When you enter the building that houses Apple’s audio lab, venture just beyond reception and you’ll encounter a massive vintage stereo setup. The deck and accompanying speakers were a gift from Steve Jobs to the team of engineers who work in this office. The group sees the old-school tech as a source of inspiration, but also as a reminder of Jobs’ obsession with both music and sound.
More than inspiration, though, the stereo is a reminder to the experts in software, acoustics and sound design how important sound is to everything Apple builds.
Inside, I was led into a maze of nondescript halls, weaving from room to room with a trio of Apple engineers as my guides. I was in for a rare peek into the company’s product development facilities — a step further behind the curtain than what’s typically allowed during Apple events.
Validating the AirPods hearing test
Billy Steele for Engadget
As Apple’s audio team works to correct and calibrate the AirPods' fit for natural variations in ear geometry, they use a collection of audio metric booths to check their work. These rooms look like small, windowless offices. The walls are covered in sound-dampening panels and there’s a single workstation with a Mac and various tools for hearing analysis. If you’ll recall, one of the company’s major ambitions with AirPods has been the end-to-end hearing health experience that it debuted last year. In order to validate its claims of a “clinical grade hearing test,” engineers use devices you might see in an audiologist's office, like audiometers. These spaces aren’t unlike the small booths you’ve probably sat in for a professionally-administered hearing test.
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In one booth alone, the team ran thousands of tests on the feature to ensure that the hearing screening in your pocket was as accurate as what you could get from a doctor. Not only does this allow AirPods users to set up a hearing aid at home (if needed), but it also creates an accurate hearing profile so that you can hear music the way it was intended.
Another important step in the product design process was making sure there was a tuning baseline for every person that listens to music with AirPods. Everyone hears various frequencies differently, so there needs to be an adjustment to achieve the desired consistency. With the hearing test and accompanying audio profile, Apple then has a starting point to make both technical and artistic decisions. It’s here that the technology and liberal arts expertise among the audio lab team starts to mix.
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