Apple's AirPods Pro hearing health features

As a mid-50 year old who discovered two years ago that he has moderate hearing loss (50-55 dB HL), I will be forever grateful to Apple for doing this.

If anybody from the accessibility teams is reading this, please know that it is difficult for me to overstate my gratitude and my appreciation for the amount of work this must've taken.

Music sounds unbelievably better through my AirPod pros, and I didn't even know what I had lost until I heard it again.

I'm willing to bet that a lot of my middle aged compatriots don't even know how much their hearing has degraded… Get your hearing test tested, folks, while you still have it!

Yes, and protect your hearing while you can. Turn down your tunes.

Disclosure: Working musician. I wear musician's earplugs when playing in bands.

Totally agree but there's a small caveat...

Everybody has vastly different sensitivities to sound exposure.

Even identical twins with identical sound exposures can have drastically different hearing profiles especially as they age.

I actually have always been very careful with my hearing; there is some evidence that I may have a very very mild congenital birth defect that makes me prone to hearing loss, but that's largely speculation.

My wife is actually older than me and has a spectacularly sensitive hearing - as does her mother! - and she's the drummer! (The wife, not her mother :-) I just do keys and vocals...)

That's why it's so important that everyone protect their hearing because even though it's not too loud for the people around you, it might be too loud for you - and you won't know until it's too late.

> I wear musician's earplugs when playing in bands.

As a musician, you possibly have custom ones, but for anyone else who’s not an audiophile, you can get decent ones that mostly preserve the sound while lowering the volume for around $15-20. A godsend for concerts.

I shoot live concerts as a hobby and it blows my mind that I’m the only one in the media pit with hearing protection.

My Apple Watch is screaming at me that its damaging levels of audio, and I can’t imagine listening to the show without protection.

I actually just use the Etymotic ER20's. I'd rather have cheaper ones that I can afford to lose, and also have a pair in each instrument case.

Did you try AppleMusic?

Not directly related to your case, but I thought I had some age-related hearing loss when listening to Spotify Premium only for a decade. I appreciate their recommendations (found me a whole bunch of new interesting bands, even new favourite ones), but didn't know how awful Spotify's quality is even in comparison to Apple's standard codec.

I didn't make the switch yet since for lossless since I don't have enough space on my phone, but am considering it, even for just showing support for the current music quality efforts over at Apple.

Yes, +1 for etymotic. I’ve used them for years.

Hearing being a "logarithmic" sense and decibels make this a bit weird to me. Like losing 6 dB of hearing in a car crash is considered negligible and insignificant, but that actually means the ears lost half their sensitivity in a flash (and it's never coming back, just like teeth). Likewise your 50 dB hearing loss is considered moderate, but actually represents a 300-fold reduction in acuity.

Spotify high quality is usually 320kbps. If not, it's because only worse qualities are recorded/available. I have sincere doubts you're able to hear a difference to lossless qualities, especially if you're listening on the go or in non-hifi setups.

The Apple RDF seems strong here.

I've heard this argument so many times - but personally I can trivially easily here the difference between Tidal / Apple Music and Spotify's 'high quality' setting - even on wireless headphones. Music on spotify sounds flat and drained. No idea if this has something to do with their compression technique, some kind of EQing, or a flaw in some other part of the pipeline, but I've blind tested it many times and its night and day.

Generally the problem with this type of argument is that the two sources are not volume-matched. Try out an ABX test here, of lossless vs various lossy codecs: https://abx.digitalfeed.net/

Spotify does some loudness normalization that you could disable in the settings. (Don't know anymore as don't use Spotify for years). Maybe worth checking.

I can easily hear the difference between Lossless and AAC on my two IEMs (Blessing 2 Dusk + IE600) as well as my open-back Focal Clear. And even with Bluetooth via AptX HD.

With the quality of audio improving so much in recent years I would take a guess that almost anyone can appreciate the significant difference in sound quality for < $50.

So that test doesn't mention how the FLAC was encoded back in 2014.

Because most of the benefits of Apple/Tidal lossless come from the fact they are encoding in 24-bit, 192 kHz direct from the original masters.

Have you done any blind listening tests? I'm having a hard time believing this, though it depends on the bitrate of the AAC.

I can't speak to Apple Music or Tidal, but I did a test between the Spotify and CD versions of Xtal from Selected Ambient Works 85-92 by Aphex Twin and the difference would be clear to absolutely anyone - the Spotify version is very tinny.

People often trot out the "most people can't tell the difference" argument, but I wonder how many of those people have actually tried a variety of tests? My hunch is very few.

Which is effectively a remaster and so invalidates every single claim that detecting a difference is due to superior fidelity.

I do blind tests multiple times a day.

On cellular on my iPad/iPhone I stream at AAC and then high-res lossless on WiFi.

When the stream switches the improvement in clarity and sound stage is very apparent.

Not all of the library is encoded this way and you can still easily hear the difference.

That's doesn't sound blind, if you don't have a very fancy setup that can switch to the lossless stream without any interruptions.

Try listening to death metal, the difference is obvious.

You can't judge the quality of a digital audio file purely on its bit rate.

There are many things that (can) go into digital mastering and re-encoding that can make huge differences in actual audio quality of the final product, even with the same file format and bit rate.

> Spotify high quality is usually 320kbps

320kbps of what?

Theoretically, if Spotify's claims are true, Ogg Vorbis at 320kbps should be indistinguishable from lossless in most listening scenarios. In practice, I found this not to be the case and there is a significant difference, even when using lossy equipment like Apple Airpods Pro.

I do not understand where the difference comes from. It could be that Spotify uses a crappy encoder. Could be that they "cheat" on bitrate. Or it could be the interplay of different compression schemes. But something is definitely off. I compared to Apple Music with lossless and Roon ARC playing my own FLAC-encoded media.

I really wish Spotify offered lossless.

Are you sure you are not comparing a normal release to the remastered version? There are plenty of albums out there that have "improved" or remastered versions but are not labelled as such in the album title, and Selected Ambient Works 85-92 is one of those.

Which still means it's a remaster/different mix.

I used to be like you many years ago, thinking that high samplerates and bit depth were essential and the ultimate way of getting the best possible sound quality, but in reality 44.1khz 16bit is plenty for humans. Get over it. Whoever mixed the 192khz version essentially remastered it and put a bit of a spice over it. You can easily prove it by producing a downmixed 44khz version (use a high quality resampler) from the 192khz version and trying to blind ABX both, I doubt you will be able to spot any difference, and if you do, congratulations your sound system has some weird intermodulation issue from the high frequencies present in the high sample rate version, that is causing a listenable sound to appear (which should not be there).

My wife is in her 50's. Her hearing seems noticeably poor than it used to be but she is in a bit of denial about it. This will be my first purchase of Air Pods — and for my wife. A kind of stealth hearing aid....

> A godsend for concerts.

Maybe necessary for movie theatres too. Contemporary volume levels are abusive (imo).

I think you're missing the wood for the trees here. It makes no functional difference to the listener whether the reason spotify sounds worse is their use of lower quality masters, or some aspect of their streaming or compression. In practice their library sounds significantly, measurably worse to many people. I've also blind tested this with friends when I signed up for Tidal, and most people I tested were able to clearly hear the difference.

This. No double-blind ABX test has ever been able to discern the difference between an above-CD quality file and its downsampled CD-quality equivalent, or even a 320 kbps MP3 encoding of it.

It's just like putting on glasses but for your ears!

I had the same experience as you did - what a difference.

Are they ever. I watched Alien Romulus in Imax, I'm not doing that again, it was painfully loud. I am an avid concert goer and I wear earplugs every time - Romulus without earplugs was by far the loudest thing I've been exposed to this year.

> A kind of stealth hearing aid....

I've had hearing aids for years. People don't notice unless you don't have much hair or you have to have the industrial strength ones.

And, if you can't afford those, just get some orange foam ones - they have excellent protection, often greater than the audiophile ones, and, let's be honest, that bar or arena you're going to wasn't built with sound quality in mind.

I would add, I've also never heard anyone make fun of another human for having hearing aids.

I do not understand the stigma around these things.

But that's just an auto volume level, it doesn't actually change the sound balance or dynamics or anything like that. It just makes the average volume of the track closer to the average volume of other tracks.

Same. There's a difference in texture, primarily in the trebles, but there's also a general muddiness and lack of separation. Everything feels like it's been smoothed over, but not in a good way, or too "crunchy". Transients don't have the right amount of bite and the stereo image doesn't feel as three-dimensional. It's harder to hear the "room". Currently using Sony IER-M9 with a Linum DualBax Zebra, which is a great cable, btw.

I've been wearing them for 10 years and have never had any bad comments as a result. When I first got them, work colleagues were visibly pleased for me that I had done something about a problem that was getting worse (not being able to follow quiet conversations in meetings).

The one time someone did say something slightly negative that included "oh it's that guy with the hearing aids" I came back with "yes, and thanks to them I can hear what you just said, the clue is in the name", which got a general laugh that helped a lot. But that was a one off, apart from people slightly staring sometimes when they notice them, no one seems bothered.

Exactly!

Although I try not to think about that too hard because... well it's kind of depressing.

But it's the exact reason that hearing aids are so difficult to design.

For example if you were to naïvely try to just "add back" 50 dB of gain to a 70 dB ambient sound, that hearing aid would be trying to pump 120 dB of sound energy into your ear canal... which would actually cause damage to the surrounding cochlear bands...

But if it doesn't try to add something there, then everything sounds distorted because you have way too much sound energy from the other frequency bands, perhaps ones where you have much higher sensitivity.

Hence the multi band compression and why it's so difficult, and why hearing aid manufacturers focus on speech intelligibility above and beyond everything.

"Stealth" in this case means I am stealthily getting her to try a "hearing aid" by way of Air Pods.

Hearing loss is one of the very few proven and CAUSAL mechanisms behind cognitive degeneration as we age.

They even know the mechanism: the slow imperceptible year by year withdrawal from rich communication patterns with our environment.

I found that it took me a little while not to feel "old" when I discovered that I needed hearing aids.

But my oh my what a difference.

It's difficult to describe to someone what it's like and how much less cognitive energy you have to put into even simple things like discussing lunch with your wife!

Personally, also at the very cheap end, I like wax ones partly because you can vary the noise blocking as needed - put them in loosely or squish them in.

I'm past the edit window here, but have a couple more thoughts. First, I'm just a jazz player, so my gigs can get loud, but not screaming stooopid loud. Second, I am almost always amplified on stage, meaning that the most delicate subtleties of optimal tone quality are lost anyway.

Many of the rock players are moving to in-ear monitors, which block everything but replace it with your monitor mix, received via wireless.

On the other hand, some band mates, and my kids, play classical. Their needs are a lot more critical in terms of perceiving their tone quality. A benefit of the fitted plugs is that you can get the capsules with less attenuation, which means you're still safe in something like a classical ensemble, but without losing too much.

When I go to rock concerts I am the one percent, when I go to bass music shows all of a sudden half of the people are wearing ear protection. I think some scenes and genres are better about this than others.

I feel like if I was playing Audiophile Bingo, I'd just have won.

I mean I can't claim complete 'ignorance', I have more audio toys than many (a "Schiit Stack" on my desk (DAC, mixer and amp) and a couple of "low end" headphones, Sennheiser and Hifiman planars), but by the time you are discussing cables... next thing it's whether wood volume knobs will eliminate unwanted resonances from your sound stage.

Favorite comment I heard on such things: Music lovers buy equipment to listen to their music. Audiophiles buy music to listen to their equipment.

I simply have to press stop and start (which you can do many different ways) and the stream will switch.

Pretty fancy I know.

> Get over it

It seems more like you need to get over it. I have never cared about bit rates etc. I just care about how it sounds and I know that lossless sounds significantly better to me and to many others.

The amount of gaslighting when it comes to audio is always bizarre to me.

I love that we still use Selected Ambient Works 85-92 by Aphex Twin like this.

I've done it myself when buying hifi equipment.

The reason it's funny is that it was "mastered" with a mid-80s domestic cassette deck.

As much as I love it it's probably not the best source material for a detailed test of sound quality.

Xtal is a gem. I just tested both and the Apple Music version had more oomph the first time I tested for a bit. Then I went back to the beginning a second time and they sounded the same. Whether or not it's true I don't think I can trust myself to be a good tester.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Fwiw I believe Xtal was originally made from samples recorded on cassette, so there's definitely a ceiling on how dynamic it could sound.

Under $20, nice: https://www.etymotic.com/product/etyplugs-high-fidelity-earp...

I think it's fine to recommend Tidal on this basis. However, you should realize that what you're hearing has nothing to do with the compression.

Read my post again, I'm strictly talking about the audio format and not about the codec nor compression. I would expect anyone caring enough to compare CD quality 44khz and 192khz/24bits to be using lossless or uncompressed audio, otherwise what's the point? Pretty much all lossy codecs will put a low-pass filter and trow out any sound above 16khz~20khz anyway, and some will even resample to 48khz, no matter what lol.

I've made blind A/B tests between the Apple standard codec and Spotify Premium.

Not even talking lossless, as Spotify doesn't even offer a lossless option.

I don't want to be patronized on what I allegedly can / can not not hear by a "Premium" service I've been paying for for 10 years.

Most people are not listening closely, nearly meditating over music. If you average over most people, this is what you will find. Look at the "outliers" in those same studies.

I did this years ago, it helped somewhat, but Apple's standard codec is still way better (I blind-tested this).

That's not blind.

I mean, if you go to a concert and don’t really care about the music, sure. The sound will suck, far worse than just a venue’s subpar sound system.

Because my voice is deep and I'm soft spoken, I've always been told people could feel my voice before they heard it, and a lot of noise cancellation models have a hard time distinguishing me from environmental sound and suppress my speech.

It's weirdly isolating not being able to communicate in certain meeting software or on some phones because a computer thinks I'm the machine.

I can too, but only because AAC has such an unnatural stereo presence that I can pick it out in a lineup of codecs with my eyes closed. If it was a direct comparison between downsampled FLAC/WAV then I'm not sure I could tell the difference.

Depends on the music. Metal shows are pretty much designed for treble-killing earplugs these days.

I guess that depends on the metal show, because I wholeheartedly disagree. But except kanonenfieber currently, I like little that is close to mainstream.

Haha, I'm the opposite, if I _don't_ have to wear earplugs I'm suspicious