The Apple AirPods Pro: A Complex Experience

When I first put on the Apple AirPods Pro, I was immediately struck by the noise cancellation feature. It's like they took a page out of my favorite music production software and applied it to a pair of earbuds. The amount of control they have over this feature is impressive, with just one button that toggles between noise canceling and transparency mode. However, as I continued to use them, I began to appreciate the complexity of their functionality.

One of the most interesting aspects of the AirPods Pro is their reliance on smart chips inside each ear cup. These chips allow for advanced audio processing, including EQ and spatial awareness. This means that the AirPods Pro can enhance your listening experience in subtle but meaningful ways. But as I continued to use them, I couldn't help but wonder about how this technology would affect my ability to focus on my work. Would I be able to hear every nuance of a song, or would the AirPods Pro's processing override that?

I decided to put the AirPods Pro through their paces by listening to a variety of music and podcasts while working on a project in Final Cut Pro. At first, I was impressed by the sound quality - it felt like a mini movie theater experience. But as I continued to listen, I began to appreciate the nuances of the audio processing. The AirPods Pro's EQ seemed to be tailored towards electronic pop music, and while that was fine for me, I couldn't help but wonder how they would handle classical or other genres.

One of the most surprising aspects of the AirPods Pro experience is their spatial awareness technology. When I turned my head, I could pinpoint where different sounds were coming from - it was like having a mini movie theater in my earbuds. This effect was subtle but powerful, and it really added to the overall listening experience.

But as I delved deeper into the AirPods Pro, I began to appreciate their limitations. With a price point of $550, they're certainly not an impulse buy. And while they do offer some impressive features, they may not be worth the investment for everyone. I found myself wondering if there were other options out there that would provide similar benefits at a lower cost.

In order to get a better sense of how the AirPods Pro compared to other wireless headphones, I decided to try them with a Lightning to mini jack cable. This allowed me to compare their sound quality on and off wirelessly, which was an interesting exercise. While I couldn't tell a huge difference between the two modes, I did notice some subtle differences in terms of tone and clarity.

As I continued to use the AirPods Pro, I began to appreciate the complexity of the technology behind them. It's clear that Apple has put a lot of thought into creating a product that offers both impressive sound quality and advanced features. While it may not be perfect - and at $550, it's certainly not for everyone - the AirPods Pro are an undeniably compelling listen.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: endo you understand how deeply entrenched you will become if you dare make this purchase these things live to sell and keep you and hold you constrained within the apple ecosystem you will never climb out of it i promise you and it gets scary when you start to think about what apple might pull off with this thing right you could have specific mixes set up in advance by the artist or producer for the headset you're listening to who else has the power who else has the connections and the handshakes necessary to potentially deliver that i'm just talking right now it finally happened i finally got my hands on the brand new air pods max from apple that's a lot of them as well i couldn't just get one not at this point i had been waiting so long i was like you know what i want to show the people every single color because i kind of think it's a big part of apple's identity right now is the color selection whether it's phones or headphones we're just seeing so many options and it's uh well it's it's tickling people in all the right ways i just wanted to show them all to you and i thought why don't we have an unboxing extravaganza so we do have the green we do have the pink we do have the silver what do they call this one space gray i mean it's not quite black yeah they call it space gray and then we also have the blue ones over here on the right and by the way i picked up the super premium lightning to 3.5 millimeter audio jack cable because this doesn't come in the box unfortunately if you do you want to use a wired connection in order to listen to audio and i read that you cannot use third-party cables this is a specialty cable that is necessary for this purpose you can't use just a regular uh lightning to mini jack that you would find on amazon you need apples cable and they'll recommend it to you when you go to purchase one of these you're saying 550 lou you're saying excuse me i'd like to have a cable and all the various adapters truthfully i don't think apple even wants you to use this i think they want you to be fully wireless these things these headphones are ultimately going to perform their best and be in their zone when they're used with ios devices using an old-fashioned analog connection i don't know it just doesn't seem seem nearly as futuristic i'm gonna just i'm gonna just unbox some of these i'm gonna listen maybe to a couple of them and i'm gonna get to the bottom of this whole thing that's the purpose of this and i'm coming with a fresh mind i'm come with an open mind i did watch a few videos but uh you know what i'm gonna try to treat it as clean as possible here the box a very simple experience oh my goodness i just exposed the most controversial component in the unboxing experience and well just to go with the product in general the smart case purse looking thing which whoa it just has people all fired up it has the whole community just right fired up they can't take it they can't stand it i don't even care that much you know it's funny maybe everybody else got angry enough for me that i don't feel the need to get angry all over again one thing that does kind of bug me is the fact that in order to put the headphones immediately into low power mode you do have to insert them into the case instead of having some sort of manual turn off switch now they will eventually go to sleep after five minutes if they're laying on the table without the case this is something apple didn't really make clear initially and then uh they put out a statement i think today actually stating that that would take place i wish there was some kind of manual override or an option a little toggle switch if you did want these things to go to sleep a bit faster depending on the way that you use them but anyways get used to the fact that you now you're a purse guy you paid a lot of money here look at this no that wasn't that could have been better there we go you paid a lot of money you paid 550 well i paid more than 550 but if you buy this you paid 550 dollars my goodness okay strong scent strong scent um smells like industry it smells like a trillion dollar company on the holidays uh let me take this out here oh it is heavy i have heard this people saying man they're a bit heavy you got like 100 grams on top of those world famous xm4s from sony which i personally use and i can tell the weight difference right away i don't know how much of it is the case but i'm sorry i'm sorry i'm not all right look listen i'm giving it a fair shake it's just it's so funny that's the way they did that i don't know who presented it it must have been some senior level person a designer where they were like absolutely that's the future right there it's an accessory and you're going to own it with pride obviously many have mentioned within the scene that this doesn't do some of the job you would expect for a case to do as far as protecting the device you have a lot of exposure around the ear cups here and the headband is fully exposed if you did throw this in a bag i mean that's some delicate mesh right there could get poked or something like that you don't have a pen in that bag it's got a lot of wrapping going on i'm gonna pull this out okay there's the head oh so the case also works to stop them from doing this which kind of funny they do that by default i wonder okay they tap each other yes so this is leather or i don't think so it does have a nice soft microfiber interior but all in all i mean i don't know what my expectation was for this material here it probably feels a little bit less robust than i expected look at these little protectors right here oh delicate you pop them out those are quite nice looking indicators stitched in right and left the ear pads themselves magnetically attach funny enough not funny enough not funny at all they'll sell you uh ear cups replacement ear cups or different color ear cups for i believe 69 which is as much as some other wireless headphones so the design is nice maybe if it had of included an extra set in there we could have been uh very happy about that with the easy replacement as far as adjustment is concerned we have this little slidey aspect this little slidy piston piece so there's no clicking or ratcheting going on which is a nice touch it's all metal and aluminum in the design very premium as we look around the device you'll see your lightning connector on the bottom to charge these up i think you can get like an hour and a half of usage out of a five minute charge so it does have some fast charging in there so there was some hope that these would go to usb type c because you might hold on to them for like five years and lightning is likely to be dead five years from now but anyway for now it's a lightning connector you also have microphones all over these things not just for noise cancellation but also for that transparency mode that i'm such a big fan of on a variety of headphone products that currently exist including apple's very own airpods pro interacting with the headphone is no touch controls on the outside instead it's going to be this digital crown it's similar to the watch but a bit larger it's kind of an unusual location so it's going to be on the the back side oh it's in it seems to be in transparency by default i hear my own voice so very clearly right now it's uncanny and there's no lag that transparency mode is likely superior to the transparency mode on my sony xm4s i have to say uh so initial impressions there they're definitely comfortable i should try without the hat as well i want to test this mesh headband it's a little wider than your typical headband and it does help but it is a heavy headphone it's a heavy headphone i'll tell you that right now i've tried a number of headphones but it is comfortable it is comfortable as of right now also inside the package you've got your usual paperwork there's no apple stickers or anything like that below that we have our only accessory in the package which is a lightning to usb type c cable that's how you charge these up you need to bring your own power brick to the party something tells me if you can afford the 550 on the headphones uh the 35 for the cable is not gonna set you set you off if you need it i mean i'm just saying it's sad but true why don't we go for something more flashy now like this pink color the official name here pink with red headband interesting hmm you're an idiot lou all right i'm just calling it a purse i mean that's what it looks like it's the kind of direction that red has gone for apple with the phones and things it keeps on moving towards an orangish coral thing pink thing but in this case the actual headphones are kind of a nice tone it's a like a rose metallic type of color are people going to flex these headphones that is the question are we going to see them flexed in public or is it just strictly an at-home flex do you flex to yourself in the mirror maybe uh i could just snap off the right ear ear cup on the pink one and the right ear cup on the silver one and i mean you could even go one and one i mean we're talking about style after all we're talking about flexing uh this could be the ultimate scenario it's quite possible i wasn't gonna select this one if i could only get one because to me it's an unusual color for a gadget and it's darker the headband is actually darker than i expected it to be that's a nice you could call that a nice blue alright so that's the space gray and yeah and that's too too tough to say no to for me it's just simple if you were gonna design this thing and draw it on and draw it up in advance i don't know i just feel like it will probably come out of your head in space gray it is only green that remains to be seen now this one is interesting that is very minty that headband is the mintiest green i've ever seen in my entire life so that is an interesting color combo can't say i would buy it however it has some attitude to it it has an energy to it which is not pink and not blue because those two energies are well understood the pink and blue energy the green energy is far more mysterious and then it's almost all of inside the ear cups i mean it they're crazy how do they make all these choices this one the case is it just not even like the ear cup or the headband this case is its own thing it's like an army green almost so the green ones are definitely the wild card and uh there's nothing wrong with that i guess we might as well open up the cable because i have been told that this is a special cable and this is why you cannot use the third-party cables that exist out there i don't know if there's a dac inside of this cable or why it unlocks this functionality where the others don't is it more intelligent this cable is it made by apple this game so it is a thin wire i don't know how long is that that's about four feet if you did want to you would be doing this and then that now oh you know where you would have to use this is if you were going to fly in an airplane and you wanted to connect to the entertainment system on the airplane it typically you're not going to be able to connect via wireless so you would use this into here into the airplane setup or maybe possibly still need to go into a secondary adapter from here i'm glad they at least make this but it's a bit of a sting certainly that you gotta pay 35 extra you know what maybe they should have just put this in the box just for what it for what it is maybe they should have just put that in the box this costs apple one dollar to make i would assume okay yes apple magic you see that is 550 that's what it's all about right there i'm into the noise cancellation right now my own voice is very muffled kirk's test is barely there i mean if it's it's it's cancelled but it's not complete fishbowl cancelled it's just one button it's either noise canceling or transparency and it's a single tap they tried to simplify it the only other control i think you have yeah you have that control and then you have your volume toggle which makes a clicky noise to it which is actually a little bit satisfying it's a lot going on there's all kinds of little enhancements happening and it's very difficult because how could you make the most out of a wireless experience if you've just admitted okay fine it's going to be wireless and apple's way is by putting smart chips inside of each ear cup in order to do the computational magic variety of eq and spatial awareness and all the rest of it to try to enhance your experience that's all fine and well when it comes to consumption when you're trying to get immersed in an experience when you're trying to watch a movie yeah give me the magic tricks but if i'm trying to wear these things on the final cut pro timeline you get a little bit worried about whether you're hearing the actual thing or not because there's all kinds of uh well i can hear the eq i can hear the interpretation and the enhancements but i'm on the winter wonderland track that's johnny mathis right there and it feels magical right now okay let me let me go do the pop music i know you you guys want me to do the pop music i don't know what's the song of the year a lot of rumble a lot of low end i mean that's what they're doing right that's what they're doing i mean they scooped it out in the middle those are the tactics that gives you that dynamics that's what the average person they pick up a pair of headphones they say oh that sounds what if i go and you know into something some classical or something this experience here doesn't feel like a 550 experience question is if i were in apple music i'm not apple music subscriber am i i just signed up to apple music for you guys all right i probably didn't even have to do that but whatever i don't think this thing is tuned up for uh you know some mozart but i'm just gonna go out and say in this limited experience right here this is a you know electronic pop music it's a 20 20 thing for the most part right now however however let's not forget my reaction to my first experience with spatial audio technology which is completely unique to the category oh ah if i turn my head bane is talking in the movie but bain stays here baine is always here and your brain is doing some weird analysis of the how realistic the source of audio is based on your ability to pinpoint your impression of where that source exists it sounds so subtle and unnecessary but when you experience it it's like it's something to it it's a movie theater it's a movie theater in your pocket that's the killer functionality that's the killer feature as far as i'm concerned that's the big difference maker compared to anything else that i've tried however i do need to try the wire i did spend 35 dollars on a lightning to mini jack cable so i might as well try it see if anything changes this part where does that go and then does it automatically switch over i wonder we go like this we go back on yeah i might be able to tell a little bit of a difference on the wire uh it might sound a little bit better to me on the wire holy moly comprehensive i don't know this is it's such a tough product right it's like to come into a new segment like over the ear headphones and to come in at a price point of 550 with your first product it just feels a little bit conceited and particularly in 2020 where it's like maybe the disposable income isn't so readily available right now as a headphone sitting here today i can't possibly tell most people to go out and spend 550 on it it's just not going to change your life in a 550 way it's not gonna feel like a new playstation if you're on a fence you do not need to run out and get it if you already knew you wanted it before you clicked on it you still want it and you should probably just find a way to get it i guess that's how this whole thing works isn't it i don't know you like something you get it feels special for a minute uh i've been doing that for a while it's called unbox therapy probably gonna keep doing itdo you understand how deeply entrenched you will become if you dare make this purchase these things live to sell and keep you and hold you constrained within the apple ecosystem you will never climb out of it i promise you and it gets scary when you start to think about what apple might pull off with this thing right you could have specific mixes set up in advance by the artist or producer for the headset you're listening to who else has the power who else has the connections and the handshakes necessary to potentially deliver that i'm just talking right now it finally happened i finally got my hands on the brand new air pods max from apple that's a lot of them as well i couldn't just get one not at this point i had been waiting so long i was like you know what i want to show the people every single color because i kind of think it's a big part of apple's identity right now is the color selection whether it's phones or headphones we're just seeing so many options and it's uh well it's it's tickling people in all the right ways i just wanted to show them all to you and i thought why don't we have an unboxing extravaganza so we do have the green we do have the pink we do have the silver what do they call this one space gray i mean it's not quite black yeah they call it space gray and then we also have the blue ones over here on the right and by the way i picked up the super premium lightning to 3.5 millimeter audio jack cable because this doesn't come in the box unfortunately if you do you want to use a wired connection in order to listen to audio and i read that you cannot use third-party cables this is a specialty cable that is necessary for this purpose you can't use just a regular uh lightning to mini jack that you would find on amazon you need apples cable and they'll recommend it to you when you go to purchase one of these you're saying 550 lou you're saying excuse me i'd like to have a cable and all the various adapters truthfully i don't think apple even wants you to use this i think they want you to be fully wireless these things these headphones are ultimately going to perform their best and be in their zone when they're used with ios devices using an old-fashioned analog connection i don't know it just doesn't seem seem nearly as futuristic i'm gonna just i'm gonna just unbox some of these i'm gonna listen maybe to a couple of them and i'm gonna get to the bottom of this whole thing that's the purpose of this and i'm coming with a fresh mind i'm come with an open mind i did watch a few videos but uh you know what i'm gonna try to treat it as clean as possible here the box a very simple experience oh my goodness i just exposed the most controversial component in the unboxing experience and well just to go with the product in general the smart case purse looking thing which whoa it just has people all fired up it has the whole community just right fired up they can't take it they can't stand it i don't even care that much you know it's funny maybe everybody else got angry enough for me that i don't feel the need to get angry all over again one thing that does kind of bug me is the fact that in order to put the headphones immediately into low power mode you do have to insert them into the case instead of having some sort of manual turn off switch now they will eventually go to sleep after five minutes if they're laying on the table without the case this is something apple didn't really make clear initially and then uh they put out a statement i think today actually stating that that would take place i wish there was some kind of manual override or an option a little toggle switch if you did want these things to go to sleep a bit faster depending on the way that you use them but anyways get used to the fact that you now you're a purse guy you paid a lot of money here look at this no that wasn't that could have been better there we go you paid a lot of money you paid 550 well i paid more than 550 but if you buy this you paid 550 dollars my goodness okay strong scent strong scent um smells like industry it smells like a trillion dollar company on the holidays uh let me take this out here oh it is heavy i have heard this people saying man they're a bit heavy you got like 100 grams on top of those world famous xm4s from sony which i personally use and i can tell the weight difference right away i don't know how much of it is the case but i'm sorry i'm sorry i'm not all right look listen i'm giving it a fair shake it's just it's so funny that's the way they did that i don't know who presented it it must have been some senior level person a designer where they were like absolutely that's the future right there it's an accessory and you're going to own it with pride obviously many have mentioned within the scene that this doesn't do some of the job you would expect for a case to do as far as protecting the device you have a lot of exposure around the ear cups here and the headband is fully exposed if you did throw this in a bag i mean that's some delicate mesh right there could get poked or something like that you don't have a pen in that bag it's got a lot of wrapping going on i'm gonna pull this out okay there's the head oh so the case also works to stop them from doing this which kind of funny they do that by default i wonder okay they tap each other yes so this is leather or i don't think so it does have a nice soft microfiber interior but all in all i mean i don't know what my expectation was for this material here it probably feels a little bit less robust than i expected look at these little protectors right here oh delicate you pop them out those are quite nice looking indicators stitched in right and left the ear pads themselves magnetically attach funny enough not funny enough not funny at all they'll sell you uh ear cups replacement ear cups or different color ear cups for i believe 69 which is as much as some other wireless headphones so the design is nice maybe if it had of included an extra set in there we could have been uh very happy about that with the easy replacement as far as adjustment is concerned we have this little slidey aspect this little slidy piston piece so there's no clicking or ratcheting going on which is a nice touch it's all metal and aluminum in the design very premium as we look around the device you'll see your lightning connector on the bottom to charge these up i think you can get like an hour and a half of usage out of a five minute charge so it does have some fast charging in there so there was some hope that these would go to usb type c because you might hold on to them for like five years and lightning is likely to be dead five years from now but anyway for now it's a lightning connector you also have microphones all over these things not just for noise cancellation but also for that transparency mode that i'm such a big fan of on a variety of headphone products that currently exist including apple's very own airpods pro interacting with the headphone is no touch controls on the outside instead it's going to be this digital crown it's similar to the watch but a bit larger it's kind of an unusual location so it's going to be on the the back side oh it's in it seems to be in transparency by default i hear my own voice so very clearly right now it's uncanny and there's no lag that transparency mode is likely superior to the transparency mode on my sony xm4s i have to say uh so initial impressions there they're definitely comfortable i should try without the hat as well i want to test this mesh headband it's a little wider than your typical headband and it does help but it is a heavy headphone it's a heavy headphone i'll tell you that right now i've tried a number of headphones but it is comfortable it is comfortable as of right now also inside the package you've got your usual paperwork there's no apple stickers or anything like that below that we have our only accessory in the package which is a lightning to usb type c cable that's how you charge these up you need to bring your own power brick to the party something tells me if you can afford the 550 on the headphones uh the 35 for the cable is not gonna set you set you off if you need it i mean i'm just saying it's sad but true why don't we go for something more flashy now like this pink color the official name here pink with red headband interesting hmm you're an idiot lou all right i'm just calling it a purse i mean that's what it looks like it's the kind of direction that red has gone for apple with the phones and things it keeps on moving towards an orangish coral thing pink thing but in this case the actual headphones are kind of a nice tone it's a like a rose metallic type of color are people going to flex these headphones that is the question are we going to see them flexed in public or is it just strictly an at-home flex do you flex to yourself in the mirror maybe uh i could just snap off the right ear ear cup on the pink one and the right ear cup on the silver one and i mean you could even go one and one i mean we're talking about style after all we're talking about flexing uh this could be the ultimate scenario it's quite possible i wasn't gonna select this one if i could only get one because to me it's an unusual color for a gadget and it's darker the headband is actually darker than i expected it to be that's a nice you could call that a nice blue alright so that's the space gray and yeah and that's too too tough to say no to for me it's just simple if you were gonna design this thing and draw it on and draw it up in advance i don't know i just feel like it will probably come out of your head in space gray it is only green that remains to be seen now this one is interesting that is very minty that headband is the mintiest green i've ever seen in my entire life so that is an interesting color combo can't say i would buy it however it has some attitude to it it has an energy to it which is not pink and not blue because those two energies are well understood the pink and blue energy the green energy is far more mysterious and then it's almost all of inside the ear cups i mean it they're crazy how do they make all these choices this one the case is it just not even like the ear cup or the headband this case is its own thing it's like an army green almost so the green ones are definitely the wild card and uh there's nothing wrong with that i guess we might as well open up the cable because i have been told that this is a special cable and this is why you cannot use the third-party cables that exist out there i don't know if there's a dac inside of this cable or why it unlocks this functionality where the others don't is it more intelligent this cable is it made by apple this game so it is a thin wire i don't know how long is that that's about four feet if you did want to you would be doing this and then that now oh you know where you would have to use this is if you were going to fly in an airplane and you wanted to connect to the entertainment system on the airplane it typically you're not going to be able to connect via wireless so you would use this into here into the airplane setup or maybe possibly still need to go into a secondary adapter from here i'm glad they at least make this but it's a bit of a sting certainly that you gotta pay 35 extra you know what maybe they should have just put this in the box just for what it for what it is maybe they should have just put that in the box this costs apple one dollar to make i would assume okay yes apple magic you see that is 550 that's what it's all about right there i'm into the noise cancellation right now my own voice is very muffled kirk's test is barely there i mean if it's it's it's cancelled but it's not complete fishbowl cancelled it's just one button it's either noise canceling or transparency and it's a single tap they tried to simplify it the only other control i think you have yeah you have that control and then you have your volume toggle which makes a clicky noise to it which is actually a little bit satisfying it's a lot going on there's all kinds of little enhancements happening and it's very difficult because how could you make the most out of a wireless experience if you've just admitted okay fine it's going to be wireless and apple's way is by putting smart chips inside of each ear cup in order to do the computational magic variety of eq and spatial awareness and all the rest of it to try to enhance your experience that's all fine and well when it comes to consumption when you're trying to get immersed in an experience when you're trying to watch a movie yeah give me the magic tricks but if i'm trying to wear these things on the final cut pro timeline you get a little bit worried about whether you're hearing the actual thing or not because there's all kinds of uh well i can hear the eq i can hear the interpretation and the enhancements but i'm on the winter wonderland track that's johnny mathis right there and it feels magical right now okay let me let me go do the pop music i know you you guys want me to do the pop music i don't know what's the song of the year a lot of rumble a lot of low end i mean that's what they're doing right that's what they're doing i mean they scooped it out in the middle those are the tactics that gives you that dynamics that's what the average person they pick up a pair of headphones they say oh that sounds what if i go and you know into something some classical or something this experience here doesn't feel like a 550 experience question is if i were in apple music i'm not apple music subscriber am i i just signed up to apple music for you guys all right i probably didn't even have to do that but whatever i don't think this thing is tuned up for uh you know some mozart but i'm just gonna go out and say in this limited experience right here this is a you know electronic pop music it's a 20 20 thing for the most part right now however however let's not forget my reaction to my first experience with spatial audio technology which is completely unique to the category oh ah if i turn my head bane is talking in the movie but bain stays here baine is always here and your brain is doing some weird analysis of the how realistic the source of audio is based on your ability to pinpoint your impression of where that source exists it sounds so subtle and unnecessary but when you experience it it's like it's something to it it's a movie theater it's a movie theater in your pocket that's the killer functionality that's the killer feature as far as i'm concerned that's the big difference maker compared to anything else that i've tried however i do need to try the wire i did spend 35 dollars on a lightning to mini jack cable so i might as well try it see if anything changes this part where does that go and then does it automatically switch over i wonder we go like this we go back on yeah i might be able to tell a little bit of a difference on the wire uh it might sound a little bit better to me on the wire holy moly comprehensive i don't know this is it's such a tough product right it's like to come into a new segment like over the ear headphones and to come in at a price point of 550 with your first product it just feels a little bit conceited and particularly in 2020 where it's like maybe the disposable income isn't so readily available right now as a headphone sitting here today i can't possibly tell most people to go out and spend 550 on it it's just not going to change your life in a 550 way it's not gonna feel like a new playstation if you're on a fence you do not need to run out and get it if you already knew you wanted it before you clicked on it you still want it and you should probably just find a way to get it i guess that's how this whole thing works isn't it i don't know you like something you get it feels special for a minute uh i've been doing that for a while it's called unbox therapy probably gonna keep doing it\n"