Once upon a time, noise-canceling headphones primarily existed for one purpose: air travel. Bose and Sennheiser were among the first on the scene commercially, blocking unwanted sounds for pilots long before wireless headphones were even a thing. Today, active noise cancellation (ANC) is not just commonplace, it's practically expected for any consumer headphone.
During the development of its four sets of AirPods with ANC, Apple has harnessed the power of its noise-blocking system to create a natural-sounding transparency mode, develop the automatic Adaptive Audio feature and create accessibility tools like Conversation Awareness. ANC is the basis for a litany of handy AirPods features, and with the AirPods Pro 3, Apple has honed this set of offerings even further.
As director of home and audio product marketing Eric Treski told Engadget. “With ANC, it was really about extending that capability to other use cases.”
The overall redesign of AirPods Pro 3
Billy Steele for Engadget
Before I get into the upgrades to the ANC system and the other tools that those unlock, I’d be remiss not to discuss how the overall redesign of the AirPods Pro 3 factors in. First, Apple adjusted the direction of the sound coming out of the earbuds so it’s going more directly into the ear canal. Next, the updates to the AirPods Pro 3’s fit — including the new foam-filled ear tips — create a better seal that helps make the ANC setup more efficient.
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“The better fit allows us to diagnose what’s happening inside the ear canal,” Matthew Costello, vice president of audio and hardware engineering, explained. “We can actually make ANC more precise, compensate for leak and also better understand the geometry of the individual ear canals.”
Costello said that the product design team spent a lot of time on the new ear tips, arriving at a silicone-coated, foam-infused version for the AirPods Pro 3. He noted that these tips provide the best seal of any AirPods so far, which I can confirm, and that the passive noise isolation they provide is one aspect of the new-and-improved ANC performance.
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