The lack of sound isolation is my biggest gripe with my AirPods, so it is nice to see that it has been improved with the Pro version. In the past I have had nausea when using active noise cancelling headphone (especially when used without music), so I am curious to see if any of the reviews hints at this.
> I am curious to see if any of the reviews hints at this.
I think it's probably too individual to go by a review, even if it's addressed. This is the kind of thing the return policy is for, though I realize the convenience of this might not be good enough depending on where you live.
I have serious reservations about these. They make big claims yet miss some important, basic design choices. For instance: you will get zero bass with an open back design and the active noise cancellation operates at 200 Hz (presumably) so you can forget about cancelling annoying whines from server fans or turbojets. The dynamic EQ based on a microphone is an interesting choice. This could have really good results if they didn't fuck up on more basics. I just hope they don't neglect phase response and do some time alignment.
Apple says they adjust the active noise cancellation 200 times a second.
We can't tell exactly what that means just from reading it, but it could very well mean that while the filter is updated 200 times a second, it isn't limited to filtering 200 Hz sound.
There are very few parameters that make sense to update 200 times a second if not the actual voltage level to subtract. If you adjusted EQ parameters 200 times a second you'd just be injecting a ton of noise in the center of the audible band due to phase jumps.
Edit: There is reason to believe it is just 200 Hz ANC. It's the same wording used in Beats over ear headphones that have a W1 chip and ANC. Those headphones have abysmal ANC that doesn't do anything above 500 Hz (aside from adding in some noise).
The dynamic EQ based on a microphone is an interesting choice.
I don't even know if the two are related, not being sound/audio/whatever expert, but I'm continually amazed that I can blast music on a HomePod, speak in a conversational tone or quieter (of course I've tested), and Siri still hears me. Whatever dark wizardry makes that work would come in handy here, yes? Or is your argument more that, dark magic or not, the physical hardware isn't there?
The limitation on active noise reduction is mostly latency, and hardware constraints when using adaptive filtering in a small package without a large battery.
Whatever "Adaptive EQ" means it may or may not be particularly novel. I've seen worked on things similar for years - changing filter parameters in response to microphone input isn't always easy but it's not untrod ground.
Going to have to listen to it to be the judge of anything, like all audio products.
Adaptive EQ is a well established piece of jargon in telecommunications. I’m not sure if that’s actually what they’re doing here, but it would be interesting if they are. The ear canal makes a resonant cavity and they could notch out annoying peaks in the mid-highs that vary from each seating of the buds. This could also be used to level out the magnitude response if they hadn’t made it an open cavity.
It’s all DSP tricks. They can take you pretty far down in receiving signals with bad SNR, but they have limits. The issues here are physics limitations. IEMs are not like subwoofers. They’re more like if your head was inside the enclosure. Porting the enclosure kills some useful resonances. Small drivers need these resonances to make low frequencies because the diameter is simply not large enough.
If you want the quick n dirties about this stuff you can check out IEM design guidelines. They're pretty shoddy and not rigorous, but serve as a decent diving off point.
