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How I discovered my left AirPod was bad
- mschuster91 10y agoThanks for the hint with the Bluetooth Explorer!
- geerlingguy 10y agoIt's one of those random apps that you'd never even think about unless you hear it mentioned deep in a thread on some random forum... I think it was mentioned in a rather old MacRumors thread discussing Logitech mouse interference. Definitely a good tool to have around, and saved me buying or borrowing an expensive spectrum analyzer :)
- jasonkostempski 10y agoI'm guessing lessons won't be learned here until this happens out of warranty. Headphones shouldn't be this complicated.
- icebraining 10y agoWell, your AM receiver wouldn't support them anyway.
- jasonkostempski 10y agoHA! I do listen to AM radio quite a bit. They play the best, that have stood the test.
- KC8ZKF 10y agomeh. It all went to shit with superheterodyne. Muxing the carrier freq strips all the warmth from the audio.
- wyager 10y agoIn my dream world, Apple would make some sort of standardized bluetooth receiver similar to AirPods minus the actual audio hardware. It would just be the transceiver, electronics, sensors, and DAC. Then you could attach it (via e.g. a UE or Shure audio cable connector) to whatever IEMs you wanted. This would not only address the fact that the actual audio on apple buds is very mediocre, but would also allow for some separation of concerns and easier replaceability/customizability.
- 2muchcoffeeman 10y agoThey already make things like that. https://www.amazon.com/Anker-Bluetooth-Transmitter-Receiver-Headphones/dp/B00E174RTS?tag=headphcompar-20 https://www.amazon.com/Anker-Bluetooth-Transmitter-Receiver-... Some companies like Westone, also make a replacement bluetooth cable since their IEMs all have replaceable cables. https://www.amazon.com/Westone-MMCX-Bluetooth-Cable-78548/dp/B01H3XS2ZQ https://www.amazon.com/Westone-MMCX-Bluetooth-Cable-78548/dp... I am pretty sure the correct answer is: Stop making phones so thing and bring back the 3.5 headphone jack. If the 3.5 really is a hindrance, come up with a connector that allows a simple adaptor to 3.5 jacks and still allows cabled charging. I already have a couple of L-adaptors for my headphones with straight connectors, so carrying a 3.5-to-Lightning doesn't bother me. But not being able to charge at the same time. WTF? iPhone SE forever!
- mappu 10y agoThe thinness wasn't the problem - there are hundreds of phones thinner than an iPhone 7 that still have the 3.5mm jack (e.g. Galaxy A8 is 5.9mm compared to iPhone 7's 7.1mm). The problem was the increased space required for the taptic engine.
- Razengan 10y ago> the actual audio on apple buds is very mediocre I for one find it to be more than adequate and actually good in fact.
- wtbob 10y agoWhat makes you think people who buy AirPods would keep headphones after the warranty period? One doesn't want to be seen in last year's headphones^WAirPods, after all! I suppose it's kinda genius of Apple, turning a simple pair of headphones which can last for decades into a fragile piece of microelectronics with a life expectancy of years at best, months at worst. Not really what I'd call 'courage,' though.
- josho 10y ago> I can walk about 50-60' while listening to music with no dropouts! What kind of magic are these things? My bluetooth connection from my phone to headphones or the car will start to drop if too much of my body gets in between the radios.
- geerlingguy 10y agoI should clarify - that's in the basement with just a few walls and still underground (in an inner-ring suburb). We also don't have a cordless phone, satellite, or other typical 2.4 Ghz devices that cause much interference (besides a few older wifi devices on the 802.11g network). If you're in a more urban environment, apartment buildings, or have plaster or other types of walls (mine are drywall and studs), you're luck will go down considerably.
- lathiat 10y agoI was having similar behavior with my LG HBS800.. with my AirPods I can go almost anywhere in my house. The LGs would drop out as soon as I went around a wall corner - and sometimes dropped out when walking. The LGs are the neckband variety, I guess that right on top of a water sack is the wrong place to sit the receiver and out the side of your ear isn't bad.
- geerlingguy 10y agoYeah, I previously had a different LG headset, and it had major issues depending on my orientation towards my computer; it seems the AirPods are more optimally located on the body for a clear signal, or maybe the antennae are just that much better.
- icebraining 10y agoHuman bodies are actually quite good at blocking Bluetooth. My $15 no-brand BT headphones can handle three walls in between my Nexus tablet and them, but putting it in my back pocket is enough to get dropped packets.
- grenoire 10y ago
- lathiat 10y agoGreat article, a few people have complained about drop-outs that others are not seeing - I wonder if this is a semi-common problem?
- rahilsondhi 10y agoI have a ton of lag when I use my Bose Bluetooth speaker with my MacBook Pro, or when I airplay to my Apple TV. I tried using Bluetooth Explorer, but I can't figure out what's causing the interference. Anyone have tips on how to debug this?
- H4CK3RM4N 10y agoFrom my experience, macOS just seems to be really conservative with avoiding drop-outs in the audio. Are you using the speakers for music, or more general use? I've found it tends to value quality over responsiveness with music in particular.
- rahilsondhi 10y agoIt's for music.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- tuxxy 10y agoMaybe someone can answer this: Why isn't there some sort of cache on the earbuds that allows the device to send the packets to it and buffer as needed (for, say, music)?
- grav 10y agoThere is. It's just not always large enough.
- 0x0 10y agoIt would only work for music; for video or games or anything else a large buffer would mean terribly unsynchronized and delayed audio. Humans will feel something is off with just a few tens of milliseconds of buffer.
- lathiat 10y agoModern audio systems actually do work like this, here's a good write up from PulseAudio about dynamic buffer sizes and resampling when a new sound comes in I do not know how a2dp works and if it supports such buffers though. http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/pulse-glitch-free.html http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/pulse-glitch-free.html
- magniturd 10y agoall this for headphones!
- adventurer 10y agoAre you in with the in-crowd?
- Ezhik 10y agoWell, since we are going to have a headphone jack debate at some point in this thread anyway, I've got a question. How are wireless headphones dealing with something as simple as switching to a different device? I can just replug my wired headphones, but what about wireless? I know AirPods do some of that W1 magic, but that's only if you are dealing with Apple devices. What if I just randomly show up to a friend's house with my wireless headphones and want to listen to music on his ThinkPad?
- galuano1 10y agoMy QC35s rememeber a few devices and connect to a diff one on command ( the power button doubles as pair / switch device)
- jarcoal 10y agoYou have to re-pair them. So not as easy as plugging in.
- quartz 10y agoVaries by device but it's basically just repairing Bluetooth. I have a pair of Marshall wireless headphones and double-clicking the button on the right earphone puts them into pairing mode. From there it's two clicks on a MacBook to pair from the Bluetooth menu or a few more than that to pair to a mobile device.
- TylerE 10y agoCan I just take a moment to say how hilarious it is that all the guitar companies have licensed their name out for consumer audio products? The audio system in my car is "Fender".
- jdietrich 10y agoThe big-name manufacturers are now lifestyle brands. Serious players know that if you want a Strat or Tele, you get a better instrument from G&L or Suhr than from Fender. Gibson's reputation is in tatters after years of poor quality control and dubious design decisions. A group of Marshall's technical staff left the company to form Blackstar Amps after Marshall went public. Most of the big musical instrument brands are going the way of Chrysler and Chevrolet - they trade on an old brand image, but there's little of the original DNA left. It's clearly working in the short-term, but I suspect that these brands will fade away with the Baby Boomers that have a nostalgic attachment to them.
- reddytowns 10y agoI love the saccharine tone of the article. If this happened to another brand of earphones and the guy was dealing with a different electronics store, it would be filled with rage and tears.
- gergles 10y agoYep. I had similar problems with my AirPods and wasn't about to be Apple's debugger for free for hours on end - I just returned them. That doesn't make for as interesting a story, but it's clear they were rushed out the door (poor soldering according to the teardowns, tons of problems like this report, extremely limited supply months later) and it really makes me wonder about the future of Apple when they can't even nail hardware anymore. I know the canard of "don't buy V1 of an Apple product" but it seemed to have been better in recent years. Until this, at least.
- icebraining 10y agoOr maybe he's just not that kind of guy? Looking back at his blog posts, he recently had a similar problem with TP-Link USB hub and I don't see any rage or tears.
- cm2187 10y agoAre these things as leaky as the headphones that come with a new iphone? The reason those are unsuitable in a work environment is that your colleagues will hear almost as much your music as you do.
- zaroth 10y agoThat was a really interesting read, and almost amazing the lengths that Jeff was willing to go to debug the problem. But it's also worth considering, how much work was possibly wasted during this arduous debug process? I say that not to knock the work Jeff did, but really to appreciate the creative process which is "debugging" and this is a great example of where a different strategy could save a lot of time. Anytime you debug a problem, you create in your mind a list of likely candidates for the problem, and sort them based on a combination of how likely the problem is being caused by 'X' multiplied by how hard it is to prove the problem is not caused by 'X'. I may have missed something, but from the story it seems like testing with one AirBud versus the other AirBud active would have isolated the problem immediately to the left pod. If you see different performance on left vs. right pod, you know immediately the problem almost certainly has nothing to do with your RF environment. So before going to extreme lengths to modify the RF environment, you absolutely must ask yourself; how can I prove the problem is not RF? Well, you have one shared RF environment. So naturally you need two or more DUTs (device under test) to run the test against and see if the problem is consistent across different DUTs. What's so neat about this particular case is that Jeff already had two DUTs, since the pods can apparently operate completely independently. Having two DUTs, it was a massive missed opportunity to test them independently before going down the RF rat hole. Please don't read this as a critique of Jeff, his write-up is a great place for learning to happen!
- bontoJR 10y agoI love these kind of articles. For some people it might be a waste of time, but to me is really good to see such amazing willingness to discover the problem. I am tempted to get a pair of AirPods, not totally sure yet, but if in the future I will get one, I will definitely remember this post in case I have troubles with them. Well done!