Tag: Airpods Pro 3

Sounding Off On Apple’s Consistently Inconsistent Sound Routing Issues

The sounds of confusion

The one thing most of us strive for in life is some measure of consistency. The sphere of life doesn’t matter. When we can achieve some modicum of consistency in an inconsistent and inconstant world it’s a plus. That’s certainly true with whatever tech we surround ourselves with. Sadly, sometimes comically, the inconsistency is the only constant thing in these days of rapid technology changes. I’m not a fan.

A pair of white AirPods and a White HomePod mini

While this post is mostly about Apple sound issues relating to AirPods and HomePods, let me first point out a quote from this excellent post by Sean Heber called Where Are We Going?

So much of what I like(d) about computers is how or why they worked. The algorithms were clever. The “why” of many things could be reasoned about and understood if you knew the deeper principles upon which everything else was built. I had faith that the unknowable parts were still knowable even if I didn’t always have the will to dig that deeply myself. I trusted that anything I might need to know someday could be found and mastered if truly necessary.

As time has gone on, though, that faith has been tested and now, perhaps, it is truly broken.

I don’t think anyone knows how anything works anymore. Not really. The scale exceeds human comprehension.

Sums it up nicely in my opinion.

On to those AirPod and HomePod issues. I really enjoy my AirPods Pro 3. I use them all the time and have used every generation of AirPods since the first one. But how they connect and reconnect through my devices is has been an increasingly constant source of inconsistency and frustration.

I’ll go several weeks when everything works as magically as they are supposed to work, switching between devices effortlessly. Then all of a sudden that just stops. Connections will jump inexplicably from one device to another at the oddest times, or fail to connect with no rhyme or reason. Then, after some indeterminate period things will right themselves again.

Like Mr. Heber I don’t think anyone knows how any of this is supposed to work anymore. I highly suspect Apple doesn’t either.

My hunch doesn’t explain the reason for the inconsistent behavior, but I do believe it’s because we live in a perpetual beta season with changes constantly happening on our devices and behind the scenes that users are unaware of, can’t track down, and that any support source, including Apple’s, can keep up with.

I wrote this post for two reasons.

First, this morning I needed to set a timer. I was wearing my AirPods and Apple Watch and told Siri to do so. My AirPods told me the timer was set. The timer completed as intended. But the expired timer didn’t show on my Apple Watch, my iPhone, or my Mac. It was still chiming when my wife tracked it down on my iPad Pro at the other end of our apartment, which I hadn’t used since Saturday. Like I said, sometimes it’s comical.

Once I silenced the expired timer and was back at my desk I was scrolling through my feeds and noticed this review by Jennifer Pattison on The Verge of the HomePod mini 2. She mentions that the signature feature of being able to use HomePods as default speakers for a Mac was not working for her as designed.

Following that I stumbled on this MacRumors article by Tim Hardwick that some users are returning newly purchased HomePod mini 2s for the same problem Pattison experienced.

These are not new issues. HomePod users have reported AirPlay issues prior to all of the changes Apple is introducing this year. I have personally experienced these kind of connection issues with AirPods prior to any of this year’s rollouts. And that’s the problem. These changes are supposedly designed to make things work together seamlessly, but for some time now Apple’s sound routing issues with HomePods and AirPods inconsistently keep baring all of the seams in a system that’s great when it works, but keeps tripping over itself when it doesn’t.

I will say this. In my early days of using AirPods before things supposedly got better I experienced far fewer issues, though there were far fewer bells and whistles.

I don’t think it’s too much to ask to consistently hear bells or whistles where I asked them to be piped into my ears or the way they are advertised.

Thanks for reading. You can subscribe to this blog if you care to. You can also find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above. This site does not use affilate links.

 

AirPods Pro 3 Review: Hits and Misses

Not quite the right fit, but still a hit in my ears

In showbiz you know you can never please everybody no matter how hard you try. The same is actually true when it comes to any product, including tech. Especially hardware.  Especially hardware you stick in your ears. Add that layer and the odds of pleasing everyone decrease substantially, even if you do create a hit.

Apple’s AirPods have generally been perceived as a hit product since their debut even though the first version was made fun of for its initial appearance. Each iteration gained more fans along the way with the AirPods Pro 2 being more than generally regarded as quite a hit.

The AirPods Pro 3 got early overwhelming raves but as more folks have tried them in more ears some of those first blush raves have been joined with more tempered opinions. Apple made a big deal about improvements in both the sound AirPods Pro 3 deliver and also how much testing they did to find the best fit for the most people. In my experience Apple scored a hit when it comes to sound and noise cancelation, but a more of a miss when it comes to fit.

First the hits

I’m a long time AirPods user and have long considered the AirPods one of Apple’s best products. They are not perfect, but they are good products I rely on. That said, I’ve never quite bought in to what I consider the myth about how good Apple’s active noise cancellation is with previous models. It has improved along the way. But to my ears it was never quite as good for me as it was promised and as it was ballyhooed by so many. It was fine and certainly better than not having it when mowing the yard, flying on a plane, or washing the dishes, but not quite as promising as Apple and others described.

That said, in my ears the active noise cancellation for the AirPods Pro 3 takes a substantive leap. The first time I noticed the improvement was in my kitchen. I had been listening to a podcast while washing the dishes. My wife came in to ask me a question. I paused the podcast, answered the question but I didn’t turn the podcast back on as I was finishing up.

I left the AirPods in as I was doing the usual clean up of kitchen counters and my wife came in again to help. We chatted a bit and then I went in the other room. This entire time we had been running our window air conditioner as temperatures had been running warmer than usual for this time of year. As I passed back and forth through the kitchen my wife and I chatted. On one of those trips I noticed that I didn’t hear the sound of the window air conditioner and I asked her if she had turned it off. With her verbal reply that she hadn’t, the sound of the AC returned. Again I was not playing any audio at the moment.

When she finished talking the noise of the air conditioner just stopped. I told her what I was hearing and it returned with my voice. It was literally as if we were using an on/off switch.

This morning as I was mowing the lawn for what I hope is the last time this season, I did some A/B testing between the AirPods Pro 2 and Pro 3 models. There was a decided difference with the lawn mower with the AirPods Pro 3 being much better at muffling the sound of the mower. It didn’t kill it completely, but it did muffle it more.

So in terms of improving noise cancellation I would say Apple certainly set a new mark.

I’m not an audiophile by any stretch of the imagination and I use my AirPods to primarily listen to podcast and audio books much more than I do music and other entertainment. In that A/B testing during my lawn mowing chores and afterwards I’ll say I didn’t notice that much of, if any difference in the audio quality of the podcasts I was listening to, but adding in the better noise cancellation I’d say I heard better over the more muffled mower.

Continuing to listen after my yard work in quieter indoor environs, I was quite pleased with the quality of the sound, but no more so than with the AirPods Pro 2. So, in my listening I’d call it a wash as far as audio quality is concerned.

The Misses

In the two experiences above I was using the AirPods with noise cancellation turned on. Apple’s AirPods feature three different listening modes, Noise Cancellation, Adaptive, and Transparency. Noise Cancellation seeks to cancel outside noise, Transparency lets outside noise in but still focuses the audio you’re listening to, Adaptive is somewhere in between, supposedly adapting to external noise to raise the signal you’re listening in balancing against outside noise as it may come and go.

When I’m walking and listening I’ll use the Adaptive mode to have awareness of what’s around me. I walk on city streets and in city parks and I’ve never felt satisfied with the myth of the Adaptive listening mode. I still don’t with the AirPods 3. When introduced Apple trumpeted “a new listening mode that dynamically blends Transparency mode and Active Noise Cancellation together based on the conditions of a user’s environment to deliver the best experience in the moment.”

In theory, the Adaptive mode should help decrease louder external sounds (leaf blowers, lawn blowers, city buses, etc…) but that’s never really worked well for me in practice. My experience with AirPods Pro 2 was there might or might not be an adjustment. It was always inconsistent, and if there was an adjustment it was quite slow in reacting to external sound, often doing so after a loud vehicle and its noise had passed.

I haven’t really given this much time with the AirPods Pro 3 but in the brief time I have, I’ll say that when there is an adjustment the response seems a bit quicker. But again, it’s inconsistent when that happens. Overall I’d rate this as about the same as the AirPods Pro 2  in that it is not really a feature that works for me.

The biggest miss for me with the AirPods Pro 3 is the fit. But there’s somewhat of a caveat that goes along with that statement. I can’t say I’ve ever been satisfied with the fit of any of the AirPods that I’ve owned. The AirPods Pro 2 came the closest. But even then I’d occasionally have difficulty keeping them in my ears or wearing them too long.

This year Apple worked hard on creating a physical design for this new generation to try and find the best fit for the most ears. The ear tips are foam-infused to create a better seal in the ear, which along with the computational audio contributes to the better noise cancellation I spoke of earlier. That said, these ear-tips constantly remind me of their presence more than the others did and after a while feel uncomfortable.

Apple also included more sizes of ear tips, again aiming for a better fit for more ears. If you run the Acoustic Seal test it can theoretically guide you to the best fit. Here’s an interesting personal tidbit. I have achieved a good seal with both the Medium sized ear tips and the Extra Small sizes, but not the Small. I’m not sure what that means.

I credit Apple with continuing to try and find ways to accommodate customers, but I think Apple’s challenge speaks more to the size and variable anatomy of its potential market than it does to any failure. Certainly ears come in all shapes and sizes. Apple claims it scanned 10,000 ears. I’m betting if it scanned another 10,000 there would still be fit issues for some customers. After all, we’re told since childhood not to stick anything smaller than our elbow in our ears.

Other Features

Apple continues to add and improve Health related features to the AirPods Pro lineup this year adding  a custom-built heart rate sensor. Apple has also added Live Translation as a feature that’s currently in beta. For the former I haven’t used the AirPods Pro 3 long enough to test the feature, and I haven’t even attempted the latter.

Summary

All in all, even with some misses, the new AirPods Pro 3 leave me in the same place previous editions have. It’s a very good Apple product that’s not perfect by any means, but it is good enough for me to want to keep using it even if it’s not a perfect fit. As I’ve previously gotten just under two years of good life out of earlier models before I notice battery life degrading, I imagine I’ll be using these for the next two.

You can also find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above.