svanstrom

alexkhan2000 said:

hentaiboy said:

mike1 said:

Looks nice. I would buy this. Love that it's real leather.

Which would make the $549 headphones $648. Ouch. 

A little over $700 for CA residents including sales tax... Double ouch.

alexkhan2000 said:

jcs2305 said:

MacQuadra840av said:

Only Apple would make headphones without a headphone jack, without a power switch, with cloth that will get dirty, worn out, and hard to clean, and cripple the control of your music when you use their $35 wired cable for better audio.

Didn't AI recently have an article on how to disable the automatic device switching because it is annoying when the AirPods switch to another device without your control?  Like when they automatically switch to your Mac when you wanted to keep listening on your iPhone?

I have the Sony MX3s and they are amazing.  Excellent sound quality, excellent ANC, fold into a compact hard case, wired connection included, USB-C, excellent controls by swiping on the right ear (or covering the right ear to turn off ANC temporarily), customizable software in the Sony app, and zero issues with Bluetooth connection or wired (preferred for better audio), and all for over $200 less.

You nailed it with this review.  Mediocre sound quality (typical of all Apple sound products) and not good enough to justify the $549 price.  Apple could have had something if they were $349 or less to compete with Bose and Sony, but no audiophile will buy these headphones if that was the market they were hoping for.  Audiophiles or recording artists do not listen to Bluetooth audio.

Correct.. Audiphiles and recording artists use more expensive wired headphones. This headphone is not remotely geared toward an Audiophile or professional sound engineer. I don't care what the sticker shock is over the 549 price tag, they simply aren't made for those critical or professional listening use cases. They also couldn't price them at $299.00-$349.00 as that directly competes with Beats. So I can understand the price bump in that regard.

Apple is trying to compete with MontBlanc MB-01's or Master and Dynamic MW65's at this price point.. Not Sony or Bose.. Unfortunately they don't sound good enough for the comparison they are going for with the price. 

Here is a great review .. Audiophile honest analysis and breakdown. 

I was really looking forward to these.. I was open to the price if the sound quality justified it. I love how my Airpods pro sound and work with my devices ( auto switching, call quality and spatial audio ) and I wanted the option going with over ears when I wanted to give my ear canals a break.. or wanted bigger better sound. With reviews like these it makes it harder and harder to justify spending this amount of money for these. 

Well, this audiophile reviewer's perspective is to be expected. Watching this on YT led me to other audiophile reviews of the APM by the likes of Joshua Valour and a few others as well as some "mainstream" reviews (i.e. millions of views) by the likes of Marques Brownlee. The audiophiles aren't impressed at all while Marques describes the sound quality as "awesome". These are two totally different worlds - virtually night and day. I'm an audiophile with a collection of boutique headphones that add up to the price of a nice midrange car but I don't think I'm an elitist audiophile snob. I like different headphones and earbuds for usage different environments and occasions.

I really like the Sony XM3 for what it does: excellent ANC with sound quality that's fine for what it is at that price point. I'm also quite happy with the Sennheiser Momentum TW first-generation ear buds for working out at the gym. Currently, with the pandemic situation still being what it is, I don't see the need to upgrade from these but I'm always interested in what may be better in their respective classes and that's why I'm looking into the AirPods Max.

While watching some of these reviews, I also ended up looking into the MontBlanc MB-01 and the Master & Dynamic MW65s that you mention but I didn't find them intriguing enough to spend that kind of money. I'm thinking about business travel usage (which I can't do right now) and occasional home usage in the hot tub. I'm trying to compare apples to apples but so many reviews are comparing an apple to a cantaloupe or something else totally different. Or they are comparing different kinds of apples and I'm only getting their personal opinions on what they like more.

After spending a little too much time on these reviews, I've decided that I'll wait until things return to somewhat normal and I can make my periodic business trips to Asia for 2~3 weeks at a time. The way things are looking, that may not happen until late-2021 or 2022. I was also hoping that the APM would "blow away" or be significantly better than the Sony XM3/4 or the Bose 700 sound quality wise but that doesn't seem to be the consensus at all. The APM does seem to be at least a little better but not by much. The Apple ecosystem features and the spatial audio are nice but, for me, these are fluffy things that aren't useful to me even though I have the latest MBP and iOS devices. For me, it'd be about the ANC for the long trans-Pacific flights and the overall sound quality first.

Like you, I was also really looking forward to these. I was hoping that these were the truly great ANC-Bluetooth headphones but they seem to be maybe a little better while being priced almost twice as much as the likes of the Sony XM4 and the Bose 700. I may yet end up getting the APM when I know I can fly over the Pacific again but I certainly don't see the need to shell out $600 now (including the CA sales tax) for the occasional hot tub usage. It's intriguing for sure but, as the review states, it's hard to justify the price. As an audiophile, I'd rather use that money to save up towards getting another ridiculously expensive but worthy (like the Abyss AB-1266 Phi TC) headphone.

dewme said:

I don't know why ANC is as hyped as it is outside of a narrow set of use cases that benefit from it.

avon b7 said:

svanstrom said:

avon b7 said:

svanstrom said:

avon b7 said:

svanstrom said:

avon b7 said:

Facial recognition has always had ethical issues. ALWAYS and EVERYWHERE. This is just one more and the facial recognition software in question was not even created by Huawei! It was tested on their platforms and ethnicity was just ONE of many parameters.

That is at best a very naive thing to say in this context; and actively defending Huawei with how it was only tested on their platform, and how ethnicity was only one parameter, imo pretty much takes away the naiveté defence.

It's like playing the "would you kill baby Hitler if you went back in time?" philosophical discussion with someone that instantly, and with way too much passion, turn the whole thing around to being about defending the freedom of speech of Mr. H.

I am not defending anyone nor am I attacking anyone.

I have given some factual information. 

You will find similar (or dare I say identical) ethical debates playing out across the world. 

In this case China, for better or worse, is proving to be the main testbed for the technology and Chinese companies are leading the field. There is no getting away from that. 

From a research perspective the parameters are what they are. How and why the resulting technologies are employed and monitored is another story. 

Ethnicity is an issue in facial recognition. There are many other issues of course. 

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-48222017

https://onezero.medium.com/exclusive-this-is-how-the-u-s-militarys-massive-facial-recognition-system-works-bb764291b96d

Technology is never developed in a vacuum where everyone involved can just claim innocence all while knowing the pain that their work causes.

You ARE defending helping implement and improve technology used to target ethnic minorities.

I will repeat. There is nothing ingerently wrong with designing technologies to discern race or ethnicity. That is happening ALL OVER the world as I speak. The problems arise with how the resulting technologies are used and monitored. 

No one is claiming that out of context work on a technology is inherently evil; helping/working on it knowing that it's used for ethnic cleansing very much is.

And you are going out of your way to defend and support that.

Not at all. I'm defending what I wrote. 

avon b7 said:

svanstrom said:

avon b7 said:

svanstrom said:

avon b7 said:

Facial recognition has always had ethical issues. ALWAYS and EVERYWHERE. This is just one more and the facial recognition software in question was not even created by Huawei! It was tested on their platforms and ethnicity was just ONE of many parameters.

That is at best a very naive thing to say in this context; and actively defending Huawei with how it was only tested on their platform, and how ethnicity was only one parameter, imo pretty much takes away the naiveté defence.

It's like playing the "would you kill baby Hitler if you went back in time?" philosophical discussion with someone that instantly, and with way too much passion, turn the whole thing around to being about defending the freedom of speech of Mr. H.

I am not defending anyone nor am I attacking anyone.

I have given some factual information. 

You will find similar (or dare I say identical) ethical debates playing out across the world. 

In this case China, for better or worse, is proving to be the main testbed for the technology and Chinese companies are leading the field. There is no getting away from that. 

From a research perspective the parameters are what they are. How and why the resulting technologies are employed and monitored is another story. 

Ethnicity is an issue in facial recognition. There are many other issues of course. 

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-48222017

https://onezero.medium.com/exclusive-this-is-how-the-u-s-militarys-massive-facial-recognition-system-works-bb764291b96d

Technology is never developed in a vacuum where everyone involved can just claim innocence all while knowing the pain that their work causes.

You ARE defending helping implement and improve technology used to target ethnic minorities.

I will repeat. There is nothing ingerently wrong with designing technologies to discern race or ethnicity. That is happening ALL OVER the world as I speak. The problems arise with how the resulting technologies are used and monitored.