Apple Airpod Pros as active & "intelligent" earplugs

[Ibarch]

2 hours ago, Reezekeys said:

As usual, you've pointed out how Apple copies other companies' tech, assigns a new buzzword to them, then uses their slick, expertly produced "events" to introduce these features with every superlative adjective in Roget's Thesaurus - "amazing", "incredible", etc... It's kind of a joke.

 

Those Sony buds look pretty cool with the slider that seems to morph between noise cancelling and transparency. Let's say you go to a concert with a painfully loud PA blasting your eardrums - can you start off at 100% noise-cancelling, then slowly move the slider towards transparency to get the volume just right? I imagine a lot of musicians with hearing issues would go for such a product. I have hopes a developer (hint hint!) can come up with an app for my Airpod Pros that might do that! 🙂 

 

Here is the screenshot. The slider starts on the left  at full noise cancelling, then has  scale of 1 to 20 for ambient noise. 

It also has a setting to bring voices through or not. There must be some active processing going on here for that. 

 

You are being a little harsh on me today. I really tried hard to be factual and balanced in a comment on Apple. You know I struggle. 

[Ibarch]

Overall I've found that for attending loud gigs and concerts, earbuds with transparency/ambient sound work really well. My ears don't ring afterwards so they are giving me some protection. The sound quality is good enough but not brilliant. 

 

I'm finding they don't work for me when Im playing in noisey band practices. They aren't going to be a replacement for in ear monitors. 

[aronnelson]

I'm going to try it at a rehearsal. This is a full band - horn section, keys, drums, vocals, and me on guitar. That will tell me all I need to know.

I'm hopeful. The crappy passive filters just ruined music for me. Why work so hard to get a good tone and then play live and hear horrible tone???

 

Those Sony buds look cool.

[Reezekeys]

As I might have advised in an older post, I would keep your iPhone with you and have it on the settings page for "headphone accomodations" and their sub-menus (pretty sure that's what it's called), so you can experiment with the settings as you play. And make sure "adaptive" is on - if you switch it on & off as you play, I'm sure you'll notice a difference.

[aronnelson]

In iOS17 they got rid of "adaptive". Now it just says "Loud sound reduction".

[Reezekeys]

39 minutes ago, aronnelson said:

In iOS17 they got rid of "adaptive". Now it just says "Loud sound reduction".

 

Interesting - I'm guessing this is to avoid confusing the name with the "Adaptive Audio" feature, which does not seem to be in the iOS beta yet (based on your screenshots). The other new features are.

[aronnelson]

It just says Adaptive. Too many choices!

[timwat]

FWIW, I've about six months without TWS earbuds after my Jabras' batteries died.

 

So I was doing the interwebz late night research thing for a while between AirPods Pro 2, Bose, Sony, Sennheiser...as well as some of the more boutique exotic options like Final Audio of Japan.

 

Because I was sucked into the Cupertino ecosystem years ago, I begrudgingly went with the AirPods Pro 2 with one of Costco's sales (I love me some Costco).

 

I say begrudgingly because my experience with Apple earbuds has been summarily unsatisfactory. They ALWAYS fall out of my ears. Would the new silicon ear tips on the Pros change that?

 

Short answer: A resounding NO. 

 

I tried all the different tips, ran the software test, all that jazz. And the right one still kept falling out of my ear. Sure your experience may be different, and sure your ear holes are shaped different than mine.

 

So...onwards to Comply Foam. I've been an advocate for the Comply Foam on just about all my IEMs, including my current ones. Full disclosure: because of the shape of and thinness of the AirPods Pro tips, supposedly the Comply tips won't last as long as the more traditional shaped ones. Okay, I'm going anyway cause I'm sick of them falling out my ears.

 

So far? Completely secure, no painful hot spots, sound is great (you do realize that different material ear tips can alter the overall timbre of your earbuds, don't you?)

 

And most importantly, I can move my head around vigorously and not feel that either one is precariously close to falling out.

 

Yes, I realize this thread is all about the ANC. So yeah maybe I'm going annoyingly off topic. And that's why the internet exists lol

 

 

 

 

[Reezekeys]

Not really off topic - imo of course - and I'm actually interested in those Comply tips. I've had them on my Shure in-ears and they seal pretty well. What's holding me back from trying them on my Airpods is only my satisfaction with the silicone tips that came with them; I find them very comfortable for extended wearing and the buds stay in my ear no problem. They also do a pretty good job isolation-wise, though I assume the foam tips might give me a few more DBs in that department. Do your Airpod Pros fit in the charging case OK with those tips?

[timwat]

Yup, they fit in the case. They seem to "stand up" just a little higher, but the lid closes securely and bob's your uncle.

[Reezekeys]

1 hour ago, aronnelson said:

It just says Adaptive. Too many choices!

 

Ha - that top line wasn't in your previous screenshot from your phone. That is apparently the new "Adaptive Audio" feature, and I'm assuming "Loud Sound Reduction" is just a re-naming of the "Adaptive Transparency" feature that prompted my starting this thread!

 

As explained in this youtube vid, one has to upload new firmware to the Airpods to get these features (I know I'm not telling you anything you don't already know! 🙂 )

 

 

 

[MathOfInsects]

I'm using the Comply memory-foam tips. They seal great, are comfortable, and there's no problem at all closing the case. I needed the largest one so apparently I have big ol' ear-holes too. 

[aronnelson]

I bought some of those memory foam tips at the beginning but mine were cheap and probably junk. Yes it did fit well, but they accumulated dust so much and the original tips work for me so I just use that. BTW that seal test was surprisingly loud. I don't remember it being that loud before.

[RABid]

Mine are do to arrive Thursday. Marques Brownlee did a nice review and talked about a lot of things discussed here. Towards the end he talks about going to a concert that was way too loud and using the AP2 to bring down the sound level.

 

 

[aronnelson]

Of course someone tried this. Very interesting. The Air Pods Pro also apparently adjust freq. response when in the ear but in general this was a good test!

 

 

[RABid]

Mine came in today. Very quick shipping from Apple, even with the engraving. Big thing for me. Bigger than anything else. I have never ever been able to use earbuds because every one I tried fell out of my ears, including those from Apple. Took a chance, thinking I may have to buy those over the ear adapters. But, I put them in and they stayed! Wow, my first ear buds that work for my ears. That new rubber tip lodges into my canals and stays. I did the head bob and shake and they stayed. I'm about to give up learning all the ways to swipe and places to tap them for various commands. So far all I have done is mute them accidentally and had to use the phone to unmute. 

[Reezekeys]

I was (and still am) surprised at how well these buds stay in my ears because looking at them, you might think they could easily fall out - but they don't (not yet anyway)!

 

3 hours ago, RABid said:

So far all I have done is mute them accidentally and had to use the phone to unmute. 

 

Maybe I'm missing something because afaik you can't really mute the Airpod Pros - they have three modes that you cycle through by squeezing a stalk for about a second - "off" where they're regular BT earbuds, "noise cancelling", and "transparency." I didn't know there was a way to mute them, and something sounds fishy because having to use the phone to get them going again is not like Apple. There is a new mute/unmute feature coming with the new Airpods firmware this fall, however I think that might only apply to muting the microphone when you're on a voice call - now you need the phone, the new firmware will let you squeeze the stem to toggle this.

[RABid]

Maybe I turned them off.  I don’t know.

[MathOfInsects]

With the feature that makes the stereo field follow your head position relative to the source, it is not hard to assume you've turned the earbuds off and are just hearing sound from your phone. It's pretty amazing actually. I can definitely see turning the sound processing (NC and AT) off and thinking the earbuds themselves were off. Or, if you were just using them as earplugs, turning those options off and thinking of that as "mute." If there's no sound coming out of them, it's fundamentally the same as muting them.  

[Reezekeys]

Obviously if the buds are not in noise cancel or transparency mode, they won't make or affect any sound unless they're connected via bluetooth to the phone, mac, ipad, or other device; in effect "off" or muted. There is no actual on/off switch, other than removing and replacing them into their case.

[aronnelson]

16 hours ago, Reezekeys said:

 

Maybe I'm missing something because afaik you can't really mute the Airpod Pros -

One click - mutes the mic while in a call.

 

 

[Reezekeys]

 

3 hours ago, aronnelson said:

19 hours ago, Reezekeys said:

 

Maybe I'm missing something because afaik you can't really mute the Airpod Pros -

One click - mutes the mic while in a call.

 

Yes I know - I described this as a new feature coming with iOS 17. You have the beta - most of us don't!

 

19 hours ago, Reezekeys said:

There is a new mute/unmute feature coming with the new Airpods firmware this fall, however I think that might only apply to muting the microphone when you're on a voice call - now you need the phone, the new firmware will let you squeeze the stem to toggle this.

 

This is what you see with iOS 16:

 

[aronnelson]

Darn it. I thought I was going crazy. I went to hang up and the mic muted. I could have sworn a single click hung up. No wonder!

Thanks!

[aronnelson]

OK finally got to try this. There's good and bad.

First off, 85dB is pretty darn soft. It sounds great when talking before playing etc... but as soon as the band starts playing, you can really hear the air pods clamp down. It totally works except for one problem, it is incredibly smart and sensitive to location/frequency as a result.

When the band wasn't playing, everything sounded natural, my guitar sounded great!

When the band started playing, it's so smart that it started notching out my guitar signal. It worked so well that my guitar basically started disappearing. I could play, but I couldn't tell how loud I was. It was like I was playing at the softest possible volume - barely louder than the band.

 

Does it work? YES! When I took the pods out, WOW the band was incredibly loud compared to the Pods. I tried all sorts of custom transparency, regular transparency and adaptive etc... but each time the guitar was notched out since I was close to the amp.

 

I am completely convinced these are much better than any ear plugs I have used. For listening, it's incredible! It will save your ears for sure.

As for using them on stage, I am not so sure since I can barely hear what I am playing. I was left with the stark realization that if 85dB was the benchmark, all us older musicians are going to be deaf unfortunately!

[Ibarch]

Unless/until Apple provide a profile for musicians or some more customisation options, it would appear that they are too smart for playing. 

 

There are plenty of options out there from other companies. A dumber system that passes in ambient sound without any additional processing may work better for this use case. Something not aimed at picking up speech. If you are not playing with a band that uses IEMs, then it may be worth persisting with. 

[timwat]

One wonders which brand's app provides the most useful (to musicians) ANC customization.

 

The Bose app images I see online suggest they provide a "slider" to adjust the level of noice cancellation, which is a big step forward from Apple's "on / off". Of course, actual musically useful results on the stage is all that matters, and it remains to be reported if Bose's slider provides a useful range with a loud band.

 

Who wants to sponsor a scientific test of all the major brands on a loud stage? 

 

If someone buys me all the major brands, I'd be happy to donate my time to provide anecdotal results.

 

Generous soul that I am.

 

 

[MathOfInsects]

@aronnelson's description is spot on for my experience. The only thing I can add is this: Two gigs ago, mid-gig, I swapped the airpods out for my regular flat-cut earbuds, the Earasers or something similar. And only when I did that did I realize that what I was hearing (or not) with the airpods was still a much cleaner version of the reduced sound than I had been getting with off-the-rack ones, so I switched back about 30 seconds later. 

My feeling is that this off-label use is going to become a first-order option for these or other ear-pods, and that our ability to sculpt the eq will only improve from here.

One thing I am going to try--tonight, in fact--is to see if "Conversation Boost" will give me help with the closest sound (my amp) and slightly duck the others, as it does for real conversation. I think that could be a workaround for what I agree can be a disorienting notch-out of our own signal when the whole band is playing.

[Docbop]

With the current insane heatwave I really learned to love my Apple Airpods Pro II's.       To keep cool box fans are great, they blow lots of air, don't use much electricity, downside they roar like a jumbo jet.    So I put in my Airpods,  turned on Active Noise Cancelation, and the roar is gone.   I sit in my chair cool air blowing on me and and listen to music in comfort.   

[aronnelson]

3 hours ago, MathOfInsects said:

One thing I am going to try--tonight, in fact--is to see if "Conversation Boost" will give me help with the closest sound (my amp) and slightly duck the others, as it does for real conversation. I think that could be a workaround for what I agree can be a disorienting notch-out of our own signal when the whole band is playing.

Please let me know. I thought about it, but now that I think about it, I think it was on. Well, in any case let me know.

Thanks!

[aronnelson]

Ibarch,

 

Does the Sony work for rehearsals/playing?

That mix slider looks useful!