Report Claims AirPods 3 With Noise Canceling Feature to Launch Later This Year

[69Mustang]

No. Active noise canceling does not require any sealing, passive noise attenuation does.

You're describing the science of noise cancellation: the introduction of sound 180 degrees out of phase with the outside noise picked up by the mics. That's different from the use of noise cancellation. The use of noise cancelling requires a seal. If you lift the earcup of your NC headphones you will hear outside noise.

 

[sentiblue]

Don't noise cancelling headphones need to seal in one way or other? That sort of rules out AirPods without a design change before its begun.

Actually the sealing design is not primary to the noise cancellation technology. The design actually includes detection of the ambient noise, then generate a frequency that counters the incoming noise making it unbearable by the wearer. Not only that, the technology should differentiate between noise and necessary sound. So if someone nearby says "Hey sentiblue", I should it hear it while wearing the device. The buzzing sound of an aircraft, wind outside a car should be recognized as noise and cancelled out.

 

[Bako-MacAddict]

My guess is they postponed launch of AirPods 2 to try to finish up and release the AirPower, but when they realized that wasn't going to happen, they finally released them. I bet the AirPods 3 have been in development since early last year when the AirPods 2 were finished.

I believe you are correct....

 

[Neodym]

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.
[doublepost=1556104556][/doublepost]
Walking through London, sensible people don't even wear earphones without noise cancellation. Too dangerous.

It is a safety issue when people are out and about and can’t hear what is around them. I guess safety takes a back seat.

THANK YOU! I completely agree. Why would I want to go anywhere and not be able to pay attention to the world around me?

What is all this safety issues some seem to have with NC? Are you walking around in war zones or something? In the average cities where I walk around, I can use my eyes before crossing a street. Shootings are not happening every other day, so I see absolutely no safety issue in wearing NC headphones (well, maybe except if someone would consider it rude to wear headphones in public and swinging at you for doing so).

Besides, how can deaf people survive, if it’d be really as dangerous as some depict it?

My guess is that most complainers have a wrong impression of the capabilitities of NC headphones (probably due to lack of personal experience). Even the best in class (such as Sony WM1000X3 or Bose’s QC35) don’t magically create total and utter silence. You can still hear voices as faint mutter and surely you can still hear loud shouting, honking, sirens etc., any of which is to be expected with imminent danger.

And you still have your eyes to register possible dangers, even indirectly by other people’s reactions. Granted, you’d need to lift your eyes from your Smartphone every now and then ...

Maybe I overlook something or am not aware of the dangers people are exposed to in big international cities. In that case please enlighten me, why using NC is such a dangerous thing to do. Thanks!

 

[brenton289]

People already sold kidneys to buy the first ones, how the hell are they going to afford ones with noise cancelling?

 

[urnotl33t]

This wouldn't surprise me, they have form.
The iPad 4 came out 8 months after the iPad 3.
Still annoyed about that and one of the reasons I never replaced my iPad 3.

-AE

Yup. Same here. Never could get on board with iPad Air because of that. Now all of iPad is a mess. Two(?) or Three(?) screen sizes. Pro, not pro, air, not air. Wtf?

I’m just fawning over the mini 5th gen at this point. That’s all I really need. #NeverAgain
[doublepost=1556162204][/doublepost]

I’m not buying this rumor at all. I don’t see Apple releasing the AirPods 2 in March and then another version later this year. It Doesn’t really make sense to do this, and it was only detract away from the version two of the AirPods. This would be very Un-Apple like. I believe the AirPods 3 are coming, but likely not for 2020 with more major revisions.

Yeah that’s what we said about iPad 3 and 4 too.

 

[himanshumodi]

My question is why do they need noise cancellation in the first place? Pods were never about noise cancellation. I personally prefer to hear what’s going on around me while walking down the street so I don’t get run over by someone. Too many idiots out there glued to their phones not paying attention, add noise cancelling headphones = zombie.

Same for me. I am not looking forward to paying 50 bucks extra for a feature I don't really want. At least I hope that it can be toggled off and on.

 

[rom3o]

And Walks on autopilot instead.

Idk what wonders you expect ANC to work, it doesn’t completely isolate you from the rest of the world (yet). It dampens the noise around you so you can listen to music at lower volumes, noticeably reducing the stress on your ears. Loud noises can be a huge distraction to your overall perception which relies primarily on vision. Like driving in a well insulated sedan where you can barely hear the outside isn’t considered more dangerous than driving in a cabriolet with the top down - quite the opposite.

People who listen to music so loud that they can’t hear anything else around them will do so with or without ANC.

 

[foxDie00]

Don't noise cancelling headphones need to seal in one way or other? That sort of rules out AirPods without a design change before its begun.

No, that is noise isolation. Noise cancelling hears ambient noise and produces sound waves exactly out of phase to cancel the incoming ambient noise. That does not require a seal. But they are not mutually exclusive. The iPhone (and every phone) has had built-in noise cancellation for a while with the extra microphones. This is why people can hear you talk much better when you talk on your actual phone rather than through a headset, etc. It's because the phone is filtering out noise that isn't your voice (traffic, wind, etc.).