[clerkpalmer]

Tell you what, APM will outsell any headphones in the world very soon. I don’t think there is a lot of competition(Bose & Sony) but even if it’s there, Apple will up the game so high that everyone will just give up. Just my opinion, someone may differ.

Sorry but no. Just no. They are too expensive for that and they are not ideal for Android and half the world runs android. They will not "outsell any headphones in the world". Please stop. This is the precise shiny new toy syndrome I was commenting on. You can say the are excellent and will be a big hit. But the hyperbole is ridiculous.

 

[ubs28]

]

After reviewing this thread and watching a bunch of reviews it seems that apple fell a bit short with these. In the IT industry we use to call this version 1. Oh-oh

Most notably:

• Lack of the ability to store and transport: ANC’s were designed for travel. Or at least that was the start with Bose. It would have been very easy to implement a ball or universal joint connection between the cup and the headphone band that allowed the cups to be swiveled up towards the headphone for storage / transport. Both Sony and Bose do this.
• Case is a joke – nothing more to be said
• Amazon. Amazon already makes Echo / Alexa earbuds, but I don’t see an over ear, maybe I missed it. Anyways these ear buds are on sale for $79. Will amazon bring an Alexa / Echo over ear to market? Assuming similar pricing an over ear could be a less than $200 option. Again theory / guess only here. If this happens that says the Bose and Sony have a coopetitor of huge strength at the low end.
• The max is a $550 unit that you have to buy a 3.5 connector for $35 (I think that is the price), plus power supply (think these are about $30 from apple) and aftermarket case. God know the price of the case lets say $40 for giggles. That’s a total build of 650-700. These have sold well so that says the market is willing to pay that for a higher quality ANC or at least theoretically and they are willing to pay a lot more

So here is the rub. Both Bose and Sony will benefit from a higher end ANC. After all they don’t want to play with amazon and apple has confirmed that people will pay more. Both Bose and Sony have lots of features that are comparable. Dolby / Surround / gimmicks can be added as these are not unique to apple. Both sony and bose have a host of existing top shelf drivers / speakers to choose from on the shelf.

I am more interested to see particularly how Sony will respond to Apple. My guess is we will se something before Christmas 2021.

Sony cannot respond. Apple is not some random company, they are the best chipmaker in the world right now.

So what can Sony possibly do in terms of computational audio against Apple when Apple has far more horsepower available?

Sony their smartphones are also very slow against Apple their smartphones.

 

[Gweeds]

Don't assume that Sony or Bose can play in the same price point for a start.

 

[Jonathan268]

Interesting thought the difference between Music lovers and Audiophiles. Just read it (lol as well) while scanning MacRumors pages.
Hopefully no offending to members of Head-Fi who I trust your options more than all reviews I had watched about APM or anything about audio.
https://www.kenrockwell.com/audio/audiophile.htm

 

[bobeau]

I really hope people do not going selling off their Audeze in place of these .... Sheer lunacy.

I don't think you're quite grasping where the market is moving from an R&D perspective. I think it's sheer lunacy to make blankets like this.

If you look at the speaker world, esp. pro audio, everyone is moving to DSP. Genelecs w/ their GLM, Dutch and Dutch 8c... room correction is where it is at. You can see an entrant like Buchardt take commodity, cheap speakers, and reuse other's efforts as DSP (again, commoditized) and produce an objectively great option at a fraction of the price of competitors, with the exception of somewhat questionable distortion in the bass region.

 

[obsidyen]

Meridian has produced speakers with DSP for decades and they sound amazing.

 

[Gweeds]

Fairly sure I recall BlackBerry and Microsoft telling Apple their phones would never work.

And the original AirPods would be a failure.

 

[clerkpalmer]

So - lets not compare these to our wired Utopia's, Clear's or whatever other audiophile cans we listen to. That is not what these are.

Exactly. Yet that is what people are doing.

I don't think you're quite grasping where the market is moving from an R&D perspective. I think it's sheer lunacy to make blankets like this.

If you look at the speaker world, esp. pro audio, everyone is moving to DSP. Genelecs w/ their GLM, Dutch and Dutch 8c... room correction is where it is at. You can see an entrant like Buchardt take commodity, cheap speakers, and reuse other's efforts as DSP (again, commoditized) and produce an objectively great option at a fraction of the price of competitors, with the exception of somewhat questionable distortion in the bass region.

I understand all of that. If I want DSP correction on my Audeze I can get it using Reveal/Roon can't I? It has been around for a while so it is not a new concept.

 

[mthaynes]

]


Sony cannot respond. Apple is not some random company, they are the best chipmaker in the world right now.

So what can Sony possibly do in terms of computational audio against Apple when Apple has far more horsepower available?

Sony their smartphones are also very slow against Apple their smartphones.

Respectfully I would disagree. Apple may make a great chip, but to say that intel is out of business due to apple is a bit of a stretch. Additionally audio processing is not really that heavy a load for a chipset. I think Sony has more than enough on the shelf to build a high end ANC, but that has yet to be seen. I hope they do since it will give us more toys to play with and I think we both can agree that is not a bad thing.

 

[clerkpalmer]

And the original AirPods would be a failure.

I don't remember anyone saying this. I was into TWS when the only game in town was Bragi. The market was dying for Apple to introduce a TWS.

 

[Gweeds]

I don't remember anyone saying this. I was into TWS when the only game in town was Bragi. The market was dying for Apple to introduce a TWS.

On announcement day, AirPods were compared to Apple's previously existing EarPods (2012–present), with The Verge noting "They look... just like the old EarPods, with the wires cut off."[43] Initially mocked by many for their unfamiliar design (including CNN asking "Would people actually wear these?" in 2016),[44] their popularity grew rapidly over the years and they were voted the most popular "hearable" brand of 2019.[4]

One criticism of AirPods is their high price; however, at launch they were actually priced less than most "true wireless" earbuds on the market (e.g. the Samsung Gear IconX and Bragi Dash) and remain competitively priced with similar products from other major brands.[45][46][47]

Another prominent criticism was a problem that caused the charging case battery to deplete at a rapid rate despite the AirPods not being used. Users were reporting upwards of 30% idle discharge per day.[48] In response, Apple upgraded the AirPods' firmware to version 3.5.1, which addressed connectivity and battery drain problems.[49]

The lithium-ion batteries in AirPods can see significant degradation over time, with two-year-old sets lasting for less than half of the advertised five hours.[50][51] As mentioned previously, Apple offers "battery service" to combat this, but this is actually a replacement program as batteries in AirPods cannot be removed.[52]

As for sound quality, SoundGuys gives the AirPods a rating of 7.3/10, but they admit that consumers likely would not buy AirPods if they were looking for the best sound quality earphones.[53]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AirPods

They were roundly mocked at launch. Just like the iPhone and iPad.

They’re now worth $15bn a year as a stand-alone business

 

[ubs28]

Respectfully I would disagree. Apple may make a great chip, but to say that intel is out of business due to apple is a bit of a stretch. Additionally audio processing is not really that heavy a load for a chipset. I think Sony has more than enough on the shelf to build a high end ANC, but that has yet to be seen. I hope they do since it will give us more toys to play with and I think we both can agree that is not a bad thing.

High quality audio processing can be very heavy depending what kind of algorithms you are running. Some dedicated DAC’s are very big and get warm, so it is not as light as you may think.

If Apple has more horsepower available, Apple can run better upscaling algorithms than Sony for translating low quality bluetooth digital signal into a high quality analog signal.

So if you got slow processing units like Sony has, you are competing not on the same playing field as Sony is restricted to lower quality algorithms.

That is why Apple is also so good in photography and video, they got the most horsepower available on their smartphones so they can run the best algorithms.

 

[bedlamite]

The APM is already 3 months backordered, anybody who doesn’t think this thing is going sell like hotcakes (even at its price point) is in denial. It’s easily going to be the biggest selling headphone in the coming months.

 

[clerkpalmer]

On announcement day, AirPods were compared to Apple's previously existing EarPods (2012–present), with The Verge noting "They look... just like the old EarPods, with the wires cut off."[43] Initially mocked by many for their unfamiliar design (including CNN asking "Would people actually wear these?" in 2016),[44] their popularity grew rapidly over the years and they were voted the most popular "hearable" brand of 2019.[4]

One criticism of AirPods is their high price; however, at launch they were actually priced less than most "true wireless" earbuds on the market (e.g. the Samsung Gear IconX and Bragi Dash) and remain competitively priced with similar products from other major brands.[45][46][47]

Another prominent criticism was a problem that caused the charging case battery to deplete at a rapid rate despite the AirPods not being used. Users were reporting upwards of 30% idle discharge per day.[48] In response, Apple upgraded the AirPods' firmware to version 3.5.1, which addressed connectivity and battery drain problems.[49]

The lithium-ion batteries in AirPods can see significant degradation over time, with two-year-old sets lasting for less than half of the advertised five hours.[50][51] As mentioned previously, Apple offers "battery service" to combat this, but this is actually a replacement program as batteries in AirPods cannot be removed.[52]

As for sound quality, SoundGuys gives the AirPods a rating of 7.3/10, but they admit that consumers likely would not buy AirPods if they were looking for the best sound quality earphones.[53]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AirPods

They were roundly mocked at launch. Just like the iPhone and iPad.

They’re now worth $15bn a year as a stand-alone business

Sorry but that just doesn't mesh with reality. Everyone and their brother wanted them. They were an instant must have for anyone with an iphone. Just because they were criticized as not being perfect doesn't mean people said they were going to be a failure. You are mixing concepts. And sorry but the iphone and ipad were not roundly mocked at introduction. I remember the day the original iphone was released. The hype was off the charts. I guess we can agree to disagree but that's just not how I remember it.

The APM is already 3 months backordered, anybody who doesn’t think this thing is going sell like hotcakes (even at its price point) is in denial. It’s easily going to be the biggest selling headphone in the coming months.

Unless you have insight into the supply chain, you have absolutely no way of knowing anything about sales numbers. Backorder means nothing.

 

[Gweeds]

They were mocked by the competition. go and read what Steve Balmer and the BlackBerry execs said. Read about how the iPad was sneered at. People never learn with Apple.

And I remember a lot of online comments about how crap AirPods look and people wouldn’t been seen dead with them.