which serves as a system wide EQ on my iPhone, but unfortunately not the iPad. With this profile they sound just „right“ to me.

I can compare them to Audio-Technica ATH-R70X, or my Genelecs 8010/sub/Sonarworks/RME ADI-2 DAC FS combination, or my Dali speakers. I agree that the APM do not deliver the same level of precision as all the other devices. They are still nice to listen to, but maybe not on audiophile sessions where you want to concentrate 100% to the music only.

I would never suggest to buy them if you are looking for audiophile headphones, but for any other of the reasons listed in the first sentence…
 
OP
D

DashiellNico

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May 14, 2021
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I have now used the AirPods Max och listened critically for 3 days and here are the takeaways:

+ It has the best sub-bass I've ever heard in any closed or open headphone. It's the best part of this headphone. I never understood what people meant they said a certain headphone has one-nore subbas and now I know. The driver is extremely fast in this region. It can produce notes of subbass I've never heard in a headphone before. Very nice!
+ It's ability to separate vocals from everything else in the recording is impressive.
+ The detail retrieval of this headphone puts it in the same league as $1000+ audiophile headphones
+ The soundstage and imaging is very, very good for a closed headphoneomegle xender

Now for for the cons...

- Vocals are rendered with sibilance and harshness that isn't supposed to be heard by the consumer. Praised headphones like the HD800 is harsh and grating on the ears but audiophiles claim it's "revealing". That's not true in my opinion. When professional sound engineers in the studio mix and master on studio speakers, they don't hear this sibilance and harshness in the final product. Sibilance and harshness is always the fault of the headphone.
- Vocals and the sound in general sounds slightly thinner than it should because the midbass and lower mids are slightly sightly lower than the rest of the FR.
- The upper mids/treble/upper treble section (I'm not sure exactly where it is) sounds noticebly more boosted than the mids and bass. The driver can't properly produce this part of the frequency response for some reason without sounding like someone applied a "treble booster" EQ. The treble has this unrefined quality to it that you hear in every recording. There is this sharp edge that is distracting. This is the biggest flaw of this headphone. Apple would've created something revolutionary if they could refine the uppermids/treble section and bring them to the same standard as the subbass and mids. I don't think it's impossible. The engineers at Apple are very close.

Now that I think about it, this headphone has the same cons and pros as the Sennheier HD58X and HD660S. For those who've heard these two headphones, just like the AirPods Max, they both have great bass and mids but the highs are just.. off. The treble/upper mids aren't refined enough. The treble in particular sticks out like a sore thumb.
thank you my issue has been solved
 

calt

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I bought one this week. My main use case would be watching movies at night. I think for that use case, although expensive, they are really good. I installed tvOS 15 on my Apple TV and I'm loving the spatial audio with movies, especially if they have Dolby Atmos sound.

However, I'm not sold on Spatial Audio with music. Some sound good, but a lot of them sound "off" to me.
 

phrwn

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+ It has the best sub-bass I've ever heard in any closed or open headphone. It's the best part of this headphone. I never understood what people meant they said a certain headphone has one-nore subbas and now I know. The driver is extremely fast in this region. It can produce notes of subbass I've never heard in a headphone before. Very nice!
Compared to what? Without comparisons this is interesting, but unhelpful. You mention a few open back headphones later in your write-up. If those are your sole point of comparison, then yes I'm not surprised the bass sounds good.
 

Darwin

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Oct 11, 2017
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Try this from another thread, worked great for me, I also did bass reduce in the EQ, love the things now.
On iOS, using “Headphone Accommodations” can fairly dramatically improve the sound quality of AirPods Max. The “Balanced Tone” setting at the “Slight” level boosts levels above 2 kHz and really wakes up the headphones. More here: https://9to5mac.com/2021/01/28/how-to-customize-iphone-headphone-audio/
 
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