Tech

Why do my Apple headphones sound so bad on Android?

Apple didn’t invent wireless headphones, but the launch of AirPods in 2016 it had a certain impact on the development of this type of product. You only have to take a look at the market to notice that there are AirPods clones everywhere. AirPods have become the most famous wireless headphones on the planet, and many people even believe that they can only be used with Apple devices such as iPhone, iPad or Apple Watch. AirPods can be used on Android phonesbut as today we will tell you, doing it is not a great idea.

AirPods on iOS vs. AirPods on Android

The Airpods Pro

When we put AirPods in our ears, the information that goes from the mobile phone to the headset has to be compressed in order to be sent in real time through Bluetooth. This happens with any wireless headphone, and the compression task is done by a codec. Each headphone manufacturer supports a number of codecs. For the device to work as designed, the phone, tablet or computer that we use as a source must support the same software.

Apple AirPods use the Bluetooth AAC wireless codec. And, although most Android phones support this codec, its operation differs between operating systems.

Android doesn’t get along with AAC

Android handles Bluetooth codecs differently than iOS. And the management will depend on several factors, such as the device, the quality of the connection and the Android power scheduling algorithms. For Android, Bluetooth encryption is not a priority, because the system considers that it has more important things to deal with. For that reason, by downplaying it, the quality of the audio can suffer.

But the thing is not the only thing there. The AAC codec is based on the psychoacoustics, which is nothing more than the compression of sound based on how we humans perceive it. This type of treatment consumes much more resources than other codecs of Bluetooth. And, as we said, Android does not give priority to this type of task. For this reason, sound playback on AirPods may not be optimal when using an Android phone or tablet.

Will my ears know the difference?

airpods max.

Here we enter another debate. It depends on how audiophile you are and how much experience you have in the world of sound. The average user may not notice the differencealthough it is possible that a certain retransmission delay of sound when watching a movie, a series or any video.

As the medium points very well SoundGuysthe poor performance of the AirPods not the fault of AAC —despite the fact that they consider that the codec is not perfect either—. In their tests, they even detected performance differences in AirPods depending on the Android phone that they used

What do we draw then as a conclusion? If you have an Android phone, don’t buy AirPods. In addition to performing worse, you will give up many of the benefits of this product such as advanced pairing, power optimization and other features that are only available to users of the Apple ecosystem.

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