With the ANC version of the AirPods 4, Apple has recently started offering its open in-ear headphones with active noise cancellation for the first time. Until now, Apple’s in-ears have only been available with the AirPods Pro, which seal the ear canal. In an interview, those responsible at Apple now provide information on the development and how they managed to overcome additional design-related obstacles.
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The recipe was thorough research for an optimal fit and the underlying H2 chip, explains Kate Bergeron, Apple’s vice president of hardware engineering. In conversation with Engadget. AirPods 4, controlled by algorithms, permanently adapt the headphones to the ear position in real time, adjusting the noise cancellation and equalizer accordingly, thus ensuring that noise cancellation continues to work.
Initially worked with MRI scans
Research on optimal fit has been going on for a long time. The first EarPods, a wired version of headphones, appeared with the iPod. Headphones were included with the iPhone for several years, starting in 2007. The first wireless AirPods arrived in 2016.
In the beginning, it wasn’t clear how many different types of ears needed to be examined, Bergeron recalls. Apple first collected data using MRI scans, later developing more efficient methods to speed up progress.
The H2 chip plays a vital role
However, active noise cancelling with open headphones was even more of a challenge than before with the AirPods Max and AirPods Pro. The breakthrough came in 2021, when the development team met for several days in one of Apple’s acoustics labs. The technology demonstrated there was the basis for the AirPods 4, which have now been released.
The challenge of noise cancellation with open in-ear headphones is, among other things, the lack of acoustic isolation, as is the case with the AirPods Pro with silicone attachments. This makes it easier for sounds to enter the ear canal and more difficult for the software to decide which sounds should reach the ear. However, slipperiness in the ear also poses challenges for the technology. All this is compensated for by more intensive calculations, but this results in increased battery consumption – the H2 chip manages to handle this through higher energy efficiency.
Apple has also worked on the design and interior of the AirPods 4 compared to previous models. For example, the drivers were slightly reset so that, among other things, the sound is not reflected on the internal microphone.
(MKI)
