Future of Headphone Microphone Technology

Hello and welcome to the Birdcast, the flagship podcast of Active Noise Ccellation. I'm your friend David Peerce and today on the show, we're talking about headphones Specifically, we're talking about headphone microphones, which I have long believed are just a severely underrated bit of technology We do a lot of headphone testing here at the Vverge. We all wear headphones all day. We all care a lot about sound quality. and if you read a lot of headphone reviews, you can get super deep into Noise cancellation features and you can get super deep into the interface. You can get super deep into sound quality. And then there's always just one line that's like, ah, microphone us calls I want to know more And so every once in a while on this show, we get somebody to bring us a bunch of different devices and we test their microphones. I care about this just as a person, but also because I think this technology matters, right? We all make calls increasingly on these devices, increasingly out in the world. and knowing how you sound to other people is important, both because you want to be a good person who doesn't make everyone's lives miserable, and also because there is lots of evidence, scientific evidence that shows if you sound good, people take you more seriously. It's just a real thing. Well At the same time, if you think about the way that we are all learning how to interact with AI systems, a lot of that is by voice, a lot of that is through headphones The difference between a good microphone and a bad microphone is the difference between having a good AI experience and a bad AI experience. This thing matters It also just makes for really fun and often terrible podcast audio John Higgins, the Virg' senior reviewer is going to come on. He's got a bunch of stuff. He is, I assume somewhere very noisy. and we're going to do some tests. But first, here's everything else happening on the verge today. This is ninety seconds on the Vverge for Wednesday june seventeenth, twenty twenty six. Big Smart homeome dayay. the new Matter one point six smart homeome spec launched today and stop me if you've heard this before, but it is supposedly going to make it easier to control your smart home Specifically, Matter one point six includes this new feature called joint fabric, which makes it easier to set up a smart device like a light or a sensor or whatever, and immediately have it be controlled by Alexa, Apple Home, Gemini, and all of your other stuff all at once. Supposedly it all just works There's also a new NFC setup feature that lets you tap a device to your phone to set it up rather than scanning a QR code As with all things matter, these are good ideas and I really hope they work. And as with all things matter, I am not remotely holding my breath. Meanwhile, the Google Home speaker, Google's first smart speaker in six years, is finally up for preorder and finally has a ship date. next Thursday, june twenty fifth The speaker was announced last fall, and for ninety nine dollars it promises to be the best way to get Gemini Smart homeome control into your house. It also looks really good in red and apparently, sounds really good. There is a remarkable interesting smart speaker thing happening right now. Alexa Plus, Apple Home, Siri AI, and Gemini are all promising these big AI upgrades to how you control your home It's all been kind of iffy so far, but we'll see how much these new things really changeed the game And finally, reviews for Toy Story five are starting to come out, a movie in which the bad guy is basically an iPad What's not surprising is that virtually everyone, including my colleague Charles Pouliam Moore, seems to love it What's more surprising is that it seems to be a remarkably maybe uniquely thoughtful look at the good and bad of what it means to be a person in a world filled with screens. Lave it to Woody and Buz man it. You can read more about all of this at theverge d. com dot That is ninety seconds for Wednesday, june seventeenth Support for this show comes from Fetch Pet Insurance Do you have a pet Every six seconds, a pet owner in the US gets hit with a vet bill of over a thousand dollars, and it's almost always an unwelcome surprise That's where Fetch pet insurance comes in. Fetch is the most complete pet insurance get paid back up to ninety percent of vet bills You can use any vet in the U S and Canada. All vets are in network. Go to fetchpet dot com slash save right now for your free quote. That's fetchpet dot com slash save How many third party vendors does your company use? twenty? two hundred? Thanks to AI, someone on your team probably added three more this week. And your security lead has no idea. Traditional third party risk management can't keep up. Santa gives you continuous coverage across every vendor, automatically so you actually know what's in your stack and what to do about it. AI on, risk off. Svanta. com slash tpRM Now let's test some headphones We like to do this every once in a while because I think we review a lot of headphones and we talk about headphones a lot, and we talk mostly about sound quality. and that's fine and good. That's very important. But as we live in a world where we spend more time talking to our devices, whether we're talking to assistants, or we're talking to various dictation apps, The microphone actually matters a lot, especially if you believe in AI and we're all going to record our lives and do everything. the microphone in your headphones becomes very important So every once in a while, we come on this show and we test some microphones Joining me now to help do it the Virg Senor reviewer, John Higgins. Hi, John. Hey, David. Where are you right now? I am in Beautiful San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles, California I am sitting at a coffee shop on Venturiff Boulevard facing west down Ventura Boulevard for the Tom Petty fans. It is right around luncht time. so there's a bunch of traffic right there. We just missed a haawk having a bird fight right above me. So you know there's a lot of stuff going on. I like this. This is about as brutal an environment as you could like on a day to day basis, find yourself, right? Like we've done some of these that are sort of deliberately out of scope of a normal time you would take a phone call or spend time talking to your phone This is like There are probably people near you on phone calls or talking to their computers or doing zooms or whatever right now. So this I think I feel like this is a fair test in a way that I really like. Exactly. I actually was worried when I sat down and really listen to everything that was going on around me thought this is just going to be chaotic. But there was a woman at a table right next to me that was on a phone call with some airpods and the mike well Yes, it might be chaotic, but it's very truthful This is what people do This is right. Yeahah, for better or for worse. So this is also one of the reasons I like to do this episode from time to time is to make people realize the hoarders they are putting onto other people when they take calls in environments like this. Like you should know what it sounds like to the other person when you do this to them. Yeah. What headphones are you on right now These are the wired earpods They are The lightning version, which I have through a lightightning to USBC adapter U But yeah, the wired, you can see, there's the microphone here, which is On the street side, I never use these. Yeah, so these are like the twenty dollarars headphones that are floating around somewhere in most people's houses. Yeah. The funniest thing about this microphone to me is you sound great. Like it's actually just as a microphone, very good. and I recommend these to people all the time as sort of podcast microphones because it's a good mic and you sound good, but it picks up every little tiny bit of background noise. Every tiny bit. And so this is like this is one that you're totally fine to use like walking around your house, but I really do not recommend using out in the world Yeah, well they don't have a noise suppression really happening with them. They're just like, here's what you get.. Yeah it is a microphone and nothing else. Yeah. So you've brought a bunch of stuff to test. And I think the one I want to start with, I want you to guide us a little bit, but I want to start with the AirPods Pro three because that I think in terms of like as a useful control, I think that's a good one that it's a very mainstream. lotots of people have them and we're about to see kind of what's better and what's worse. But I want to see the sort of basic most mainstream options. Sos let's switch to that and see how we do. That sounds good. Okay. sounds. Let's do it. let's go I am now on the AirPods Pro three Okay, this is fascinating So You're clearly in a very noisy place because the Airbuds Pro three actually do a pretty good job of sort of normal din noise suppression. L if you want an airplane the AirPods Pro do a pretty good job of canceling that out But you're I'm hearing a lot of background noise still It's interesting too, because a lot of people talk about all clarity of the AirPods Pro three with or AirPods Pro in general. I mean, since they were released, it's been sort of a talking point. And I've always been like, Fine But they're not the thing to focus on They're not the the the the end all be all of quality, they're just Okay You can hear me You can hear other stuff too. I'm sort of thrown by this one because what I expected and what we get from a lot of these earbuds and what I suspect we'll hear some of here is They compress the crap out of your voice in service of getting rid of all the background noise. And so it's like, you don't sound good, but I don't hear the background as much This is kind of splitting the middle in both cases Like, yeah, your voice is less rich than the earPods I'm getting less background mode. But I'm not getting No background noise Like I just heard a sound that sounded like somebody wheeled a shopping cart right past your head. That was a person that just pulled up on their Dukati motorcycle and stopped like they just parked on the sidewalk. Okay, perfect example. O the earods, on the earpods I would have heard a motorcycle. Oh ye. This made it sound like a shopping cart. So like that's actually that is a perfect example U Doesn't It's not unpleasant to listen to, but it is I am very aware that there is a lot of background noise here. And it's not It's very like beam formed on your voice, which I can sort of hear But I'm not as impressed with this as I expected to be actually That is I feel a common response when I talk to people and tell them. And like when I do comparisons, because that's one of the things I do with reviews is I have whatever earbuds I'm reviewing And then I bring along a couple others and I will talk to somebody. that I trust their opinion on audio quality. and I'll switch. between them, I'll do a call. I'll be like, OK, let me call you back. and I'll switch over to something else and I'll call them, but I won't tell them what I'm on. And quite often when I tell them, oh yeah, Those ones that you didn't like. Those were the airPods. L what I use those all the time. I' like, yes, you do. Okay. Yeah, I am confident everyone has either made or received a call from a pair of AirPods Pro threerees. U This is really interesting. Okay. so let let's actually play this game your way. I want you to switch to one of the other ones you have with you, but I don't want you to tell me which one And we're going to see how it feels. So let's let's pause here and switch and gets the next one Stound good. Okay, you've switched I'm immediately hearing Next to no background noise, but let me hear what you sound like. So these are brand new that, which you, well not bra new But these are new ear buds that I've switched to U I'm going to keep talking because the traffic has actually died down a little bit So I want there to be little bit more representative. Yeah, there's some jeeps that are going by Um Oh yeah, these are these came out Last October, I want to say Okay So this is what I expected the AirPods Pro to sound like, which is I'm getting Basically no background noise U it's almost all gone except for like the occasional little flare of background, but I'm hardly hearing anything. You sound terrible That was my next question is what the compression would have been like on these as well. It's very compressed.'re like I can hear you clearly enough but it sounds like you are in a tin can. Yeah, I'm having trouble figuring out how I feel about this actually because this is actually more like if you and I were going to spend two hours on the phone right now I would rather have this than the airPods, just because there's not so much constant noise you don't need to do as much mental work in order to understand what's happening. Exactly. But then like somebody just honked and I heard it. Like's there's just like little moments that I'm hearing, but that's about it. Well let me see if this will affect feelings. Airpods for. What are these? evenven When the AirPods Pro three are on sale for around two hundred bucks. These are R or less What are these headphones These are o am I going to get this name right because there's so many words to it. These are the ear fun air pro four plus That is okay. So this is if I'm not mistaken, earphone is one of those kind of random Amazon brands that pops up out of nowhere every once in a while, the like straight out of a Chinese factory somewhere kind of brands. I wouldn't put them quite in that same category having met and conversed with the owners and members of the company. It's not quite the level of pop up Chinese company that just pulls a whole bunch of OEM stuff and throws stuff together. They actually do research and they develop things but they are very much a inexpensive brands. the state. they are Hallmark is stuff underos. Yeah, your phone, if I remember correctly, is at the top of a lot of lists of best cheap headphones. Like if you want a really cheap pair of headphones, This is a brand I've heard more and more recently is like This is just the right place to start if you want Whatever, seven thousand five hundred dollars headphones. How much are these specifically? These are list price ninety nine dollars ninety nine cents. but are almost always on sale for about eighty bucks. Okay, so this is we're looking at like a third of AirPod's pro prices Fr their full price, yeah. Wow, and I'm sure they don't sound is good, audio wise and whatever. And like they sound fine. Yeah That That's how I would describe this too, right?ike this this is completely normal fine phone call, useound kind of like You're on speaker a little far away from your phone. U But I this so far of the three that we've tried, this is You don't sound the best, but this would be the most pleasant phone call to have of the three that we've tried so far, I think Yeah, they make good stuff. I'm a fan of things that they could out with. Yeah, E fun. who knew? And they use Oacast, which I really love too What is Ocast for people who don't know? Ocast is a Bluetooth standard U orcast broadcast. So what you As opposed to like multip point connection on Bluetooth where you can connect know have two devices hcast is an unonlimited amount. Oh, cool. Okay. And it's found a lot on hearing aids So it's a great way it's a great accessible feature that I really am just waiting for it to really take off. just be found everywhere. There are TVs that you can have that have workcast. The LG owns have orcast and you can connect to them. So it's a really great technology and ready for it to take off and beat everyere airports that hs anywhere where you need hear and assistance That's super cool. All right, let's switch And I assume everything you want to try here is more expensive than these. Th These are bound to be the cheapest ones. These are the cheapest. Whoa. Okaykay. This one says you get a free phone if you switch Hey, this one also says you get a free phone if you switch. Yeah, they all do one. A. The Tam Mobile one says their customers had the lowest wireless bills versus the other big guys over the past five years. And their latest experience plans have Netflix included, pllus a year of dash passass by door Dash.. Hang on, pase do that Yeah, we're switching. That's what I'm talking about. Do we clap now or? A TMobile gets savings that keep stacking up. That's value you can feel every day. And right now, bring your phone to TMobile and we'll give you four hundred dollars when you switch S saety is based on HarrisX billing snaps from Q, twenty one to Q four for twenty five, compared average eighteen and te and horizon bills compison includes discs, credits and optional charges for hundred dollars for a new account on qualifyingine unlock deice credit fororded, ninety plus days with device and carrier entirely redemption required. Virtual master card typically takes fourteen weeks, no cash access and expires the six months card issed by summariz banks and a member FDIC visit Tam moobile dot com d pport for the show comes from Shopify. Every worthwhile journey starts with a handful of what ifs. But one day you'll be able to look back and realize that all those what ifs were small steps towards turning your dream into a thriving business. Shopify can help you get there. Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world, and ten percent of all e commerce in the US Join them and turn those what ifs into would Shopify today? Sign up for your one dollar per month trial today at shopify d. com slash Voxbus. Go to shhopify d. com slash voxbus. That's shhopify d. com slash voxbus The US and Iran say they've agreed on terms to end the war and reopen the strait of Hormuz. You already see oil prices from a high of one hundred twenty six dollars a barrel down to about eighty dollars a barrel today? That's a lot of progress. The war, of course, drove up the price of gas and other essentials and has led to some ugly polling for President Trump sixty one percent of adults polled by NPRPBS and Marist disapprove of his handling of the economy. His handling in a certain light makes sense. His priority was preventing Iran from getting nukes, but Trump's messaging was unusual, unusual for a president. Last month, a reporter asked Trump, to what extent was he thinking about American's finances when he negotiated with Iran? I don't think about American financial situations. I don't think about any but I think about. What's he doing? coming up on today exxplained from Vox Awesome Pker has blown up in recent years. After the twenty twenty four election, the popular leftftist Twitch streamer became a go to voice for the Democratic Party's but Piker's Gow up has angered a section of Democrats who are growing louder in voice. Hashan Piker is anti American. He is bigoted, he's anti Semitic, and he is deeply misogynistic. So in March, a Democratic group called Third Way published an op in the Wall Street Journal's opinion section, saying quote, Democrats are too cozy with Hassam Piker. He is such an extremist that it will only do damage to Democrats and hurt their chances of beating right wing populism Piker is controversial, no doubt. But is he toxic? I don't think this helps Republicans at all. I think as a matter of fact, third ways brand of politics has helped Republicans Their attitude has been to constantly concede on culture or issues of the Republican Party and never focus on economic populism. I'm Estet Heringon, and this is America Act Re. Catch us every Saturday on YouTube or wherever you get your podcast What do we have now These are the Sound core Liberty F pro. It just came out a few weeks ago This is like multiple orders of magnitude better than anything we've tested so far. This is nuts isn't it You like just recently reviewed these, right? Yeah. They're the best quality I have ever heard on a pair of earbuds or headphones I am blown away by how good this is. Um what what is sound Ct,? That's not brand I'm super familiar with It's the audio brand of Anchor Oh. I spent a bunch of time with anchor headphones. kind of at the very beginning of of their headphone journey and They made a lot of like pretty good, pretty inepensive. like on the level of the earfund stuff we were talking about a few minuteso.ute. These are significantly more expensive than that, right They are more expensive than they normally have done, which is hundred dollars around or less They're not theirir pods. They are one hundred seventy Okay. Dead center. They have a more expensive version which is two hundred and thirty But the earbuds in both are exactly the same. The only difference that you're getting by stepping up is a case that has a larger Um screen on it And it also has AI transcription and summary technology if you'd like record a lecture or something like that. it'll transcribe it and then give you a summary I I mean, yeah, I cannot believe how good these sound. I'm hearing No background noise, like flatly none There's a lot of traffic happening right now. Yeah, Nhing And you are you're still a little compressed, but not nearly as compressed as even like the earphones you're looking at. This is almost exactly the balance you would hope for. because right, I'm willing to give up a tiny bit of your voice fidelity to not hear background noise. and it feels like I'm only giving up a tiny bit of fidelity to get no background noise I am blown away by how good this sounds These are amazing. Every time I use them, I feel great. Is your sense that there's any new or unusual technology in here? Like what did Anchor do to make this work this well They created their own chip. calling the Dust chip the name. five P H U S yeah, I don't like that at all So it's, similar to like Apple's H two chip, right? Apple makes their own chip. They put it only in Apple products. products eventually And, you know, Sony has their chip that they put into their processing to do the processing So this is Anchored sort of making a making a bid to compete against them And my understanding is that ship will be used across the anchor lineu. So we're talking about Soundcore and we're talking about smart home things and robot vacuums and so they're going to try and sort of connect their entire ecosystem with this Dust ship the terrible name. It really is a terrible name. It's just hard to say. There's a fascinating anchor story in there that is like anchor came up by Taking that sort of direct out of a Chinese factory stuff and upleveling it a little bit, a little better design, a little better quality, just kind of improving everything and building a brand around it But now to start to do things like its own chip is really, that's a leap ahead in It's a big leap what this company thinks it can be. And I mean, just based on this It's it's onto something Are these good headphones otherwise I think they're great. Okay. The sound out of the box isn't the best, but they have this sort of hearing preference test that you do. they Play a sound, a music clip twice uh, and then they u say which one do you like better? And then they do Two more clips, whichich one you like better and they do that seven times and it fine tunes the audio to be something that you enjoying listening to and I really likek the way that it tuned it. It fixed an issue that they had with the mid range frequencies like voices and snare and stuff made it more present and sappy and kind of tamed the base, which is I enjoy bace, but was a little excessive for me fair. Yeah, I find a lot of headphones now reallyally, really, really just want to beat you to death with base Yeah. it's like TV's in brightness. They're just like, what if we just go super duper hard? onn this one thing, you're going to love it. The noise canceling on these is also great too, just to say. Um, they they are some of the top noise canceling like as good as the AirPods Pate So this immediately goes on the list of like B headphones you can buy And especially for that much less than the AirPods, that's pretty competitive Yeah, it's my top recommendation, I would say Fair enough. Score one for Soundcore, cheese All right, I think you got one more, right? you wantan to switch to this one. I feel like I feel bad not saving this one to last now because I don't think there's any chance. but hey, let's see what we can do. All right, we got one more. let's switch Brought our last one You look a little like you're wearing like air traffic control ear muffs What do we have this time These are the Senheiser Mentum Fives. just came out like a week ago from when we're doing this. So I'm very curious to Get your impression on how they sound So this is an interesting one. The voice fidelity is pretty solid, but I would even put this as like slightly above AirPods Pro three level Like you you sound Good not great. U but like, but good Im but I'm definitely getting more bikes in the background noise than a couple of the other ones we've tried. Like it's doing a pretty good job. Uh, like in in it's sort of like where the your fun one was where Like most of the Normal noise seems to be gone But then I'm like hearing spikes of people talking and stuff behind you as you're going Yeah, there' been some people that have sort of walked by Yeah. And then when you talk the background noise picks up, which the Soundcore one was doing a really good job of not doing So there's I'm getting more background noise when you're talking than when you're not. So like you can sort of hear it processing. It's one of those sets of headphones that like I can listen to the processing as we're talking, whichich is super distracting in my opinion. It is kind of distracting. I agree, especially when it's like it's coming and going as we have a conversation I am neither impressed nor disappointed by these, I would say Well, they're four hundred bucks. Yeah. in general, it seems like the over ear headphones tend to have great mics. Like is that just a physics thing because the other ones can actually point their microphones towards your mouth and use beam forming that way? Yeah, I think the earbuds are usually better at beam forming. They also usually have some form of bone conduction that they're using in order to localize where your vice is coming from and with padding That doesn't really work here So they really rely on on theformformant And yeah some do it better than others Sony generally their headphones do a good job Oh But they don't They don't match . U your bs generally But yeah, it's very funny, when you're not talking, it does really good noise cancellation, but it feels like the more you talk the more background I hear, which is weird and not what I expected Yeah, I can see that because it's trying to figure out when I'm talking, it makes it more difficult for it to figure out pay attention to And so, you know, my frequency range is going to match would be close to a lot of the noise that's happening around me. so it just has trouble deciding what to l. What's your take on the momentum Fiv'? otherwise? There are a lot of people at the verge who feel like Senheiser deserves more shine and credit in the high end headphone space Interesting. I was not aware of that I think that they are I Tens and kn M. a huge fan of their sound tuning Um They sometimes are a little bit more what we call audio file tuning U, which can sometimes push the high end a little too much because even most audio files are older and have often hearing Um So It's not something that I generally gravitate towards. They don't sound bad by any means. It's just not for my taste in generaly That's fair All right, I think I think we're done here. Switch back to the sound cores which sppoiler alert won this test and let's let's finish up here. So switch back to those and then let's talk this out C I have to say, it's like my heart just relaxes when you switch back to these headphones. it's so much better Okay, so last question and then I'm let to go here. It feels to me late. We've been doing these tests a long time. U and microphones aren't getting sort of hugely better. I think like part of the reason I'm so surprised by these sound chores is they're the first meaningfully better set of headphones in terms of mic quality And if that I can remember since we've been doing this test, everything else is kind of variations on a middle ground What is your sense of whether this is just some very hard physics problem to solve? orr it's just low on the list of things that microphone or that headphone manufacturers care about like Why aren't these getting better at kind of a rapid pace that you would hope for I think it's a little bit of both. I think they are it's incredibly difficult cancel out noise that is unpredictable whole lot of processing power. Also person that has purchased the earbuds is not hearing that Yeah. They're not the ones that are experiencing it every day. I really think that's part of it. So they're going to concentrate more on sound quality. on A and C U on comfort on other features that you might want to use, you know, like there's we're seeing the live translation popping up all over the place now It's those sort of things heart rate sensors and workout headphones thingsings that are are the the person that has purchased the headphones uses on a daily or near daily basis and experiences on a daily or near daily basis. They might make loads of calls a day or be in a whole bunch of Zoom meetings all day But they're not hearing what everyone else is hearing. And we all just have kind of accepted that that's the quality that you generally get when you're on a call or you're in a meeting