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Report Claims AirPods 3 With Noise Canceling Feature to Launch Later This Year
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How is this Clickbait? The article title states “Report claims AirPods three with noise canceling feature to launch later this year”, it doesn’t indicate anything that would be clickbait. I think the user makes the decision if they believe the rumor or not, but I don’t think this one is particularly Clickbait. Either way, I’d say it’s a bogus rumor at minimum.
If Apple was able to add NC to Airpods it would be major home run. Even though they are already a hit, since existing Airpods don’t have any noise isolation because of their design, they aren’t great to use in noisy environments, such as airplanes.
Why you ask? As a city commuter I would like to be able to actually “hear” my music and podcasts over the ambient sounds of the city like in coming trains, annoying people talking, and the general city sounds. Additionally, to actually get anything close to hearing content, I at least have to keep the iPhone volume at 75% or greater. Besides both pairs of Airpods that I have owned, I like to switch off sometimes to my Jabra Elite Actives which have a good design fitting in the ear to get that noise isolation. If I want to hear the sounding environment, I just double press the right earbud and get external sound enhancement which turn on the mics to let in sound while the buds continue playing.
Living in a city environment with lots of noise everywhere what’s the point of wearing AirPods when you cannot comfortably hear the music ? The only way to do so is by turning up the volume loud and most likely to levels that could cause hearing damage. Doesn’t seem very moronic to want to protect your hearing.
Commuting and noisy open-office concepts is where I'm using NC over-ear-headphones and I am glad to own them.
Don't want to wear those big cans when walking around, though, so I'd welcome NC on AirPods for noisy cities of today, if only to allow me to listen to my music without having to crank up the volume to unhealthy levels to squelch the noise.
There are quite some AirPod copycat products already on the market, most sporting longer and/or thicker stems. Doesn't look as bad as I expected.
The biggest challenge in NC is human voice and irregular sounds. Rule of thumb: The higher the frequency and the more irregular the noise, the more difficult it is to process.
If Apple would accept the compromise to deliver an NC that works well for constant noises (such as traffic, train rattling, AC, Airplane engines etc.), but not so well for the above-mentioned challenge areas, the latency may be sufficient to offload the heavy lifting to an iPhone and its recently-aquired DSP. That way the additional power consumption for the AirPods would be minimal.
Besides, not many so-called "NC" headphones really shine for the challenge areas, whereas even the mediocre ones manage to cope quite well with constant noises. If Apple could deliver even the mediocre-level NC in something as small as the AirPods, that'd be a real achievement.
It does do that, but it also requires a decent seal. ANC cannot account for the sound bleed coming from around the sides of the AirPods.
It's not overrated and it's not binary. Noise cancellation can be toggled on/off. So no one has to be a moron to want noise cancellation headphones. To have the functionality would be a plus for AirPods. No need to be insulting because of it.
Apropos of nothing, Damian Lillard murdered Oklahoma City last night with a 37 foot long dagger.
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No. Sealing helps, because you get a good deal of noise cancellation before you even start using electronics. But then the speakers emit sound that exactly counteracts whatever noise gets through the sealing.That works without sealing as well, but may need more power, work not quite as well and so on. But in principle, you don't need sealing.
Maybe it's only noise reduction, not noise cancellation.
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No, haha. This is not how Apple develop their products. They have an ideal first concept for a new product before even doing any dev work on the first gen version. Then they work slowly towards it and make practicality decisions along the way. Then the management chain decides the product release target timeline and potential budget and tentative pricing range for the products, then they do their very best to develop the product and make many variants. They drop features as time goes on up to a cut-off date. Then on that date, they drop all features that aren't possible to ship by the first release date and cut all development effort for those that aren't in the first release. The first release will have around 20 prototypes that are seriously considered by the dev team, then around 5 will be kept and sent up the management, then the executive team will come in and work with the dev team to coin the final 2-3 for potential release. The dev team will further the dev work with those final 2-3 prototypes, then the best one will come out or the only practical one will come out of the 2-3 final prototypes, and that final 1 will be the "golden master" for final release approval. Finally, this one will be reviewed by Apple senior management, and the marketing team. It's a joint effort. When it's all good, Apple will sign it for release. Then Apple CEOs will come on stage with a classic handwave, "Hello, welcome to xxx Apple special event, etc.". It is now an Apple product.
They only had an idea for iPhone 4 when they wanted to build the first original iPhone. Every release before that was a compromise they made for iPhone 4 they wanted to build, due to dev and tech constraints.
To walk around the city _and not hearing the traffic around you_ is dangerous. But on my headphones, noise cancellation works both ways, so it's very nice on the train or underground, or at work.
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I'd suggest an automatic mode: The phone in your pocket turns noise cancellation off when it detects that you are walking. Walking through London, sensible people don't even wear earphones without noise cancellation. Too dangerous.
Airpods leak sound to everyone around you just like earpods especially when people crank them up due to the unsealed design.
I wear earphones in the office to get away from the noise so I dont want to hear everyone around me and they don't want to hear my music.
Like most things Apple sell you will have the option to not buy the noise cancelling version if you don't need it.
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If they could combine the noise cancelling of the Sony M1000X3 in a not-much-larger form factor then they are now, and keep 4 to 5 hour battery life (with NC on) - take my money!
Will be interesting to see what solution they come up with. Sony probably have the smallest ones, but they don't last very long:
https://www.whathifi.com/sony/wf-1000x/review
Or you have Bose which are a lot bigger (and more expensive), but have better Battery life:
https://www.whathifi.com/bose/quietcontrol-30/review
No. Active noise canceling does not require any sealing, passive noise attenuation does.
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The same way that it’s possible to do anything that wasn’t possible before.
Thanks for letting us know Tim.
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Just like they’ve never released a new iPad, iPhone, or iMac in the same year?
Interested to see how one would implement noise cancelling in an ear pod. I always thought the war had to be encased. Algorithms have come a long way. 
Regardless, I’d be reeeeal surprised if Apple released two of the same products in the course of a year. If anything, and aside from iPhone, they tend to err on the slower side of product upgrades.
Regardless, I’d be reeeeal surprised if Apple released two of the same products in the course of a year. If anything, and aside from iPhone, they tend to err on the slower side of product upgrades.
I didn't want nose cancellation until I started using my apartment complexes gym. Annoying people talk on their cell phone or talk to each other so loud I can hear them over my music, very distracting when I'm trying to do cardio and not quit before my half hour is up.