Composer and music producer Lodewijk Vos has published an interesting review of the AirPods Pro 3. In it, he shares his experience with the new earbuds and points out a few clever tricks Apple uses to keep the music sounding good no matter how loud (or quiet) you listen. Check it out below.
Video reviews about audio are always tricky, especially when you consider the fact that different people have different sensibilities, experiences and responses to the same stimuli.
So instead of getting deeply technical, Lodewijk Vos took a different approach. In the video below, he notes a few tidbits that make the AirPods Pro 3 different from previous models, and explains how Apple keeps playback clear and crisp at any volume.
Noise cancellation and transparency mode
Just like in our own review of the AirPods Pro 3, Vos notes that Apple really delivers on its promise to improve noise cancellation when compared to previous models.
Vos notes that the foam tip actually provides a better seal, while Transparency Mode sounds more neutral and true to the actual environment, when compared with previous models:
“If you turned on transparency mode in the old ones, the highs were super hyped, and it never felt real. Another audio trick that Apple used to play on us was, I am pretty sure that the transparency mode was always like 2dB louder than the real world, which made as soon as you turn on noise cancellation, you really felt a huge difference. More than the noise cancellation actually was with this ones. It’s not It’s not the case. They are actually really close.”
Music playback
As he listened to Radiohead’s Paranoid Android, Vos noticed that Apple fine-tunes the EQ depending on the volume to keep the experience consistent:
“If you go down in volume, the EQ will hype the bass and the treble, so it becomes a smiley face. This makes the track sound more hyped and more alive at lower volumes. (…) As you start turning it up, the EQ goes slowly the other way around because if you’re too loud, that kick is going to be super overwhelming (…).”
He points out that with the new ANC and these EQ tweaks, he’s been listening to music at lower volumes, and also notes that Apple managed to avoid the fact that other small earbuds face compared with bigger headphones or speakers, which is that “as soon as they start pumping up the bass, things get muddy and woolly. And this is not the case at all for these guys.”
Vos also takes a few minutes to give his take on the different reviews and measurements that have been popping up online, with very mixed results about the new AirPods Pro 3 performance. In a nutshell, he disagrees with their methods, and explains why measuring active noise cancelling is less straightforward than one would imagine.
All in all, this is an interesting take that avoids the pitfall of going overboard on the technical aspects that most users will probably not be able to notice, and offers a comprehensive look at what most of us will actually get to notice once we pop these AirPods on.
Watch it below:
What has your experience with the AirPods Pro 3 been like? Let us know in the comments.
Accessory deals on Amazon