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Wireless Networking Communications Music Network Networking Apple Technology

AirPods Delay Attributed To Apple Ensuring Both Earpieces Receive Audio At Same Time (macrumors.com) 189

Posted by BeauHD from the any-day-now dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Mac Rumors: AirPods were originally slated to launch in October, but the wireless earphones were later delayed. Apple said it needed "a little more time" before they are ready for customers, and it has yet to provide an official update since. While the exact reason for the delay remains unclear, a person familiar with the development of AirPods told The Wall Street Journal that Apple's troubles appear to be related to its "efforts to chart a new path for wireless headphones," in addition to resolving what happens when users lose one of the earpieces or the battery dies. The Wall Street Journal reports: "A person familiar with the development of the AirPod said the trouble appears to stem from Apple's effort to chart a new path for wireless headphones. In most other wireless headphones, only one earpiece receives a signal from the phone via wireless Bluetooth technology; it then transmits the signal to the other earpiece. Apple has said AirPod earpieces each receive independent signals from an iPhone, Mac or other Apple device. But Apple must ensure that both earpieces receive audio at the same time to avoid distortion, the person familiar with their development said. That person said Apple also must resolve what happens when a user loses one of the earpieces or the battery dies."
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AirPods Delay Attributed To Apple Ensuring Both Earpieces Receive Audio At Same Time More

AirPods Delay Attributed To Apple Ensuring Both Earpieces Receive Audio At Same Time

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  • PTP (Score:1)

    by TheSync ( 5291 )

    Precision Time Protocol [wikipedia.org] to the rescue!

  • Apple should (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Progman3K ( 515744 ) on Friday December 09, 2016 @07:11PM (#53456471)

    Apple should get out of the Courage business and get back into making computer hardware.

    I don't know how much more "courage" the industry can take...

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by NatasRevol ( 731260 )

      Ah, yes. They'll follow the lead of the other hardware makers. Ones who are doing such a good job, their profits are increasing.

      Like the companies on the following list:

      1. Apple

    • Apple should get out of the Courage business and get back into making computer hardware.

      I don't know how much more "courage" the industry can take...

      The main concern we have with industry is they won't be able to ignore the profit model driven by Apple. Manufacturers utterly don't give a shit about consumer input or feedback anymore when it comes to design. Oh look, another vendor is ditching the headphone jack so they create more profit streams.

      And sales skyrocket as a result. Doesn't have to make sense, it just happens, thanks to the lemmings standing in line at midnight lining up to buy the shiny new iTurd, paying 3x to get it in flat black. So

  • Air Pods delayed? Oh noes! (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Christmas is officially ruined.

  • Back in my day... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Back in my day we had wires, and no worries about synchronization or worries about single earbuds running our of battery.

    You'd have thought Apple would have a working solution *before* trying to kill off the 3.5mm jack.

  • iWipe (Score:5, Funny)

    by Tablizer ( 95088 ) on Friday December 09, 2016 @07:18PM (#53456519) Journal

    Next up: Apple complicates toilet paper.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      It's a party trick. A gimmick that makes people want to buy it, which they know will be copied by other manufacturers in a few months, so the next iPhone will have to have some other dubious but unique feature.

      • Next up: Apple complicates toilet paper.

        It's a party trick. A gimmick that makes people want to buy it, which they know will be copied by other manufacturers in a few months, so the next iPhone will have to have some other dubious but unique feature.

        Let me guess - it won't get the shit off your arse hairs and your fingers will go though it.

        No way! Murdoch patented those features with his newspapers decades ago. This is going to be the patent fight of the millennium.

    • iWipe will just be a ripoff of the two seashells...

  • ...according to Gruber [daringfireball.net].

  • 1. Build audience of people who buy products based on hype alone.
    2. Make those products cheaper, crappier and more awkward.
    3. ???
    4. Profit!

  • Vs the existing implementation of sending the audio to one and having it relay the audio to the other? Apple's method would have less latency and higher throughput but does that matter for this application?

    • Vs the existing implementation of sending the audio to one and having it relay the audio to the other? Apple's method would have less latency and higher throughput but does that matter for this application?

      They wanted the earbuds to be independent, so they could operate in a solo situation, rather than have a Master-Slave relationship.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by maugle ( 1369813 )

        They wanted the earbuds to be independent, so they could operate in a solo situation, rather than have a Master-Slave relationship.

        So, would this be Apple tacitly acknowledging that these things are guaranteed to quickly fall out and get lost?

        • They wanted the earbuds to be independent, so they could operate in a solo situation, rather than have a Master-Slave relationship.

          So, would this be Apple tacitly acknowledging that these things are guaranteed to quickly fall out and get lost?

          No, it's because Apple acknowledges that there are use-cases for only using one earbud at a time, you insensitive clod.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by cob666 ( 656740 )
      Sending data to both ear pieces means that both ear pieces are master, this gives you the ability to use one while the other stays charged and switch them when the first one dies, not possible if one of them was a slave. This is how I would use them, provided they are comfortable and don't fall out of the ear as easily as the current earbuds do.
      • Thanks (to TheFakeTimCook as well). If that's the case couldn't Apple have them they operate in master-slave mode when both are available and switch the slave to master when it's the only one available?
        • Yes, they could. The CSR 8670 can do that very thing - and it maintains nice and tight sync as well. Plus AptX support...
      • Oh shit... I hadn't even considered that each earpiece would have a separate battery. Worrying about ONE battery was already too much for headphones.
      • So you're looking forward to Apple taking you back to the one-ear earphones of the 70's?
      • In California, at least, it is illegal to operate a vehicle (car, truck, motorcycle, bicycle) with headphones or earbuds in both ears. Sure a lot of cars have bluetooth built in, but I own two that don't. Cops will almost never stop you for it, but if they're looking for a reason to pull you over, such as driving while teenaged, black, etc, it gives them a valid reason. I've used Jawbones for years, but they've devolved into crap, so I'm looking forward to getting these. I'm happy to wait until they get

  • This is a solved problem (Score:5, Funny)

    by Snotnose ( 212196 ) on Friday December 09, 2016 @07:24PM (#53456559)
    My headphones with the headphone plug get left and right at the same time, everyfricken time.

  • 1. user loses an earpiece
    2. battery dies
    3. battery loses an earpiece
    4. user dies
    =
    Meeting on Tue to discuss 1 & 2
    Meeting on Thu to brainstorm 3,4 (tentative)
    =
    company meet with outside consultant Wed/reorg?

  • They released their flagship product (iPhone) that requires wireless headphones by default, and don't have the wireless headphones ready for sale synchronized with the release?

    • 1. The iPhone 7 does NOT require wireless headphones by default. That's retarded.
      2. There are thousands of wireless headphones that work with the iPhone 7 (ever heard of Bluetooth?).

    • The phone came with wired headphones and an adapter for you to use with your current set. so saying that the phone requires wireless headphones is completely untrue.

  • So apple is charting a new path with their headphones... but what happens when a user loses a headphone or the battery dies? Perhaps they should have talked with someone familiar with their development.

    Seriously... that summary is crap and made head spin trying to make sense of it.

  • Is quite repetitive.

    Is quite repetitive.

    This summary is quite repetitive.

  • Lost Earbud (Score:4, Funny)

    by multi io ( 640409 ) <olaf.klischat@googlemail.com> on Friday December 09, 2016 @07:53PM (#53456717)

    Apple also must resolve what happens when a user loses one of the earpieces or the battery dies

    What's supposed to happen? FindMyDeadEarpiece[tm]?

    • The solution is simple:

      1) Get in touch with Apple customer care where you can buy a new earPod for $100. After receiving it, you can take it to an Apple Store, or call customer support again, and in 4-5 business days your new earPod will be synced with the other and you can get back to enjoying all that wonderful iTunes music.

      2) Buy another pair, for $160.

      It still dumbfounds me that anyone, even audiophiles, would spend more than $50 on *any* pair of headphones. Maybe if you're a professional and

  • Samsung, please don't fuck up the S8 (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I saw that rumor Samsung, but it's not too late to retain a headphone jack in the S8. Please don't be courageous.

  • I guess I'm behind the times because I don't have this problem with my ordinary wired earbuds. Woe is me.

    Please donate money to me so I can buy this expensive, technologically inferior bit of crap.

  • CSR has several "receive-and-forward-in-sync" chipsets available. Of course, Apple doesn't like CSR for iOS type devices (hence no AptX for iOS, but AptX for OSX). But then, if they used the proven, off-the-shelf solution they couldn't brag about their W1 chip (which apparently doesn't work as well as the existing solutions), so... Courage?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      CSR has several "receive-and-forward-in-sync" chipsets available. Of course, Apple doesn't like CSR for iOS type devices (hence no AptX for iOS, but AptX for OSX). But then, if they used the proven, off-the-shelf solution they couldn't brag about their W1 chip (which apparently doesn't work as well as the existing solutions), so... Courage?

      CSR was acquired by Qualcomm a little while ago. So Qualcomm has the chips, yes. And yes, Qualcomm showed off aptX HD earlier this year at CES. Of course, Qualcomm is usi

  • I'm waiting for a phone company to show some real courage and buck trends.

    Give me a fatter phone. Use that extra space for more battery and useful ports. Maybe even make the battery removable. Add some rubberized trim around the edges for better grip and drop/impact protection.

    Seriously, no one cares if it's 12.3 grams heavier, or 5.1 mm thicker. And we've long since reached a point where the internals are good enough. The incremental updates every year are nice for some top-end applications, or flexin

  • Not just one battery to keep charged but TWO! This no headphone jack ideal just sounds more courageous all the time.

  • Possible solutions (Score:5, Funny)

    by ColaMan ( 37550 ) on Saturday December 10, 2016 @12:55AM (#53457743) Journal

    Problem 1 - Lose one earpiece.
    Solution 1 - Maybe use a tether of some sort to keep the earpieces together?

    Problem 2 - Battery dies
    Solution 2 - Maybe have that tether double as a charging lead? You could plug it into some sort of handy port on the phone to keep the batteries charged up.

    Problem 3 - Audio sync between earpieces.
    Solution 3 - Perhaps shift the audio hardware to the phone, decode the audio there and then transfer simple audio signals down the tether to the earpieces? That might work.

  • They're spending hundreds of thousands of dollars researching this, when they should have just stuck a $5 audio cable on them..

  • When we hear a sound and can tell what direction it comes from, the volume in one ear compared to the other usually helps only a little. Direction is determined more from which each the sound reaches first. There can be up to 0.7 ms of difference in time. So any sync issue that's anywhere near 0.7 ms will make it so the sound sounds like it's constantly coming from one direction, even if the volunteers are the same.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ledow ( 319597 )

      Actually, a lot larger effect is gained by the differing attentuation and reflection of the signal by each ear. This is how "2-speaker 3D sound" systems like QSound, A3D etc. worked - by slightly changing the actual sound pattern to simulate passing through your skull / around your head instead of just changing the volume.

      The problem is that 0.7ms of delay is NOTHING when the primary data channel is operating over something like Bluetooth (i.e. a 2.4GHz carrier, data rates around 1Mbit/s, etc.). In those

      • And if you're really that worried, you buffer ever so slightly (even a few ms will do) and spend more time on sync to make sure you keep the same idea of "now" on both earbuds.

        They probably buffer a lot. Existing bluetooth headsets will keep going for a few seconds after you remove the phone. The issue is likely timing the buffers to microsecond precision.

  • we don need no analog audio!

  • I have additional information on the "story".
    * the trouble appears to stem from Apple's effort to chart a new path for wireless headphones.
    * In other wireless headphones, only one earpiece receives a signal from the phone ; it then transmits the signal to the other earpiece.
    * Apple has said AirPod earpieces each receive independent signals from an iPhone, Mac or other Apple device.
    * Apple must ensure that both earpieces receive audio at the same time to avoid distortion
    * Apple also must resolve what happens

  • removing the headphone jack was a stupid idea

  • "But Apple must ensure that both earpieces receive audio at the same time to avoid distortion, the person familiar with their development said."

    So, I make a phone, shove it down your throats saying you either can buy generic crappier than crappy crap BT headphones or you can buy my fantastic BT headphones. There's only one catch: in can only play music in canon, but don't worry, I'll just need a bit to come up with a convincing selling point to convince you this is the technology of the future and all mus
  • For $159, they better make sure they work. Can you imagine the backlash?

  • It's as if they had to do some big R&D project to figure out how to sync separate digital audio receivers. We've been doing things like this in the open-source world for years now--I hacked together a synchronized multi-sink audio system as a weekend project in 2011 [hackerposse.com], for example.

    That was UDP/IP/ethernet, but the same principles of latency-matching apply pretty much regardless of the underlying transport.

    I suspect that this actually has nothing to do with "[having difficulty figuring out how to] ensure t

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