(NEW) Apple AirPods 4 Wireless Earbuds (without ANC)

I spent about a decade in college studying sound, have a list of certifications, and 20yrs in the studio mixing music professionally. I should explain that Apple devices are not capable of playing Dolby Atmos/immersive audio. Apple has their own Dolby Atmos decoder called Spatial Audio, which is similar but ignores the near/mid/far distance metadata encoded into the Atmos files and clusters audio objects differently, causing it to sound slightly different from real Dolby Atmos playback. Unlike most Android devices (which come with Atmos renderers built-in), iPhone&iPad do NOT. Their only option is to buy AirPods, which have Apple's Spatial Audio binaural decoder built-in. I needed AirPods so that I can check how my work sounds to consumers through Airpods. If you're an iPhone user, you need AirPods because your phone lacks this basic feature. That's unfortunate because (spoiler alert), all AirPod models offer inferior sound compared to GalaxyBuds models, wired AKG buds that used to come with Samsung Galaxy phones, Bose, Sony, and a lot of other options out there. Music for Test: Hiphop & rock songs from Apple Music and the master files of an unreleased song I just finished mixing for a very famous Shady Records artist. I played all songs on the $100k Dolby Atmos mastering system I work on at Deadly Mix Studios as the basis for the ideal sound and compared against GalaxyBuds (gen.1), GalaxyBuds Pro2, and GalaxyBuds3. All songs and buds were tested on Win11 PC w/ Dolby Access, Mac Mini Sequoia, our Dolby RMU, Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra, iPad Air4, and iPhone14 ProMax. ☆ DESIGN/ FIT/ COMFORT: • PROS: The design puts the mic in a slightly better position •CONS: Its hard to understand why Apple has stuck with this awful design for 6 models now. Samsung recently released the first line of GalaxyBuds that suck (GalaxyBuds3/3Pro), and they owe it entirely to copying this terrible design. Most users will find them to be a poor fit. They will fall out easier than other buds. Most of the time, they don't fall out completely, but they need to sit in the ear just right to hear acceptable quality and it's a struggle to keep them in that position. Because they don't have a silicone tips to hold them and direct the driver into the ear-canal, you get a slight boost in clarity... but only because the low-mid & low frequencies don't reach the ear as well, causing you to hear less bass and other elements of music than the engineer and producer intended. ☆ DOLBY ATMOS/SPATIAL AUDIO: AirPods have a slightly different sound than all other binaural (emulation of an immersive 7.1.4+ speaker system in HPs/buds), due to Apple's bootleg decoder. The 3D effect isn't necessarily better or worse in general, just different. However, Spatial Audio ignores the near/far/mid metadata that we engineers use to refine the mix and improve the immersive effect. So Spatial Audio is less impressive than the real Dolby Atmos on Android, PC, etc. Apple markets AirPods headtracking as a big selling point. However, GalaxyBuds and many other brands/models offer the same thing. Its an okay feature in a situation where focusing in one direction matters, but it gets annoying in most situations you'd want earbuds for. ☆ SOUND QUALITY: I was going to rate them at 2 stars, but I decided to try pushing them into my ears, to make it a fair comparison. The discomfort of forcing them into a similar distance to my ear drums aside, this did offer a notable improvement. The music sounded beefier and more full than before. However, configuration of the buds sounds as good as the GalaxyBuds. The GalaxyBuds3, which have the same poorly designed shape, are the worst sounding GalaxyBuds model; yet they still sound better than Airpods4 or any of the other AirBuds models I've tried over the years. Im not saying that they sound particularly bad. They are better than the cheap off-brand models I've picked up at CVS and Family Dollar to test. They're just not as good as anything in their price range. ☆ OVERALL: I gave them a 3 because they're not terrible if you get them in the right position and can keep them there, just not particularly good compared to many other options. Just like Mac Pro vs Threadripper PCs, iPhone Pro Max vs Galaxy Ultra, Logic Pro vs Cubase Pro, and every comparison below; AirPods are blown away by GalaxyBuds and other comparable options. ■ On the other hand, the more people that listen to music in Dolby Atmos, the more demand there is for Atmos engineers like me and iPhone users aren't likely wisen up and switch to a better phone like Galaxy S-series, that offer Atmos on any buds or headphones you choose.... So, buy these anyway.😁