Hello everyone,
I’ve just received the AirPods 4 with active noise cancellation a few hours ago, and these are my initial impressions. I hope I’ll be able to reconsider some of these points with more time, but here’s what I’ve noticed so far:
1. Conversation Awareness: With music playing, this feature lowers the music volume only when I respond to someone, not when someone else speaks. For a blind person, this doesn’t make sense—the music should lower automatically as soon as a voice is detected.
2. Transparency Mode: It doesn’t seem to work as expected. Even with this feature enabled, music overpowers external sounds, making it hard to hear what’s happening around me. It would work much better if it functioned like the "Live Listen" feature in the iPhone’s accessibility settings, which amplifies external sounds.
3. Mode-switching tones: When changing between modes (Transparency, Noise Cancellation, Off, Adaptive Audio), the tones indicating the switch are not accompanied by any voice feedback. A tutorial during setup or voice prompts would be really helpful to identify which mode is active.
Overall, the sound quality is excellent, but some features feel incomplete or in need of improvement, especially when it comes to accessibility.
Has anyone else noticed similar issues? I think that the same issues may apply partially to AirPods Pro 2 as well.
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For the tones of switching modes, I think you will understand which sound is accompanying which mode sooner or later. For the noise and all the other stuff, you can change much of this in the AirPods settings in Accessibility.
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I do not have the Airpods 4, but I do have the Airpods Pro 2.
First, if I ask Siri to change from transparency to noise cancellation, Siri always announces something like "noise cancellation active" and I get a very distinctive audio cue. Similarly for changing the other way around. So I would be surprised if Siri wouldn't announce this for the Airpods 4.
Also, you spoke about audio getting louder when you use transparency noise, making it harder to hear what is around you. As someone said, this is a setting you can change in the Airpods settings. Most users want the audio to get louder as the outside noise gets louder so that they can better hear the audio from their phone. I have my settings set up this way and really like it because if I'm listening to a podcast, for example, and someone turns on a faucet or there is suddenly a lot of clatter around me, I don't miss what is said in the poddcast. But, as the previous poster said, this can be turned off.
As for the converstational awareness, this should work with any speech, yours or someone in the room. It might be that for the test you did, the speaker's voice wasn't loud enough compared to the background so that the Airpods could distinguish that someone was speaking from the background noise.
Perhaps by changing some of the settings for the Airpods and using it a bit more you will be able to customize the performance to your likeing. I think Apple did an excellent job with the Airpods 2 Pro and the features and customizability of their use.
Give it some time and testing.
--Pete
Accessibility settings
I checked in accessibility settings of my AirPods, but where's nothing about transparency mode, only things about clicking speed of the force-touch sensor, personalised spacial audio and similar.
Air-pod Settings
Go to settings / accessibility / audio and visual . There, they'll be an option for headphone accommodations . Toggle that on and the settings should be in there.
An easier way to find all Airpod settings
If you put the Airpods into your ears with them paired to your phone, then a new category will appear in Settings near the top. The category is labeled "Airpods" and contains all of the settings you can customize for your Airpods as well as a section to perform the hearing test if your Airpods support that.
Hope that helps.
--Pete
R: AirPods settings
In accessibility>Audio and visuals>headphone accomodations there's only the option to perform a custom audio setup for Apple and Beats headphones which applies either to phone calls or music, and then there are the pre-made options to tune the audio for balanced tone or vocal range. There's a brightness level, ranging from slight to strong. Finally, an "apply with" section where you can set it to phone and/or media. There's nothing related to transparency mode nor conversation awareness.
Peter's suggestion
Did you follow his suggestion? That is where all airpod settings are not accessibility.