AirPods Max

[tinyman392]

Who’s to say whether they “sound like a $500 headphone“ or not? Sometimes the sound signature alone can make them worth the price, and ironically enough the posts after this justify that observation.

I made that statement strictly from an audio-quality perspective, not an overall package. Granted I feel these would be better priced around 450, but a 100 dollar up charge isn’t the worst I’ve seen; it’s not enough for me to want to return them. But again, this is all my opinion. At current time there doesn’t exist a single headphone with all of these features though (all others seem to be lacking at least one of the features offered in the APM).

 

[torifile]

2.5 weeks with the APM and I still love them. I do notice a bit of the recessed mids everyone is talking about but it’s not enough to turn me off of them. My listening station with my LCD2C and Schiit gear along with my Roon collection sits unused in my basement office.

A benefit I hadn’t thought of until tonight - using transparency mode to listen to a song I’m playing on guitar is perfect. I don’t use my APP for music much so these are the first headphones I’ve used for music that have a good transparency mode. It’s really helpful!

Listening to For Emma right now. The jangly guitar is so perfect. It’s how it would sound if I listened to Bon Iver play it live. The horns are in the right place on the stage. I’ve heard them play this song in person a couple of times and this is how it sounds. BTW, I turned off Headphone Accommodations. I prefer the out of the box sound.

More Bon Iver listening for me tonight. I have listened to 22, A Million more than any other album in the past 4 years. I watched them perform it cover to cover in concert. I have a poster from that show on my living room wall and I’m currently wearing the hoodie I bought that night. All this is to say the album is particularly high up on my list of favorite albums. The APM does an admirable job getting the nice deep bass and all the highs in Justin’s falsetto. It also does a remarkable job with the interesting clipping effects (I don’t know the right word to describe it) in the production.

8 circle. I did not intend to make this a running log of my listening session tonight so this will be my last edit. If there was a song I had to be stranded on a desert island with, it’d be this one. Layers of sound all across the range. I have no words to describe the sound but I will just say I had wave upon wave of shivers while listening to it tonight. That’s all I need.

 

[tkddans]

Listening to For Emma right now. The jangly guitar is so perfect. It’s how it would sound if I listened to Bon Iver play it live. The horns are in the right place on the stage. I’ve heard them play this song in person a couple of times and this is how it sounds. BTW, I turned off Headphone Accommodations. I prefer the out of the box sound.

I’m so glad someone else hears the fantastic live performance quality of the APM. To me, these headphones do it such justice, with a fuller experience on the bass end and authentic sounding vocals than others that are even more expensive.

The whole pricing argument seems odd at times to me when there are things the APM unapologetically excels at. If it wasn’t Apple, and if the issues found on these weren’t highlighted so readily by critics, I feel that the headphones would have high regard for their strengths - and at $550, not bad at all!

I have sellers remorse typing this. I can’t wait to have my live performance headphones back, this March.

 

[torifile]

The whole pricing argument seems odd at times to me when there are things the APM unapologetically excels at. If it wasn’t Apple, and if the issues found on these weren’t highlighted so readily by critics, I feel that the headphones would have high regard for their strengths - and at $550, not bad at all!

I agree. I can’t believe that any hobby where people regularly spend $100+ on a balanced cable for a pair of IEMs would complain about price. I spent $140 on a balanced cable from ALO for my Andromeda’s. I didn’t think twice about it. Price consciousness and audio gear are kind of incompatible.

 

[tinyman392]

I’m so glad someone else hears the fantastic live performance quality of the APM. To me, these headphones do it such justice, with a fuller experience on the bass end and authentic sounding vocals than others that are even more expensive.

The whole pricing argument seems odd at times to me when there are things the APM unapologetically excels at. If it wasn’t Apple, and if the issues found on these weren’t highlighted so readily by critics, I feel that the headphones would have high regard for their strengths - and at $550, not bad at all!

I have sellers remorse typing this. I can’t wait to have my live performance headphones back, this March.

A lot of the headphone’s flaws (mainly dealing with sibilance and treble) go away with better mastered recordings. A lot of live recordings are generally not mastered as loudly as regular ones are for whatever reason. With a good recording the only issue I really have is that I want some bass texturing. Otherwise, the warm, easy-going signature is very inviting and enjoyable to just listen to.

It seems like a lot of people are trying to find an issue wherever they can find one, partly because it is Apple. In this case they probably can’t trash the SQ entirely since it is the better sounding of the major players. I feel like the APP got a bad wrap with SQ initially as well when it was better than reviewers tended to put it out to be. Another one I keep seeing is weight causing discomfort. Ironically, this mainly comes from people who haven’t had the headphones on their head. Being here at Head-Fi, there are many of us that have heavier headphones. A lot of us here also understand that discomfort caused by weight could be counteracted easily with a better headband.

All that said, I feel like the majority of the reviews said that it should be priced lower, but the price isn’t high enough to deter the reviewers from buying a set if they wanted one and were part of the Apple ecosystem. In short, they aren’t a value buy, but you won’t regret the 550 you put into them.

 

[Ilomaenkimi]

Yeah, that's what I hear of APM treble, grainy is the way to describe it. There's different interpretation of the word grainy based on people I've spoken to. Some people state grainy being like non-distinction or not so resolved or fuzzy. Others state grainy as texture grainy, but still not so sharp resolve, kinda like television noise and image behind it. With the rise of such treble of APM, and not so fine of a treble, I do hear it as the latter, the unrefined texture grainy. Which is the case in these class of headphones. I was hoping we can get past such type of sound, but APM is no different in this regard. I bet there will be people have no idea what I'm talking about. That's fine, this is just based on my experience with various gears tried.

Maybe grainyness is there because signal is not cd-quality? These ARE bluetooth-headphones, signal is max at AAC 256 when using iPhone. People compare these wired Sennheisers(which sounds terrible, imo) with something else than AAC256. Wake up people.

 

[Heyyoudvd]

All that said, I feel like the majority of the reviews said that it should be priced lower, but the price isn’t high enough to deter the reviewers from buying a set if they wanted one and were part of the Apple ecosystem. In short, they aren’t a value buy, but you won’t regret the 550 you put into them.

I’ll never understand the complaints about price. I mean, for casual users, $550 is a lot of money for headphones, but for a community used to spending a lot on audio gear, it’s not a lot at all, especially for what you get.

Remember, it’s wireless, so it doesn’t need a separate DAC or amp. That’s all built in. Where else can you get a machined steel + aluminum headphone, along with a DAC, an amp, and all the bonus features like spatial audio, auto-switching, ANC, and transparency - all for $550?

When people say you can get a headphone with comparable sound quality for $150, my thought is, great, what’s the price after you factor in the amp and DAC? And how’s the build quality of that $150 headphone, and does it provide any of those additional features?

My point is that it’s an apples to oranges comparison when people just throw around the $550 number in relation to wired headphones.

 

[tinyman392]

Maybe grainyness is there because signal is not cd-quality? These ARE bluetooth-headphones, signal is max at AAC 256 when using iPhone. People compare these wired Sennheisers(which sounds terrible, imo) with something else than AAC256. Wake up people.

More likely due to frequency response and even the quality of the recording/master itself. If you listen to a better mastered recording (that isn’t mastered for loudness) the treble grainyness and vocal sibilance improve quite a bit.

 

[Ilomaenkimi]

More likely due to frequency response and even the quality of the recording/master itself. If you listen to a better mastered recording (that isn’t mastered for loudness) the treble grainyness and vocal sibilance improve quite a bit.

Again; we are talking about AAC 256 here...it's not the same as cd-quality, or HiRes. Not at all.
Should play wired cans with AAC256 also, plugged in to the iPhone not headphoneamp. Then make a comparisons?
That's the only "fair" way?

 

[LithosZA]

Again; we are talking about AAC 256 here...it's not the same as cd-quality, or HiRes. Not at all.

AAC has about nothing to do about it. Like tinyman392 mentioned it's about the quality of the recording/master itself.
Using a decent AAC encoder such as Apple's AAC encoder, mostly anything will be transparent at 256 Kbps. Even much lower than 256Kbps.

Also HiRes is such a dumb term and pointless. Anything >16 bit, 44.1Khz wouldn't sound different at all.

Should play wired cans with AAC256 also, plugged in to the iPhone not headphoneamp. Then make a comparisons?
That's the only "fair" way?

That won't be fair as well, the APM isn't plugging into the iPhone. APM has a built in DAC + amplifier specifically designed for it.

 

[Ilomaenkimi]

AAC has about nothing to do about it. Like tinyman392 mentioned it's about the quality of the recording/master itself.
Using a decent AAC encoder such as Apple's AAC encoder, mostly anything will be transparent at 256 Kbps. Even much lower than 256Kbps.

Also HiRes is such a dumb term and pointless. Anything >16 bit, 44.1Khz wouldn't sound different at all.


That won't be fair as well, the APM isn't plugging into the iPhone. APM has a built in DAC + amplifier specifically designed for it.

That is my point; it's useless and dump to compare APM to any wired can.

 

[MayaTlab]

Are those the N90Q In the first picture? Those actually had an adaptive EQ feature That feature really interested me when it was released about 5 years ago.

I'd really like to try that feature indeed. Tyll's measurements suggest that changes were moderate and conservative - perhaps because the system (apparently from what I understand two mics in two different locations inside the cups and a test tone) didn't provide AKG with enough confidence to EQ the FR curve with narrower Q and more dB variations.

Technicalities is the collection of all things sound I guess. A lot of the descriptive words actually have their focuses around certain frequency ranges.

Given what we've seen so far from some "audiophiles" reviewers, it seems that "technicalities" mean to them "we measured what could be seen by some people as some potential deficiencies with the FR curve - ie the "tuning" -, but for some reason we still think they're well tuned - go figure -, so we'll assign those potential deficiencies into another category for which we'll provide no evidence whatsoever and use obfuscatory terms with no clear operational definition".
Never mind that so far that every measurement we've seen about them other than FR curve measure excellently (THD, ANC, etc).
One simple, and perhaps more easily reproducible and far less ambiguous test that I like to do with BT headphones that doesn't imply the frequency response (and that for some reason very few reviewers obsessed with "technicalities" even bother with) is to play single tones below 20hz, even if the HPs can't reproduce them - particularly for ANC headphones - and above 10 000hz, and listen for weird spurious tones, elevated noise floor, or peculiar phenomena regardless of source or audio over BT codec. Most (but not all) BT headphones I've tried so far fail that test one way or another, regardless of price. It's not that important to the actual reproduction of musical content but can give an impression on exactly how serious the manufacturers were about making a quality product as far as BT implementation is concerned or perhaps how constrained or not they were in terms of resources to do so.

 

[fabripav]

2.5 weeks with the APM and I still love them. I do notice a bit of the recessed mids everyone is talking about but it’s not enough to turn me off of them. My listening station with my LCD2C and Schiit gear along with my Roon collection sits unused in my basement office.

A benefit I hadn’t thought of until tonight - using transparency mode to listen to a song I’m playing on guitar is perfect. I don’t use my APP for music much so these are the first headphones I’ve used for music that have a good transparency mode. It’s really helpful!

Listening to For Emma right now. The jangly guitar is so perfect. It’s how it would sound if I listened to Bon Iver play it live. The horns are in the right place on the stage. I’ve heard them play this song in person a couple of times and this is how it sounds. BTW, I turned off Headphone Accommodations. I prefer the out of the box sound.

More Bon Iver listening for me tonight. I have listened to 22, A Million more than any other album in the past 4 years. I watched them perform it cover to cover in concert. I have a poster from that show on my living room wall and I’m currently wearing the hoodie I bought that night. All this is to say the album is particularly high up on my list of favorite albums. The APM does an admirable job getting the nice deep bass and all the highs in Justin’s falsetto. It also does a remarkable job with the interesting clipping effects (I don’t know the right word to describe it) in the production.

8 circle. I did not intend to make this a running log of my listening session tonight so this will be my last edit. If there was a song I had to be stranded on a desert island with, it’d be this one. Layers of sound all across the range. I have no words to describe the sound but I will just say I had wave upon wave of shivers while listening to it tonight. That’s all I need.

22, A Million is one of my go-to records when i get new headphones

I ended up placing an order for these. If they convince me more than the Deva I'll return the latter and sell my Airpods Pros as well.

 

[Sp12er3]

BGGAR's for you peolel that like reviews with reference to songs.

 

[Roney]

I'm thinking of upgrading my commute ad office headphones from the quite tired Bode QC35 I've had for a few years. Anybody with an opinion on the ANC in commute traffic?