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AirPods Getting Automatic Switching Between Apple Devices, Theater-Like 'Spatial Audio' Coming to AirPods Pro

This would be more meaningful for me if Catalina hadn't completely broken AirPods connectivity on my Mac with Apple not providing any meaningful assistance since March, when I opened a support case.

(2 pairs of airpods, one each of generation 1 and 2, have the same issue, the issue persists across local users and after macOS reinstalls, and each pair of airpods works fine with another mac and all my other apple devices, hardware diagnostics show no issues, wireless trackpad and keyboard work fine, clearing plist files and restarting services and rebooting doesn't help, resetting pram/smc doesn't help..)

Cool idea but at this point Apple doesn't have my trust to pull this off in an "it just works! :)" way.
 
The automatic switching is nice! Especially since I won't have to connect and pair them from my iPhone to iPad and vice versa.

I also wonder if the automatic switching will just be supported on the new AirPod models? Or if they'll be supported for the OG AirPods.
 
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Amazing I have been waiting this for long time, I usuallly switch a lot between my Mac and iPhone and this is the best ever so much convenience here.


When will this be available ?
 
My guess is this is the coolest feature that won't get the press it deserves.

Every year, there are SUPER useful features that just fall off the radar of tech.
Useless features sometimes get focused on too much.
 
Its been a challenge or expensive to do this well. But removing the "inside your head," doesn't-sound-like-real-sound in-a-real-room has been a goal of headphone designers for decades -- and for the longest time the best bet was open backed headphones.....which did a little better than other designs.

Various companies tried putting multiple drivers into a single ear cup to fake surround sound, marketed them to gamers, and didn't really hit the mark. In fact, well designed normal drivers with good software (eg, Dolby Headphone, which has been around since the 2000s) did better, but still missed the mark by a wide margin.

Then, the Smyth Realiser broke ground on this a few years ago.....but their reproduction of real spaces, and head tracking solution, costs way too much for mass adoption, even if it literally sounds like one is not wearing headphones. https://smyth-research.com

Then there came a popular software, called Out of Your Head, which doesn't do the head tracking, but does the spatialization convincingly. https://fongaudio.com/out-of-your-head-software/ but it requires too much computing power for most setups, and without head tracking, the illusion of listening to the real work is lost.

In other words, there have been commercial attempts every few years for nearly two decades......

Hopefully Apple gets it right. The emergence of effective head tracking could be the thing that carries it over the top.


anshuvorty said:
Man, what is it with tech companies and going after trends? It looks like Spatial audio is the hot new trend. Just some examples of companies pursuing spatial audio recently:
  • Sony - PS 5's custom audio engine called Tempest
  • Razer - THX Spatial Audio software
  • Apple - Spatial Audio for AirPods
This is great news and with Apple's solid track record with audio, I'm sure their solution will be pretty great. But it is just weird seeing these companies going after these trends all at the same time...

I dunno, just my thoughts...
Click to expand...
 
switching is great. it's so awful the way it is right now, i'm surprised they didn't have something like this worked out from the start... but better late than never.
 
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Joniz said:
Was there any mention of what will happen if you’re watching a show on the Apple TV and then you just happen to check something on your phone or iPad? Will they just change on you?
Click to expand...
Good question. Since Apple don't usually use/test their products in real-world scenarios, it is safe to assume that they didn't think of that. Also, the way macOS chooses microphone and output device when you work with a MacBook and sound-capable monitors suggests it will quite likely not work well (randomly selects the wrong device).

There are many more scenarios, for example when you are at work in a video call. Then you quickly pick up the phone to check something. I don't want them to disconnect from the work computer. To be fair, as long as two sources are present at the same time, I don't know how they can find out which one to connect to. I hope they focus on designing a good UI and leave it to the user instead of trying to use the "Neural Engine" which certainly will never work.
 
Does this means that they are also fixing the awful squeaky skwark noise I get with every step that they introduced into the last Pro's update?

I really hope so.
 
I'd like to discuss the airpods pro firmware with the specialist who presented today because it has been straight garbage.
 
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As far as I can tell, this feature is not implemented on iOS/iPadOS side. Must be a firmware update or a missing feature for now.
 
Superman730 said:
They do sort of. Like, if you're listening to something on a different device and your phone rings, you can tell it to answer and use the AirPods. It also quickly switches between the devices just not automatically.
Click to expand...

Does that actually work for people now? My current process to switch between my personal phone (music, iPhone 11) and work phone (call, iPhone 8) is to hit the Audio button on the call screen, select Airpod Pro, wait 5 seconds for it to fail and then let me try again, repeat that, then repeat that again. Occasionally works with two tries, but usually takes three.

I'm afraid auto switching will fail similarly for me now, I was sort of assuming this was a bug that affected everyone.
 
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