New AirPods Max finally have lossless wired audio, which is pretty nice and makes them finally catch up with the Pros.
Does anyone have experience with obtaining a flatter frequency response from any AirPods, though? While maintaining the full power of noise cancellation.
My experience with Pros has always been that they exaggerate the bass. EQ settings available in Music are coarse, and I don’t know of any other way to control frequency response independently of the app that plays the sound.
I know they are not really best for critical audio work, but they are damn convenient.
Research by Harmon suggests almost everyone, musicians and pros included, prefers exaggerated lows and highs over flat response. Check the "Harmon Curve"
And there is certainly a way for you to set system wide eq, see what AutoEq recommends.
> My experience with Pros has always been that they exaggerate the bass
Based on my experience, almost all consumer-grade headphones (in ear and headphones) seem to suffer from this, I'm guessing people tend to prefer bass-heavy over "not enough bass". Not until you start looking at headphones meant for studio-use does it seem to get closer to expected when it comes to the bass.
Apple added wired lossless audio last year when they moved to USB-C iirc
Based on the wording AirPods Max 2 looks to have the same limitation as AirPods Max (USB C) where using the wired audio means the mic is not usable.
Really quite annoying from the "damn convenient" aspect as well.