Inside the Apple Audio laboratory where AirPods is tested and seized

When you enter the building that includes the Apple Audio Laboratory, skip the reception directly and you will face a large ancient strategy. The deck and the accompanying speakers were a gift from Steve Jobs for the engineers’ team working in this office. The group believes that old school technology is a source of inspiration, but also as a reminder of the Jobs obsession with music and sound.

More than inspiration, though, the sterio is a reminder of experts in software, audio and sound design how important sound is in all that is adopted Apple.

Inside, it was presented to a maze of Nondescript halls, where he woven from one room to another with the trio of Apple engineers as guides. I was in a rare peek at the company’s products development facilities – a step away from the front behind the curtain more than usually allowed During Apple events.

Check AirPods

Since the Apple Audio team works to correct and calibrate the AirPods for the Natural Change in Ear Engineering, they use a set of irreversible sound kiosks to check their work. These rooms look like small offices without windows. The walls are covered in sound revision panels and there is a single workstation with a Mac and various hearing tools. If you are going to remember, one of the company’s main aspirations with AirPods was the experience of hearing health from one to tip He appeared for the first time last year. In order to verify the validity of the “clinical hearing test for the class”, engineers use the devices that you may see in the hearing world office, such as hearing measuring devices. These spaces are not different from the small compartments that you may sit in a professionally managed hearing test.

In one kiosk alone, the team conducted thousands of tests on the feature to ensure that Hear the examination in your pocket It was accurate as you could get from a doctor. This not only allows AirPods to prepare hearing aid at home (if necessary), but it also creates an accurate file of hearing so that you can hear music in the intended way.

Another important step in the product design process is to ensure that there is a basic line to control every person who listens to music using AirPods. Everyone hears different frequencies differently, so there should be an adjustment to achieve the desired consistency. With hearing test and accompanying sound note, Apple has a starting point for technical and technical decisions. Here the technology and liberal arts experience begins between the audio laboratory team in mixing.

When your office is settled

The media control laboratory works on any Apple product that can reproduce the recorded sound, including iPhone, Mac and iPad. In order to bridge the gap between the art and science of this chase, this team comes from a variety of backgrounds – from the sound of live parties, the sound design in Broadway to the traditional sound engineering. Various adjustment studios are prepared in this area such as music creation rooms: full mini studios with many tools around them, a major listening seat in the back and an office replacing the recording engineer sound panel. Latifa, all named after the famous registration studios (such as Abbey Road).

The main idea there is that the synthesis team needs to refer to the registered content form as it was created. This, in turn, provides a better picture of the artist’s intention that can then be applied to products such as AirPods Pro 3. Due to the Tips’ Tips and Audio Mass in the latest Apple’s ear models, synthesis engineers believe that this AirPods provides the most authentic sound so far in the company’s squad because the team was able to reduce a lot of difference through users and suitability.

To create an exciting audio profile for customers and still maintain all this originality, the media control team listens to thousands of hours of music, movies, podcasts and YouTube videos in Mono, Stereo and Dolby Atmos. There is also a lot of vinyl lining these synthesis studios. During the development process, the team will test multiple versions of devices with tons of synthesis differences using the arithmetic sound. The goal is to translate all control decisions better into all users, with a desire that everyone to hear the same sound from Apple products.

In addition to listening to music through loudspeakers and headphones, microphones are also important for seizure. In order to create features such as AirPods Pro, the team took clips of the earphones in the studio and exit in the real world before comparing them with standards of high -end registration microphones. This analysis allows engineers to translate the pro -dance audio features such as AirPods. For example, the audio of the IPHONE vena studio is replaced. It is clear that he will not replace the studio microphone, but it puts more capable sound tools in your pocket.

The completely silent room

An important part of the Apple Voice Products Test, and features such as spatial sound, is to use them in a completely silent room. It is known as the Anechoic room, a room inside a physically separated room for the rest of the building. This is essential because things like a footsteps in the hall or cars that drive outside can create vibrating noise that can be transferred to the room.

Inside, the foam slices absorb on the walls, floor and ceiling all the sound emitted in space. There is no echo (hence the name “Anechoic”), so sounds and applause die. In fact, you have to walk on a suspended network similar to a wire fence, because the real “floor” of the room is more than the foaming bachelors aimed at absorbing the vocal reflections from the bottom. It is an external space to spend time in it, because it seems to be something from the science fiction movie-not to mention the lack of hesitation.

Over the decades in which Apple designs and manufacturing electronics, the company has learned a lot about all unwanted noise that its devices make. The ANCHOIC room allows a dedicated team of voice engineers to listen very carefully to products like AirPods to determine whether any unintended sounds. They collaborate with other engineering teams to ensure that the product does not do anything that the company does not intend to do.

The Anechoic room is also a vital part of the spatial sound development. In its current composition, there is a chair in the room with a loop of small loudspeakers around it. Engineers are studying the variable physiology of test themes, such as the way the sound wears from the body and around their ears. To create a visualization of the sound coming from a specific direction, the team uses the sound processing and mathematical signals to create the perfect angle to sign a person. This type of analysis was directly responsible for Specialized spatial soundWhich takes an examination from the iPhone camera and analyzes it using different models and algorithms to adapt the sound with each person.

Fantasia Laborat

The last station in my tour was the most visually attractive and voice. This room is called a fantasia laboratory, which was called the first movie that used the peripheral sound. The name also speaks to the Apple engineers’ ability to generate (or simulating) any sound they can think about by preparing the spherical speaker for the room. The Audio Lab team used this room to check the features on AirPods Pro 3, including transparency mode, active noise cancellation (ANC) and spatial sound.

A group of dozens of amplifiers enable the engineers to evaluate whether the environmental sounds in a mode of transparency are as accurate and natural as possible. The team will have someone sitting in the field and indicates the direction from which the sound comes to eliminate any problems in this feature. To measure ANC performance, different types of sounds are placed in various folders. This gives engineers an insight into the works of adaptation and control algorithms, and the software used to ensure that the African National Congress Party blocks the largest possible noise. As for spatial sound, the team will play sounds in different locations and corners of real speakers before trying to re -imagine that the sound comes from the same place inside AirPods.

I managed to fill a seat for a few seconds to learn about what a fantasy labo can be able. One of the engineers played a direct recording of a spatial sound concert. With loudspeakers everywhere around me, the sound came from all directions – including the roar of the crowd. I closed my eyes and I was there, and I was raised to Apollo’s age with tens of thousands of people. Except, of course, I was not. I was surrounded by loudspeakers in a small room with four other people, through a maze of corridors, tucked in an inexplicable Apple buildings around Cobino.

Imagine my disappointment when I opened my eyes.