Apple delivered a solid update to its best wireless earbuds last fall with the launch of AirPods Pro 2. The second-generation AirPods Pro will now feature five brand-new features without requiring a hardware upgrade from Apple.
Adaptive Audio
There are currently three settings for the Adaptive Audio AirPods Pro 2’s noise reduction. The world around you is effectively muted by noise cancellation. When your ears are plugged, transparency lets in sounds from the world around you. And before the AirPods Pro, in-ear headphones sounded off… off. Muffled and watery. You probably work in transparency or noise cancellation.
Adaptive Audio is here. The other two modes might never be needed again.
According to Apple, the adaptive mode “dynamically blends Transparency mode and Active Noise Cancellation together based on the conditions of a user’s environment to deliver the best experience in the moment.”
And it works flawlessly.
When you turn on the vacuum cleaner, Adaptive Audio seamlessly transitions to Noise Cancellation, allowing you to take pleasure in the presence of transparency while you are doing the dishes. Because audio playback simply sounds consistent, you won’t even be aware that mode switching occurred. When you realize what just occurred, you will be amazed by the return of ambient sounds around you.
Conversation Awareness
AirPods have always been excellent at allowing you to pause the audio and tune in to the world, ever since their debut in 2017. Auto-Pause stops playback by simply removing an AirPod from your ear. Slick.
Conversation Awareness is a novel approach to the same concept.
AirPods Pro 2 can automatically lower your volume and improve the voices of those speaking in front of you if Conversation Awareness is enabled. Conversation Awareness will actively reduce the background noise behind you while this is taking place.
To put it another way, it might soon be possible to converse in a bar. What? I’m not ignoring you; I’m doing this out of concern! But seriously, this will allow you to jam out to music and greet passersby without ever touching your AirPods.
Mute or Unmute
Mute or Unmute may not sound as amazing as Adaptive Audio and Conversation Awareness, but if you ever use your AirPods Pro 2 on a phone call, it will still be just as convenient. Pressing the stem on your AirPods will make it simple for you to mute yourself during any call starting later this fall. Press once more to mute. There is no need to use your phone.
Wait a minute, there’s more. The AirPods will be able to “understand environmental conditions and listening preferences over time to automatically fine-tune the media experience” thanks to the brand-new Personalized Volume feature, which will make use of machine learning.
Automatic Switching is a feature that lets you switch between Apple devices right now. Apple claims that “connection time between a user’s Apple devices is significantly faster and more reliable” following an update to the feature.
So that is the thing we need to anticipate with AirPods Master 2 in the not so distant future. Starting this fall, a free software update will make improvements to Automatic Switching, Conversation Awareness, Mute or Unmute, Personalized Volume, and Adaptive Audio available.