
How I discovered my left AirPod was bad - geerlingguy
https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2017/how-i-discovered-my-left-airpod-was-bad
======
josho
> I can walk about 50-60' while listening to music with no dropouts!

What kind of magic are these things? My bluetooth connection from my phone to
headphones or the car will start to drop if too much of my body gets in
between the radios.

~~~
erelde
Is that inches or feet? With my bose qc35 I can walk 5 to 10 meters away from
my phone/computer. (10 if clear view, 5 if wall)

1.5 meters seems very little and 18 meters seems too much.

~~~
Negitivefrags
At work I can leave my phone in my office and go get a drink from the kitchen
without the audio dropping out. It's probably a good 15 meters away with 2
walls in between.

~~~
rconti
Ditto. I can walk to the restroom and my QC35 don't disconnect. 15+m, 2 walls
(all tile bathroom walls) in between. Not so much as a crackle.

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Ezhik
Well, since we are going to have a headphone jack debate at some point in this
thread anyway, I've got a question.

How are wireless headphones dealing with something as simple as switching to a
different device? I can just replug my wired headphones, but what about
wireless? I know AirPods do some of that W1 magic, but that's only if you are
dealing with Apple devices. What if I just randomly show up to a friend's
house with my wireless headphones and want to listen to music on his ThinkPad?

~~~
quartz
Varies by device but it's basically just repairing Bluetooth. I have a pair of
Marshall wireless headphones and double-clicking the button on the right
earphone puts them into pairing mode. From there it's two clicks on a MacBook
to pair from the Bluetooth menu or a few more than that to pair to a mobile
device.

~~~
TylerE
Can I just take a moment to say how hilarious it is that all the guitar
companies have licensed their name out for consumer audio products?

The audio system in my car is "Fender".

~~~
jdietrich
The big-name manufacturers are now lifestyle brands.

Serious players know that if you want a Strat or Tele, you get a better
instrument from G&L or Suhr than from Fender. Gibson's reputation is in
tatters after years of poor quality control and dubious design decisions. A
group of Marshall's technical staff left the company to form Blackstar Amps
after Marshall went public.

Most of the big musical instrument brands are going the way of Chrysler and
Chevrolet - they trade on an old brand image, but there's little of the
original DNA left. It's clearly working in the short-term, but I suspect that
these brands will fade away with the Baby Boomers that have a nostalgic
attachment to them.

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cm2187
Are these things as leaky as the headphones that come with a new iphone? The
reason those are unsuitable in a work environment is that your colleagues will
hear almost as much your music as you do.

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reddytowns
I love the saccharine tone of the article. If this happened to another brand
of earphones and the guy was dealing with a different electronics store, it
would be filled with rage and tears.

~~~
gergles
Yep. I had similar problems with my AirPods and wasn't about to be Apple's
debugger for free for hours on end - I just returned them.

That doesn't make for as interesting a story, but it's clear they were rushed
out the door (poor soldering according to the teardowns, tons of problems like
this report, extremely limited supply months later) and it really makes me
wonder about the future of Apple when they can't even nail hardware anymore.

I know the canard of "don't buy V1 of an Apple product" but it seemed to have
been better in recent years. Until this, at least.

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jasonkostempski
I'm guessing lessons won't be learned here until this happens out of warranty.
Headphones shouldn't be this complicated.

~~~
wyager
In my dream world, Apple would make some sort of standardized bluetooth
receiver similar to AirPods minus the actual audio hardware. It would just be
the transceiver, electronics, sensors, and DAC. Then you could attach it (via
e.g. a UE or Shure audio cable connector) to whatever IEMs you wanted.

This would not only address the fact that the actual audio on apple buds is
very mediocre, but would also allow for some separation of concerns and easier
replaceability/customizability.

~~~
2muchcoffeeman
They already make things like that. [https://www.amazon.com/Anker-Bluetooth-
Transmitter-Receiver-...](https://www.amazon.com/Anker-Bluetooth-Transmitter-
Receiver-Headphones/dp/B00E174RTS?tag=headphcompar-20)

Some companies like Westone, also make a replacement bluetooth cable since
their IEMs all have replaceable cables. [https://www.amazon.com/Westone-MMCX-
Bluetooth-Cable-78548/dp...](https://www.amazon.com/Westone-MMCX-Bluetooth-
Cable-78548/dp/B01H3XS2ZQ)

I am pretty sure the correct answer is: Stop making phones so thing and bring
back the 3.5 headphone jack.

If the 3.5 really is a hindrance, come up with a connector that allows a
simple adaptor to 3.5 jacks and _still allows cabled charging_. I already have
a couple of L-adaptors for my headphones with straight connectors, so carrying
a 3.5-to-Lightning doesn't bother me. But not being able to charge at the same
time. WTF?

iPhone SE forever!

~~~
mappu
The thinness wasn't the problem - there are hundreds of phones thinner than an
iPhone 7 that still have the 3.5mm jack (e.g. Galaxy A8 is 5.9mm compared to
iPhone 7's 7.1mm).

The problem was the increased space required for the taptic engine.

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zaroth
That was a really interesting read, and almost amazing the lengths that Jeff
was willing to go to debug the problem. But it's also worth considering, how
much work was possibly wasted during this arduous debug process? I say that
not to knock the work Jeff did, but really to appreciate the creative process
which is "debugging" and this is a great example of where a different strategy
could save a lot of time.

Anytime you debug a problem, you create in your mind a list of likely
candidates for the problem, and sort them based on a combination of how likely
the problem is being caused by 'X' multiplied by how hard it is to prove the
problem is _not_ caused by 'X'.

I may have missed something, but from the story it seems like testing with one
AirBud versus the other AirBud active would have isolated the problem
immediately to the left pod. If you see different performance on left vs.
right pod, you know immediately the problem almost certainly has nothing to do
with your RF environment. So before going to extreme lengths to modify the RF
environment, you absolutely must ask yourself; how can I prove the problem is
not RF?

Well, you have one shared RF environment. So naturally you need two or more
DUTs (device under test) to run the test against and see if the problem is
consistent across different DUTs.

What's so neat about this particular case is that Jeff already _had_ two DUTs,
since the pods can apparently operate completely independently. Having two
DUTs, it was a massive missed opportunity to test them independently before
going down the RF rat hole.

Please don't read this as a critique of Jeff, his write-up is a great place
for learning to happen!

------
rahilsondhi
I have a ton of lag when I use my Bose Bluetooth speaker with my MacBook Pro,
or when I airplay to my Apple TV. I tried using Bluetooth Explorer, but I
can't figure out what's causing the interference. Anyone have tips on how to
debug this?

~~~
H4CK3RM4N
From my experience, macOS just seems to be really conservative with avoiding
drop-outs in the audio. Are you using the speakers for music, or more general
use? I've found it tends to value quality over responsiveness with music in
particular.

~~~
rahilsondhi
It's for music.

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mschuster91
Thanks for the hint with the Bluetooth Explorer!

~~~
geerlingguy
It's one of those random apps that you'd never even think about unless you
hear it mentioned deep in a thread on some random forum... I think it was
mentioned in a rather old MacRumors thread discussing Logitech mouse
interference. Definitely a good tool to have around, and saved me buying or
borrowing an expensive spectrum analyzer :)

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lathiat
Great article, a few people have complained about drop-outs that others are
not seeing - I wonder if this is a semi-common problem?

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bontoJR
I love these kind of articles. For some people it might be a waste of time,
but to me is really good to see such amazing willingness to discover the
problem. I am tempted to get a pair of AirPods, not totally sure yet, but if
in the future I will get one, I will definitely remember this post in case I
have troubles with them.

Well done!

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magniturd
all this for headphones!

~~~
adventurer
Are you in with the in-crowd?

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tuxxy
Maybe someone can answer this:

Why isn't there some sort of cache on the earbuds that allows the device to
send the packets to it and buffer as needed (for, say, music)?

~~~
0x0
It would only work for music; for video or games or anything else a large
buffer would mean terribly unsynchronized and delayed audio. Humans will feel
something is off with just a few tens of milliseconds of buffer.

