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Apple's AirPods Pro hearing health features

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282 points elsewhen | 4 comments | 22 Oct 24 00:25 UTC | HN request time: 0.996s | source
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an_d_rew ◴[22 Oct 24 02:35 UTC] No.41910659[source]▶
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!

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DanielleMolloy ◴[22 Oct 24 07:52 UTC] No.41912148[source]▶
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.

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gnatolf ◴[22 Oct 24 08:29 UTC] No.41912319[source]▶
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.

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dbspin ◴[22 Oct 24 08:38 UTC] No.41912349[source]▶
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.
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1. frereubu ◴[22 Oct 24 09:54 UTC] No.41912753[source]▶
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.

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2. amlib ◴[22 Oct 24 12:34 UTC] No.41913596[source]▶
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.
3. Lio ◴[22 Oct 24 19:15 UTC] No.41917652[source]▶
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.

4. npunt ◴[22 Oct 24 20:45 UTC] No.41918519[source]▶
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.