AirPods Max Review: An Audiophile's Perspective

Although I don't prefer to use the term, I am what many would consider an

audiophile

. I have a deep affinity for music of all genres, from performing to listening, and I have what could certainly be classified as an unhealthy amount of audio equipment, so when Apple announced they were entering the midfield audio market with the 550 Airpods Max. He was extremely interested and skeptical. Now I had a few days to listen to the Airpods Max almost non-stop. I disarmed them. I've tried all kinds of cable devices and I want to share with you what I found and how I feel they fit in with the competition they are really good but not good enough it's complicated what it's not complicated to buy one of these new little ifixit stocking stuffers with The most common bits for electronic component repair, including those needed to open AirPods Max, you really can't pass them up at their low prices of 15 and 20 dollars respectively, pick them up today with the link below, okay, let's start with the quality of construction, but only briefly.

As other

review

ers have covered ad nauseum, in short, they look and feel expensive thanks to their aluminum and stainless steel ensemble in a way that honestly can't be conveyed on camera, they are really impressive, but that's not without of disadvantages that are seen more. The headphones are made of plastic and it's not because they are cheap, for example the Bowers and Wilkins px7 have very stylish plastic composite arms with woven carbon fiber for strength and they don't feel cheap at all now that materials like these. to reduce weight because evenly distributing the weight comfortably over the head is a difficult task.

Now Apple has tried to solve this by adding what they call the woven mesh canopy and they are not even remotely the first company to have implemented something like this to reduce pressure on the top. of your head, regardless of most heads I think it will work pretty well, unfortunately for mine, don't you know those helmets they put on babies now to help them form proper skulls? Yeah, well those must not have existed when I was a 90s hashtag kit, so the top of my head is actually further back and I find that most of the weight of the headphones doesn't rest on the canopy. mesh but on the rear fixed bar.

It's strange, aside from the head, I rarely feel uncomfortable wearing headphones, so it was strange to see the

airpods

max. It bothers me and I suspect a lot of it has to do with his weight moving the weight off the top of his head. Headphones also often squeeze the side of the head a bit and while many people find this distracting, I actually prefer to weigh it down on my head, the problem is the clamping force of these headphones on my head anyway, which It's not even very wide, it's very tall. I can tilt my head all the way forward and they don't slide well at all. in the sense that they are unlikely to fall out if for example you go for a run with these on, however it will be a problem if you are sensitive to strong grip, you know who you are, these are not arches, quiet comfort levels . comfort maybe luck will strike and Apple will release a cheaper composite model of these in the future because the weight deserves most of the blame when it comes to comfort everything else the ratchet-less yoke fit the soft breathable ear pads absolutely fantastic the deep ear cups that fit many ear sizes etc. they are all well thought out and even industry leading with a side note on the yokes although they are not very long so if you have a head Tall and thin, you'll find yourself wishing there was. just a little bit more length, I'm among you, let's talk controls, the

airpods

max were originally rumored to have a touch-sensitive control surface and while I'm sure Apple would have done a good job, the volume wheel, which It's just a meteorite version of the Apple Watch's digital crown and the noise control button are fantastic, while the vibrating touch motor is absent, you can hear a nice little click on the right earcup when you adjust the volume and steps. volume are noticeably more accurate than you would otherwise.

Turn on your iPhone by pressing the volume up and down button, which is great when one level is too quiet but the next level is too loud. The noise control button has a satisfying click after a hilariously long trip that honestly could be a shot further than your laptop keyboards, the only and I mean the only problem with these is that they are confined to the right earbud and you can't just change the ear pads because the channel phase won't be correct and b It will block the important optical sensor that is used to see if your ears are inside the cups, pull one side up and your music will stop until Replace the cup or remove them completely so that the headphones go into a low power mode, talk about low power. power and battery mode.

I've seen a lot of drama about these because of the case and yes, this case is really notable in the sense that it is perhaps one of the worst things ever designed in an interview with Japanese magazine Casa Brutus, Apple designer Eugene. Wayne talks about how the origami style case was designed to be compact and not bulky like other headphone cases. um, yeah, it's not like that, that's the problem. These headphones, as stated, are huge and basically fall in the most basic and worst possible way from a space. -The savings point of view is, honestly, one of the reasons why I have a hard time seeing myself traveling with these things, they are just huge and the case, which is a very generous term, does not provide anything in terms of protection, it sucks, okay, whatever, just get rid of it. of the stupid case because the case has a magnetic sensor inside that tells the earbuds that you're done with them and the earbuds then go into a low power state because yeah the earbuds don't have a power button now a lot of people are losing my mind over this.

Because mkbhd stated in its

review

that the earbuds stay on for about an hour or two before automatically entering ultra-low power mode without a case, Apple has since clarified that quote if you set your Airpods to maximum and leave them stationary. for 5 minutes, they leave. In a low power mode to preserve battery charge After 72 hours stationary outside the smart case, your AirPods Max enter a low power mode that turns off Bluetooth and finds mi to conserve battery charge. Watch more even if there is an 18 hour wait time. Before the bluetooth radios went out completely, the only thing I can really confirm is that I left them out of the case for eight hours when I went to sleep and noticed that only three batteries were dead, about 36 minutes of total listening time, an insignificant loss, so just get rid of the stupid case and don't worry, everything will be fine, plus I'm sure that in due time third party cases will hit the market soon.

Anyway, let's talk about battery life real quick. Apple has them rated to last 20 hours and on my first full drain I actually measured close to 24 hours of total use, which is more than enough for basically any scenario that says you can use them while charging via lightning and , unlike other active noise canceling headphones I have, I'm looking at you, Sony. Don't worry about noise cancellation with this static hiss when listening while plugged in, plus if you're a fool and forget to charge them, I'm talking about me, a quick five minute plug-in will do the trick. An additional 1.5 hours of listening time, which is amazing, things that aren't amazing, damn, why should this connector still exist?

Apple, I only charge my airpods pro wirelessly like my iPhone, and it's so necessary to have a stupid Lightning connector on hand just for these headphones. It's incredibly annoying, these should have just been USB-C and it's Apple's fault for not doing so. I want to address repairability quickly because the airpods line has historically been terrible at that and look, I recognize that in a small earbud form factor there are unlikely to be any repairable parts. but these are great headphones and really have no excuse for not being used for many, many years, just like any other pair of high end headphones, for example these Stax headphones I have are almost as old as I am and they still work and sound great. decades later, so opening the airpods max with today's sponsor, the ifixit minnow kit, is a piece of cake because it has Apple's patented Penelope p5 bit, these screws seem to recoil like normal screws, they are very attractive, but wow, sure no.

And if you don't know, like me, no one I've ever seen has tried to take them apart, but you're going to break them, you'll see there's a little aluminum lip that these plastic shims press against, turn right and the plastic shims they tighten. Turn half a turn to the left and they will move away and loosen. Once you've released them, you'll still need an unfortunately violent opening tool to get in, as they're also held in place by an adhesive perimeter strip. Disappointing Once inside, you will see that the power controller and battery cells are in the right cup and in the left cup, well, it is almost empty, except for the logic board and the dual h1 chips, everything inside the cups is Screwed into place, even the microphones with no glue in sight. which is great from a repairability standpoint, just be careful when working with the controller.

I accidentally dropped a small screw and slightly dented the controller. Now don't worry, I wrote the audio portion of this review before the teardown and, frankly, it didn't. It doesn't seem to change the sound signature anyway, but be warned, once opened everything seems easily replaceable, assuming you can get parts, good luck with that and assuming you can non-destructively get into the damn things, pick up your ifixit kits today at the link below and thanks to them for sponsoring this episode, well let's finally get to the good stuff about the audio. I'm going to separate this section into three subsections noise control modes wireless and wired performance and latest sound quality with objective data and subjective opinions now like the airpods pro before them, there are three noise control modes on the airpods max.

If you don't have airpods pro or have never heard of them or don't know how these modes work, go ahead and check out my original review of the airpods pro because it gives you a simulation of what these modes feel like with your regular headphones. Now the ball bell on these headphones has active noise cancellation and all in all it is the best in its class with a few minor caveats. Now I personally find that the vacuum pressurization effect. It's very loud, much louder than any of my other anc headphones and while this means it does a better job of canceling noise, it can cause discomfort or headaches for some people, it even got to the point where I needed to open my mouth to let my eardrums recalibrate much like they would on an airplane.

Remember that look, it's really only annoying if you're not playing music with ANC enabled and even then my ears got used to the pressurization effect after about a day of use in exchange for that cabin-like pressure offering the best cancellation of any over-ear headphones I've ever tried. It's not as good at eliminating consistent noises like HVAC systems or fan noise. I also suspect that airplane engine noise is the reigning champion. Sony. 1000x mark iv but it comes very close and far superior to everything else, those inconsistent sounds like spoken voices passing cars, strong gusts of wind, children and just about any other noise you can make that you want to be blocked out.

That's not to say it's perfect, it's not, for example, I had to turn and swerve on a stretch of road as a passenger in a vehicle when my wife and I were driving on a cement road, you know, the noise of the tires that are made on cement. roads like well yeah that noise, well the Airpods Max really struggled with this scenario in both of my ears. I was getting a really loud and really annoying clicking noise, like it was a little slow in canceling out all the different noises. I restarted the The headphones thought it was a bug, but it wasn't, the problem persisted until we took the exit from the paved highway, so except for strange cases like this, which are really rare, it is by far the best of its kind class and it is exceptional, what else is exceptional?

Transparency mode: This is the mode that lets ambient noise in so you know that while you're riding a bike down a road or listening to a baby cry, you can hear things around you and, frankly, all the transparency modes of theConventional headphones suck in my opinion, I mean they work. But if you're going to talk to someone for more than 10 seconds, you'll just want to take off your headphones entirely, except maybe the AirPods Pro, which work pretty well but have a strangely artificial brightness and hue that clearly makes them. It sounds like you're listening through a microphone and it's not convincing enough to be annoying with the airpods max.

The opposite couldn't be more true when you're sitting with the audio paused and transparency mode on, it's almost indistinguishable from not wearing headphones, it's eerily good and because there's a microphone inside the left earcup, it does a very good job. by separating your own voice, allowing you to hear yourself while you speak, something no other headset offers. It's genuinely top-notch and is perhaps the most impressive feature of these headphones. uh wow oh yeah, and then there's the off mode where the microphones just take a break and the headphones act like normal headphones. We'll get to that with my airpods pro.

In fact, I prefer this sound mode when I don't really need it. noise canceling, but with the airpods the maximum noise cancellation mode is so discreet that I just leave the anc enabled all the time, okay, so let's talk about the aac codex or codec. You've probably heard a lot in the last few days about the sbc dex or ldac application. These are all audio compression codecs used to transfer audio data over Bluetooth. Yes, they airpods mac are bluetooth headphones, there is a lot of confusion behind the h1 chips and what they do and they perform various functions and they are amazing, I mean they are the ones that run the digital signal processor, which we will talk about in a minute.

It also allows you to quickly connect to other Apple devices etc., but the non-proprietary main audio column is transmitted via Bluetooth, so if you want to learn more about audio compression via Bluetooth, because the Airpods and Mac are no different than any other type of headphones, the sound has a Excellent article, even if it is a couple of years old, I will link it below, but in short, aac is not the quote-unquote high-end wireless codec. Sony's proprietary LDAC currently holds that crown at 990 kilobits per second, still a long way from lossless CD quality at 1411 kilobits per second, but much closer than AAC's 256 kilobits per second limit.

Now talking about bitrate is dangerous because aac is a bit special in the sense that it is a psychoacoustic compression algorithm, meaning it looks to shuffle or strip. data that determines that you wouldn't be able to hear beyond the frequencies of normal hearing anyway, making it a more efficient codec and closer to the others in sound quality than you might actually think, also because the rate bit rate is much lower. To reduce the reliability and range of Bluetooth, everyone talks about ldac like it's the best thing out there, but it's extremely unreliable and its range is abysmal, even Sony's own digital audio players give you the ability to prioritize quality of sound or performance and range, and that changes the bit rate from 990 kilobits per second to 660 kilobits per second respectively, why does any of this matter?

You're asking, well actually that's not the case and that's the point in most cases and it implements the music you're listening to on Apple Music or Spotify or youtube isn't even beyond the speed that the airpods max can receive data anyway, and even if they were, I'd say that many audio files, as determined by the drivers, internal amplification, and digital-to-analog converter inside the headphones themselves, matter a lot more than bitrate or codex you're sending to the headphones, it's something like HDR TVs, like a 300 4k HDR TV, it sucks, they have much lower dynamic range and maximum brightness than a five year old high end TV. if it's older and lower resolution and not quote unquote hdr, just because there is a higher code, a higher end codec and it's supported, doesn't mean it's actually going to make a noticeable difference on headphones that you can't with put something good poor quality components and hope to get something good now you can use the airpods max connected with this cable that Apple sells separately for $35.

Now make no mistake, the price of 35 for this crappy little cable is pretty outrageous, but you have to give Apple credit, it's not just a normal cable, you see, mac airpods only have one Lightning port, that's all, and Lightning is a digital-only connector, this cable is bidirectional, so if you plug one end into your iPhone's Lightning connector and then the other end into just a standard pair of old headphones it will convert and amplify that signal, but in the case of With the Airpods Max, you actually do the opposite, by connecting the 3.5 millimeter side, for example, to your MacBook Pro and then the lightning end to your headphones, the analog signal coming from your laptop is reconverted back into a signal digital where the lightning connector is because there is an adc known as an analog to digital converter inside and then they pass that digital signal to your airpods max which reconverts it back into an analog signal to amplify it in your speaker.

Drivers lose me, okay, you really only need to know two things about this number one cable, it mainly eliminates latency. Bluetooth has a latency of about 120 to 150 milliseconds, making it basically unusable for video editing or music production, so plug this cable in. and that latency disappears for the most part, the dsp adds a couple dozen milliseconds to my perceptions, so it feels a little more delayed than standard headphones, but it's not enough to matter to basically anyone, I don't care and I edit videos and even you know inside. one box there is adequate tolerance and number two this cable overcomes the limitations of bluetooth and the edc within the cable is surprisingly good on well mastered tracks the wired cable provides a higher quality listening experience than through bluetooth i know this sounds like a placebo like me drinking the kool-aid i know so i ran an experiment with four people to do a blind b test of three songs that i felt benefited from playing wired on my macbook pro old standard headphone jack a via kobas hi-rez and 12.

Songs played 11 of the tracks were correctly identified by listeners as sounding better so it's not a placebo I don't know and now we come to the sound quality let's start first with objective measurements, now I do not have the necessary test equipment to create. My own frequency response graphs because high quality measurement equipment costs tens of thousands of dollars, so instead of doing that and providing my own, I will show and link to chronic measurements. This is a downward curve with a lot of emphasis on the low end, especially pronounced. It's the low mid bass and the sub bass at around 100 hertz, these headphones are really bassy, ​​luckily they are spectacularly well controlled.

If you look at the sony 1000x mark iv you will see this awful V curve that totally saturates the bloated bass all the way to the bottom. The lower midrange airpods max don't, however if you follow the harmonic curve the treble frequencies on the airpods max from about 1.5k onwards never really resolve and you don't get that sparkle that someone like me would be looking for in a simpler way what Apple has. done here is very harmless, most people will simply appreciate the sound signature with the bass heads and will be particularly pleased. Frankly, there's a little more bass than I'd like, but it's so remarkably well controlled for a closed-back headphone that I honestly have a hard time believing this headphone is made by the same company that for years produced dre beats, the Fortunately, the upper mids are pretty decent, with string instruments showing off frequencies. strong treble, they are perfectly harmless, they are very smooth and easy to listen to, but they are nothing special, they lack extension and the presence that I would personally prefer, fortunately, in the accessibility settings in iOS. you can tune the dsp of the airpods and by enabling the balanced and light ho ho ho ho mama, those thin mids and those missing high-end sections really come in very well and sound quite similar in sound signature to really prestigious headphones like the audeze lcd 2c, only with more bass than desired they have the benefit of being open cans.

In my opinion, the soundstage is remarkably good for closed-back headphones and the h1 chips certainly need to be complemented for that, however, I was a little disappointed in the imaging capabilities, which is where the instruments seem. They are spatially placed, I thought with all of Apple's work on this dsp for spatial audio imaging it would be top notch on this pair of stereo headphones but it's just average talking about spatial audio, it's great, a party trick, yeah, Sure, but it's Great in compatible TV shows and movies. Dolby Surround tracks are simulated by different phases of these stereo drivers and feels like surround sound.

It's nowhere near a good home theater setup per se, but for a pair of stereo headphones it's very immersive, but the sensors on board your iOS device and the gyroscope inside the Airpods Max let you move your head away from the screen and the headphones retain positional images so that it seems like the audio is coming from the screen itself instead of having speakers attached to your head, it's a really cool tech demo and nice when watching movies, but not in my opinion It's a game changer and certainly not a selling point for these headphones. Also, they are only compatible with iOS and when will I want to see them? a movie on my phone anyway, lastly let's talk about the dsp because I've been referring to it a lot during this video.

It's the chip that, by the nature of its name, changes the frequency response of the headphones according to a variety of different factors, as Apple's marketing calls it. adaptive equalizer and suggests that all the sensors work together to adjust low and mid frequencies in real time based on how the headphones are placed on your head, taking into account things like glasses, ear piercings and hairstyles. Now I can't talk about that. It actually works because the only ears I have are my own and they are different from everyone else's. What I can say, though, is that I'm surprised at how consistent these headphones sound, no matter how they're placed in your ears, angled up and down. bass, even slightly removing the entire cup from my ear, the frequency response stays pretty much the same unless I do something really weird and take it completely out of my ear, this doesn't happen with other headphones and I have a few pairs where there are actually at the Conversely, a very narrow sweet spot inside the earcup, the AirPods Max don't really seem to care where your ears are, and while that may bother some

audiophile

s who want to control how their headphones sound, the end result is a consistency I've seen. well never before, it's really cool, okay let's finally compare them to sony's 1000x mark iv, frankly it's not even close and that's not even really subjective.

The mac airpods objectively have better bass control and the sony ones actually have a tendency to get quite muddy in the sub bass area which can make the headphones sound too boomy, the bmw px7 are much more reserved than the sony and They provide a more balanced listening experience, but because they are reserved, they are quite boring. The airpods max have significantly more detail in the instrument separation than them with the confidence in the low end that the bmw simply lacks, but the sonys tend to overdo it, it is my opinion that, except perhaps the airpods mac 800 bang olufsen h95, they are the best active noise canceling bluetooth headphones you can buy period and it seems like even some h95 owners think the airpods max outperformed the bang olufsens with a little EQ, that's impressive but of course it's not impressive either because that it just makes them the best of the worst, most bluetooth headphones suck and no the airpods max don't.

They make me want to throw out my headphone collection but they are fun for me, an audiophile, and I think that says a lot, the levels of detail are impressive and the wired performance takes these headphones even further, unfortunately I think that's the problem, the price, while someone like me, I see 550 for headphones and it becomes interesting, most people scream bloody from the mountain topsabout how Apple takes advantage of its low-intelligence lemming customers and plunders their weak wallets in the process. See if you want the best headphones with active noise cancellation. On the market these are red and frankly not even close but they are priced over 250 over the main competition and no matter how much better they are it will be hard for Apple to convince consumers that they are worth it, especially when you can get the respectable px7 or the popular 1000x brands and a pair of airpods pro for less money than a single pair of airpods max.

Cnet reported that Apple had a pair of AirPods Max in development that would have cost more than a thousand dollars. directly into the hi-fi market, while that would have ruffled even more feathers and probably resulted in fewer sales, it would have been interesting for me to see them specifically target a competitor and a market because they are in no man's land right now. They are not high fidelity, but they are not cheap either and I feel like Apple should have learned by now that since the homepod, it is a difficult market to compete in, for example the airpods pro, they are 10 to 20 percent more expensive than similar sounding competition. but because of their great case, their tight integration with the Apple ecosystem, and the niceties that come from that, like on-demand device switching, they weren't the premium price in most cases, airpods at most, well , they are not between 10 and 20 more expensive than the competition, they are 90 percent more expensive and even for me I pause and think if it is really worth it.

That said, the airpods max have been out of stock for almost three months now, so maybe I'm just stupid who doesn't know. What am I talking about? What do you think you have Airpods Max? Let me know if you like them in the comments below. If you like this video, please like it if you haven't shared it with someone you don't know. I don't like it, thank you so much for watching and as always, stay classy.