Apple Acoustics VP hints that Bluetooth could be holding back AirPods
Apple's AirPods team has offered new details about the development of the third-generation model -- and how Bluetooth could be holding back the popular accessory.
Apple's AirPods 3
Gary Geaves, Apple's vice president of Acoustics, and Eric Treski of Apple's product marketing team recently sat down with What Hi-Fi to speak about the design and development of AirPods 3.
According to Geaves, AirPods 3 use an entirely new design with custom components. As Geaves put it, nothing that went into AirPods 3 came "off the shelf."
The third-generation AirPods use a "complicated acoustic system," a new amplifier, and a tuned bass port to deliver top-notch sound quality. Geaves said the "effortless open fit" of the non-pro models are a draw for consumers, but added that designing for an unsealed fit created "challenges" for the audio team.
That lack of seal wasn't the only limitation for AirPods. When asked if Bluetooth stifled sound quality, Geaves stopped short of openly criticizing the standard but noted that Apple would "like more bandwidth."
Apple's attention to detail extends to research, too. Geaves said Apple has leveraged ""extensive measurements" and "deep statistical research" in developing the new AirPods. In addition, Apple also worked with professional teams of critical tuners and listeners to design the device.
The full interview, which offers other details about AirPods 3 and Apple's audio design team, is worth a read for anyone interested in the company's Bluetooth headphones.
Read on AppleInsider
Apple's AirPods 3
Gary Geaves, Apple's vice president of Acoustics, and Eric Treski of Apple's product marketing team recently sat down with What Hi-Fi to speak about the design and development of AirPods 3.
According to Geaves, AirPods 3 use an entirely new design with custom components. As Geaves put it, nothing that went into AirPods 3 came "off the shelf."
The third-generation AirPods use a "complicated acoustic system," a new amplifier, and a tuned bass port to deliver top-notch sound quality. Geaves said the "effortless open fit" of the non-pro models are a draw for consumers, but added that designing for an unsealed fit created "challenges" for the audio team.
That lack of seal wasn't the only limitation for AirPods. When asked if Bluetooth stifled sound quality, Geaves stopped short of openly criticizing the standard but noted that Apple would "like more bandwidth."
As far as other tidbits, Geaves noted that the diversity in consumer ear shape led the team to bring Adaptive EQ -- an AirPods Pro feature -- to the base model AirPods. The feature provides a "consistent frequency response regardless of the level of fit that each person gets.""Obviously the wireless technology is critical for the content delivery that you talk about, but also things like the amount of latency you get when you move your head, and if that's too long, between you moving your head and the sound changing or remaining static, it will make you feel quite ill, so we have to concentrate very hard on squeezing the most that we can out of the Bluetooth technology, and there's a number of tricks we can play to maximise or get around some of the limits of Bluetooth. But it's fair to say that we would like more bandwidth and... I'll stop right there. We would like more bandwidth."
Apple's attention to detail extends to research, too. Geaves said Apple has leveraged ""extensive measurements" and "deep statistical research" in developing the new AirPods. In addition, Apple also worked with professional teams of critical tuners and listeners to design the device.
The full interview, which offers other details about AirPods 3 and Apple's audio design team, is worth a read for anyone interested in the company's Bluetooth headphones.
Read on AppleInsider
Comments
but all the vendors have the same limits on this product class. Life
All Apple wired earbuds that came with an iPhone have a microphone.
I actually wish the 3.5mm (1/8th on an inch) connector would make a comeback (like vinyl records did) on future iPhones.
Having only a lightning connector sucks when you want to use and charge your iPhone at the same time. The included 3.5mm adapter has good sound quality but no splitter, so it is either power cable or 3.5mm adapter. I tried various lightning splitters and charge + 3.5mm socket combos... The ones with 3.5mm socket all sounded terrible, some had hissing or buzzing in the background all the time. Lightning only splitter with Apple supplied 3.5mm adapter and charging cable sounds good, but is cumbersome and not comfortable to hold for extended periods.
Or failing that, consider reintroducing 3.5mm sockets on future "plus model" iPhones. The larger iPhones have more internal space and it should be possible to squeeze a 3.5mm socket in there without any noticeable impact on battery life for example.
I don't think another different jack would really help.
UWB.
Agreed - I still miss the simplicity and security of plugging in headphones. I can't count the number of times I've had to dick around with my AirPods to get them to connect to the correct device.
Huawei (Kirin A1) was directly comparing to Apple (H1) in its product presentation on general latency, open fit intelligent noise cancellation (which could be 'tuned' to the users preference), true isochronous dual channel transmission, higher resolution audio, faster transmission speeds (up to 6.5 Mbps), Bone Voice ID, AI for voice enhancement (including mic duct technology to enhance call quality in windy conditions), chip size, ultra low latency gaming audio etc.
It was able to do that by using the very latest version of Bluetooth at the time (BT 5.1LTE) , and adding to it for use on its own devices.
So for example, for 'high definition' (BT-UHD) audio they had to be paired to a Huawei phone but they would still work with other non-Huawei Bluetooth devices. That's how they could push things up to 2.3Mbps in the case of audio.
They did exactly the same with WiFi which led to Huawei's WiFi 5 outpacing Apple's Wi-Fi 6.
They also made Wifi 6 faster (again, for its own phones, routers and networking gear) by providing Wifi 6+ (which levers its own 5G technologies).
The point is, all those products were also fully compliant with standard Bluetooth and WiFi devices.
And this was back in 2019.
Apple could have easily gone the same route (just as it has in the past) but without sacrificing interoperability. It simply chose not to. Just like it chooses not to include the necessary profiles for Bluetooth file transmission on iPhones, chose to make Bluetooth 'less open' on HomePods.