Apple has revealed powerful new features for AirPods Pro 2 as part of iOS 18.1. On this occasion, the firm offered a rare glimpse of its Audio Lab, the laboratory where the audio innovations of its products are developed.
A unique place to create the sound of Apple
Apple’s Audio Lab in Cupertino is the nerve center for the design, measurement, tuning and validation of all Apple products with speakers or microphones. This is also where the multi-year, cross-team collaboration to create the new hearing health features for AirPods Pro 2 took place.
These include Hearing Protection (to limit exposure to loud noises), a hearing test with iPhone, and help for mild to moderate hearing loss, all using AirPods Pro 2 as a clinical grade hearing aid.
Specialized spaces for every need
To make these advances possible, engineers use highly specialized spaces throughout the Audio Lab:
- The Longwave anechoic chamber, Apple’s largest, accurately measures how sound interacts with the human body, without disruption.
- The Fantasia Lab uses a spherical array of 50 speakers to simulate hundreds of real-world sound scenes, such as a shopping mall or an airplane.
- Three clinical-grade audiometric booths are permanently installed to perform thousands of audiometry tests in-house.
Everything has been designed to best recreate the user experience in their daily life and ensure that the features meet their needs.
Design at the service of the user experience
Design is also at the heart of the experience. The team conducted extensive research to determine how to make taking the hearing test and setting up the hearing aid as simple as possible, compared to a traditional test at the doctor’s office.
“Within our health features, we’re focused on clarity and meeting users where they are,” says Heather Daniel, a producer in Apple’s Design Studio.
A true technological feat
For Kuba Mazur, chief engineer of hearing health at Apple, these new features of AirPods Pro 2 are “the perfect example of what is possible when innovation meets passion to deliver useful products that improve users’ daily lives “.
With this end-to-end hearing health experience, “AirPods truly do what each person wants or needs them to do. They are truly the interface of the ear.”
A feat made possible by the collaboration of numerous teams across Apple, and by the unique tools of the Audio Lab. A place usually kept secret, which is revealed a little more on the occasion of this major advance for hearing health.
