Comment by leviathant
17 hours ago
I say this as someone with tens of thousands in audio equipment, as someone who can hear the compression warble in the hihats and the cymbals - audio quality with earbuds doesn't actually matter. It's like the argument for audio quality in cars - you're listening in a hostile environment, and convenience wins over fidelity. I remember walking to work one time with over-the-ear Sennheisers attached to my iPod and it felt ridiculous, and unsafe.
I finally capitulated to earbuds when they started giving them away with the Pixel phones. The "find my" feature basically justifies the pro-prices, to me, because my biggest complaint about bluetooth earbuds in my own use case was how easily they're lost. I've lost and recovered my Pixel Buds Pro 2 a couple of times now. When traveling a lot by train and plane, the convenience of pocket-sized noise-cancelling earbuds has become worth it for me.
But when I'm on meetings, I'm wired in. During the pandemic, I lost track of how many times my colleagues' Airpods would sputter out and die in the middle of a client meeting. Then they'd switch to wired headphones and their Macbook microphone. They sounded better, they could hear better, and there was no battery power sword of Damocles anymore.
Disagree slightly with audio quality for cars. I recently got a car with "good" speakers and the difference from regular car speakers is striking. Although I'm sure that the curve quickly flattens on spending more to get more quality, going above the base car speaker level has been awesome for me.
I think the point is that when you're driving (at least in a combustion engine car), the 60-70dB noise floor is so high that it almost doesn't matter how good the speakers are in an ideal silent, soundproof chamber.
I recommend ripping your car apart and putting sound insulation panels everywhere you can! Also replacing your sound system...
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You also need microphones to pick up ambient sound and play it back at 180 phase shift ..
There is a reason premium audio car packages cost over 2000$
Car's have it really tough in the audio department. SO many things work against it
In cars it’s also important how good it isolates you from the engine and external noise like wind and wheels on the road. Some cars even have noise cancellation for that.
Some cars have gone so far on the isolation and sound damping front that they pipe back in a little bit of engine noise (but only the part that sounds sporty) via the speakers.
I agree. Hell, when I'm listening to music with my full-fat expensive setup, even the noise of the fans in my desktop computer is distracting and adversarial to the listening environment. Bringing those cans outside would be insane.
> I finally capitulated to earbuds
I'm not audiophile, but I was prepared to do the same, despite the discomfort and obviously-lower sound quality... but the mic isn't even sufficient for meetings in a public place (e.g. a diner at lunch time), whereas my laptop's builtin mic is. How can they expect us to use these things??
> […] but the mic isn't even sufficient for meetings in a public place (e.g. a diner at lunch time), whereas my laptop's builtin mic is.
Exact opposite for me: other people can't hear anything if the meeting app uses my laptop's mic.
Sound quality is worse when transmitting and receiving over Bluetooth, when I use the AirPods for calls on the MacBook I switch to the microphone on the MacBook, they will hear me better and I will hear them better since the AirPods will use all the bandwidth for outputting audio only.
Are you sure this is a bandwidth issue?
I always assumed it was more about the position and size of the microphone.
When making a call and using headset mic+earphones the audio mode/profile drops back to HFP instead of A2DP used for music. The quality difference is huge. By using the computer mic you can keep using A2DP with better quality for your voice capture and listening experience.
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>Are you sure this is a bandwidth issue?
It's technically not a bandwidth issue, AFAIK, it is a "profile" issue. When listening to audio only you are using a different bluetooth profile than when you are using it for two way mic+speakers.
Try playing some music on your computer and then start a video call. Even before I jump into the meeting, as soon as I hit the Google meet site and it opens up the meeting "camera preview" page, the music quality goes straight into the toilet.
This also happens to my "puck" speaker+mic array that is connected via USB.
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They mean that the audio quality you hear on the AirPods is better if you only listen to audio compared to listening and using the microphone. I don’t know if that happens on Macs too, but it’s certainly true when using AirPods on Linux because you have to switch the profile when you want to use the microphone and then the audio is really compressed for playback.
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This is certainly the opposite of my experience. The sound quality from someone speaking via their MacBook microphone is noticeably worse than someone speaking via their AirPods microphone.
Convenience is close. IMO it’s all about accessibility, or more generally Good UX. Your coworkers AirPods died because they used it consistently and could just get up and walk around without having to take them out. They were always on because they were in ear and had no reason to be disconnected. They’ll turn off the moment you take them out on iPhones atleast. This is a small example of how the user experience in the Apple Ecosystem for AirPods has been kind of nuts. So if you’re on these devices, there is a palpable difference in ‘convenience’ that goes beyond what is carry-able or safe or consistent.
To further this concept, the reason why you tolerate variable quality isn’t just convenience or accessibility. It’s because you can’t carry your setup around, yes, but furthermore you don’t habitually listen to music because you have the best setup. You do it because you love music. In that regard, the user experiences do become interchangeable. Quality music is accessible on every device and you will listen to it with anything if you love music. The user experience enjoyment levels are ultimately similar with most devices for you, purely when it comes to music listening, just because you love music. It’s a consistently good UX for you.
I say all of this as someone who has also wasted money on expensive listening devices (and loves music) and also someone who isn’t like, crazy about the modern Apple UX. They just got earbuds right when it comes to the experience of an Apple ecosystem user.
> They’ll turn off the moment you take them out on iPhones atleast. This is a small example of how the user experience in the Apple Ecosystem for AirPods has been kind of nuts.
Every 'pod' type headphones I've used do this. It's odd you admit to only knowing Apple, then use it to support Apple being superior.
> They sounded better, they could hear better
Only tangential, but man I really hate sitting in zoom meetings with bad audio. It could be one person with a bad mic. But the worst is when you’re talking to people in a room somewhere and they simply don’t have the equipment. Combine that with a weekly dose of feedback…
I use my Shokz headset for calls. The boom directional mic is excellent at suppressing background noise on its own and the connection is super reliable with the USB-C dongle (that works on phones as well as laptops)