Ronan Macdonald takes the Apple AirPods Max for a thorough test to see if the pro price tag makes them a viable set of headphones for the professional user.
Having changed the personal audio game very much for the better with the iconic AirPods and AirPods Pro IEMs, Apple has set its sights on literally bigger things with the release of AirPods Max. Cupertino’s first over-ear Bluetooth headphones have certainly garnered plenty of public and media attention thanks to their meme-inspiring £549 pricetag, bewildering Smart Case and inability to be turned off. And although ostensibly a premium consumer offering, with the fruity tech giant being such a major force in music production and AirPod Max’s vaunted H1 chip bringing computational audio to the party, it’s surely not unreasonable to expect Apple’s debut ‘serious’ cans to cater to that sector of the market too.
With all that in mind, here we’re going to cut through the online noise of self-proclaimed ‘audiophiles’ and undiscerning technology journos to give music producers and mix engineers the definitive verdict on AirPods Max as an effective monitoring proposition.
Construction and build quality
In terms of materials and design, AirPods Max do everything they can to justify the eye-watering entry fee. They’re far better built than rival wireless models by Sony, Bose et al, as well as many wired headphones costing several times more. Available in a range of colours (Silver, Space Grey, Sky Blue, Pink and Green), the fit and finish are superb, and they look future-retro fabulous. The headband comprises a mesh fabric “canopy” stretched over a stainless steel frame that terminates in a pair of smoothly telescoping arms, which in turn connect to the anodised aluminium earcups via a spring-loaded ball joint. Those earcups are fronted by soft, deep, fabric-encased memory foam cushions, which are big enough for even the meatiest of pinna and removable, snapping into place magnetically. Apple will soon be selling replacements… for £69 a pair. The earcups are also home to the nine microphones involved in the Active Noise Cancellation and Transparency modes, Adaptive EQ and voice comms, and have sensors inside for head detection, which pauses and resumes playback as the headphones are taken off and put on.
Both points of adjustment – the arms and earcups – provide just the right amount of resistance, and the whole caboodle yields a reassuringly strong clamping force. This vice-like grip ensures a tight seal for active noise cancelling, and is also required to keep AirPods Max on your head, as they weigh in at a hefty 384g. While not absurdly heavy in comparison to some high-end wired headphones, that’s a bit much in a wireless set, with which mobility is obviously a consideration. It’s certainly possible to go for a walk in them quite comfortably, but awareness of their presence is a constant. And as for that mesh canopy, it’s supremely comfortable on the noggin, for sure, but clearly vulnerable to tearing and piercing. The whole headband is easily replaceable by Apple, but you’ll probably want to factor in the cost of AppleCare+ for that inevitability alone.
Even more concerning than the fragility of the canopy, though, is the total lack of IP rating, meaning that AirPods Max are not in any sense waterproof. On the face of it, that’s not a massive problem – the weight makes them unsuitable for running or working out anyway, and keeping them away from water shouldn’t be too difficult – but an increasing number of owners are reporting the appearance of condensation under the cushions and on the drivers with normal usage, presumably due to the coldness of the aluminium cups. I’ve experienced this myself, and it is very alarming. Apple had yet to comment at the time of writing, and the jury’s out on whether this is within the realm of ‘normal’, but it’s something to be aware of.
The only other build-related issue is the inner bottom corners of the earcups constantly clacking together in their rotated-flat state (which is as much of a ‘folded’ configuration as AirPods Max can manage). This can only to be countered by some faintly ridiculous manoeuvring when removing them from the Smart Case, and is bound to result in minor cosmetic damage over time. It’s a bizarre oversight for an Apple product.
The Smart Case and battery life
I’m not going to dwell on the physicality of AirPods Max’s controversial Smart Case, beyond saying that it does indeed look comedy dumb and doesn’t offer anywhere near enough protection. A proper hard case would have been vastly preferable at this or any other price, but at least third-party cases with the necessary magnets installed (see below) are starting to appear at a range of prices.
The main purpose of the Smart Case is to kick the stowed headphones down to low power mode using a pair of internal magnets, which is as close as AirPods Max ever come to being turned off, draining roughly 1% every four hours, then almost nothing per hour after 18 hours. The absence of a power button sounds utterly mental but is actually a non-issue in use – having them connect instantly to your iDevice or Mac by simply taking them out of the Smart Case never gets old.
Outside the Smart Case, when left untouched, AirPods Max drop into an alternative power saving mode after five minutes of inactivity that keeps them connected at all times and drains around 3% every four hours, then a disconnected lower power state after 72 hours.
Battery life in use is stated as 20 hours (which, if anything, proved to be a slight underestimate in my testing), and a full recharge takes two hours, with the first five minutes restoring an hour and a half of life.
For charging, Apple have opted for their proprietary Lightning port rather than the ubiquitous (in headphone land) USB-C. Make of that what you will, but at least it means you can charge AirPods Max using the same cable (and charger, since you don’t get one in the box) as your iPhone.
Wireless connectivity
Once effortlessly paired with your Mac, iPhone, iPad or Apple TV, AirPods Max become known to all other devices linked to your iCloud account, switching seamlessly from one to another as you move between them. Well, almost seamlessly – they do get confused at times, but I’d expect that to be fixed through firmware updates.
Like AirPods and AirPods Pro, AirPods Max employ Class 1 Bluetooth for excellent stability and range – up to 30m, compared to the 10m of Class 2. Oh, and Apple being Apple, the only wireless streaming codec supported is 256kbps AAC, which is fine.
Control panels in iOS and macOS enable adjustment of various settings (Head Detection, which Noise modes are included in the button cycle, Spatial Audio, etc), and have no equivalent in Android or Windows. Indeed, AirPods Max are unquestionably designed for use within the Apple ‘ecosystem’, and probably shouldn’t even be considered by Android and/or Windows users, who don’t get any of the conveniences described above, and might as well opt instead for any number of better facilitated, far cheaper alternatives.
Wired connectivity
Never a company to pander to industry convention, Apple have not only eschewed the inclusion of a 3.5mm input on their wallet-busting headphones, making an extra conversion stage from analogue to digital necessary for wired usage via the Lightning port, but they’ve not even included the cable required to do that in the box. Alas, with Bluetooth latency amounting to a horrendous 177ms at a buffer size of 512 samples, anyone looking to make music with AirPods Max is going to have to shell out another £35 on Apple’s ADC-equipped Lightning to 3.5mm Audio Cable, which reduces the lag to 10ms or so. That’s perfectly acceptable but still not the zero of a passive analogue connection, and absolutely not something we should have to pay extra to get access to. Not including the cable as standard feels like a wholly mercenary move on Apple’s part.
Needless to say, with only one Lightning port, you can’t charge AirPods Max while using them wired, either; and with no passive mode, a dead battery means no more listening without a recharge.
Controls and features
For AirPods Max, Apple have wisely opted not to follow the current over-ear headphone trend of touch controls, instead placing a physical button and a larger version of the Digital Crown rotary from Apple Watch on the right earcup. The latter works as both a push-button (start/stop playback; previous and next track; Siri) and a volume knob, while the button toggles between Active Noise Cancelling and Transparency modes, and a third ’processing off’ mode, all of which work both wired and wireless. The controls are a joy to use, although their location makes accidental presses when adjusting the earcups in situ a frequent occurrence.
Active Noise Cancelling does an amazing job of isolating you from your surroundings, but Transparency mode is even more impressive. While ANC inverts the external sounds picked up by the microphones in the headphones to cancel them out, Transparency mode feeds them straight in, so you can hear the outside world as if you weren’t wearing headphones at all. Apple aren’t the first to do this, but their implementation is by far the best yet for clarity and soundstage, with all those mics delivering flawless spatial positional. It’s pretty incredible.
The other party trick up AirPods Max’s collective sleeve is Spatial Audio. This isn’t at all relevant to music production, and only works with iPhone and iPad, but in summary, it uses psychoacoustics to emulate surround sound with Dolby Digital and Atmos source signals, and exploits positional sensors to give the impression that the sound is coming directly from the iDevice rather than the headphones – turn your head and the sound stays fixed in space. Clever stuff.
Drivers and Adaptive EQ
AirPod Max’s custom 40mm drivers feature dual neodymium ring magnet motors, which are said to minimise THD (total harmonic distortion) across the frequency spectrum – and true enough, they’re remarkably distortion-free at all volume levels. It’s the technological wizardry of the 10-core H1 processor that’s the big story in the sound department, though. Microphones inside each earcup feed what you’re hearing back into the H1, which applies adaptive EQ (updating 200 times a second) to constantly target Apple’s specified frequency response curve at the output, no matter what the shape and size of your ears, the fit of the cushions, or what Noise mode you’re using. And it really works! Lift an earcup off your ear slightly and you’ll hear the EQ kick in, rebalancing the frequency spectrum to get it as close as possible to the ‘sealed’ sound. Drop it back into place and for a moment you’ll hear that huge compensatory bass and low-mid boost, before the EQ quickly reverts. It’s computational audio in action – the sonic equivalent of the iPhone’s lauded computational photography – and it really does feel like the future.
Sound
With adaptive EQ ensuring that AirPods Max always maintain their prescribed sound signature and tonality, we come to the big questions: how do they sound, are they viable for music creation, and could you mix with them? The answers to those three questions are ’great’, ’kind of’ and, sadly, ’Hell no’.
AirPods Max sound really, really good. They’re big, bouncy and a ton of fun, with possibly the most tightly controlled low-end I’ve heard from a closed-back dynamic headphone – the sub bass has to be heard and felt to be believed, honestly. Similarly, the highs are bright and airy, if a little sharp; and although the mid-range is slightly recessed, that contributes to an overall warmth that most will find very appealing.
Importantly, there’s no integrated EQ with which to customise the frequency response, should you wish to. Many users are apparently finding the broad-strokes EQ and compression of iOS’ Headphones Accommodations Accessibility feature helpful, but, being intended specifically to compensate for hearing loss, that’s just not an appropriate solution. Applying compression to improve the sound of a set of headphones… seriously?
The soundstage, meanwhile, is as good as you’re likely to get with closed-backs – which is to say acceptably wide and deep – and imaging and separation are decent.
Sonic inflexibility aside, for music and media consumption, AirPods Max sound fantastic. When it comes to music creation, though, things are less cut and dried. First, as discussed above, most of the time you’re going to want to use them wired for production, as Bluetooth audio latency makes playing virtual instruments via MIDI and recording audio a total nightmare (this is common to all BT headphones, not only AirPods Max, of course). Once you’ve got everything recorded, there’s no reason why you couldn’t unplug for arrangement and even mixing, where round-trip latency is less of a concern, but even then, the increase in signal quality you get from the uncompressed wired connection remains compelling. Why spend all that money on wireless headphones when you have to use them wired? (Incidentally, Apple’s odd wired implementation means you’re dealing with two amplifiers – the one in your source, and the one in the headphones – so the digital crown controls the latter entirely independently of the former. Not a big issue but it does mean you’re juggling two volume controls.)
Then, more saliently, there’s that sound signature, which, with all its flattery and glamour, is a long way away from ‘neutral’ and can’t be corrected without the use of a third-party system such as Sonarworks Reference 4. Depressingly, this really does take the AirPods Max out of contention for serious mixing duties. On the other hand, though, their immensely satisfying bass response, impact and general character make them more than viable for working up dance and electronic track ideas prior to mixing. Again, ‘fun’ is the word.
Last but not least, and a bit off topic, Transparency mode works well for playing acoustic instruments along to music in the headphones. Which is nice.
Conclusion
Ultimately, AirPods Max would be a poor choice for mixing or any other audio engineering task that prioritises neutral frequency response, accurate imaging, fully coherent resolution and minimal AD/DA conversion – seriously, just save yourself a couple of hundred quid and get a decent set of wired open-backs. That said, they are without doubt the best made, best sounding Bluetooth ANC headphones I’ve ever heard, and – used wired – an enjoyable option for electronic production at the writing and sound design stage, thanks to their extraordinary low-end prowess and juice-flowing vibe.
The crazy thing, though, is that with all that computational power onboard, AirPods Max are presumably capable of sounding far more neutral than they currently do through manipulation of the frequency response. The ideal scenario would be something along the lines of the Audeze Mobius’ switchable (and very effective) EQ profiles – the ‘Flat’ one, most pertinently – but I certainly wouldn’t put money on Apple ever adding such functionality. Ironically, the far cheaper (albeit Bluetooth-only) AirPods Pro have a much flatter frequency response.
As to the divisive matter of price, regardless of intended usage, for sound quality alone, no, AirPods Max are definitely not worth £549 of anybody’s money. But what you’re also paying for here are truly stellar build quality, top-notch noise cancelling and transparency modes, Spatial Audio, and Apple ecosystem integration, all of which help to normalise the tag for the cash-rich iPhone/iPad/Mac user. It’s just a real shame that Apple have essentially disregarded their substantial pro audio user base in the development and delivery of their first high-end ‘phones, which are aimed squarely at the consumer market, even in their wired remit.