In an interview with EngadgetApple’s vice president of hardware engineering Kate Bergeron and AirPods marketing director Eric Treski promoted the brand’s new products, including the AirPods 4. The two executives explained how the company was able to add “excellent” active noise cancellation (ANC) to the AirPods 4, despite the fact that they don’t have ear tips.
Apple talks about the new AirPods 4
Apple said the H2 chip and computational audio were big factors in bringing ANC to the standard AirPods for the first time. Until now, ANC was reserved for the AirPods Pro in the lineup.
Kate Bergeron said:
In many ways, the math is even more intense than with the AirPods Pro.
For his part, Eric Treski outbid:
It’s really, really hard to create that great ANC quality in a product without an ear tip. The power of the H2 allows for that, so we do a lot with the H2 chip to manage the ANC quality and listen to the environmental noise from the mics to make sure we’re canceling as much as possible.
Additionally, the slightly redesigned shape and acoustic architecture of the AirPods 4 also contribute to the effectiveness of the earbuds’ noise reduction. Early reviews of the AirPods 4 have highlighted this point, while admitting that the rendering is not as good as on the AirPods Pro 2.
Kate explains the new internal design:
To get a better fit, the driver and the front of the product had to be adjusted. Mechanical engineers deal with the packaging of the whole product, trying to make everything fit. Acoustic engineers say, “Okay, given these constraints, this is the best place we can put the speaker.”
The AirPods 4’s design overhaul extends to the case as well. Apple managed to reduce the size of the accessory while simplifying how you interact with it. Removing the pairing button allowed engineers to reduce the overall thickness and rely on an accelerometer. Removing the button also removes a place where liquid could potentially get in, so the case has the same IP54 rating as the new AirPods.
The new AirPods 4 have been available since this morning at Apple and retailers. Remember that there are two types of AirPods 4, but only the high-end models at 199 euros offer an active noise cancellation function.
Buy AirPods 4 at:
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