Apple reveals secret sauce behind AirPods 4 with ANC

The new AirPods 4 earbuds, which are out today, offer a more premium tier that brings active noise cancellation to the non-Pro edition for the first time.

However, given the standard AirPods 4 don’t have silicone ear tips to help create a seal as the AirPods Pro 2 do, many folks were curious as to how well the experience would translate due to how much ambient noise can make its way in naturally.

We haven’t completed a full review, but early indications are that Apple has done a great job of recreating powerful ANC technology even without the tips to offer a helping hand.

Now Apple has gone on record to explain how and why it brought the marquee feature to the standard edition AirPods, which do cost an extra £50 over a more basic set of AirPods 4. The company said it had been cooking up the solution in the labs since 2020, and had created a working demo a year later.

“We were just blown away,” Vice President of Hardware Engineering Kate Bergeron told Engadget in an interview. “We said ‘we absolutely have something here, we need to go after this and we’ve got to make it happen.’”

The algorithm developed over time, as did the tip-less fit for the earbuds. The key however, is the powerful H2 chip that Apple says can monitor the in-ear fit in real time and adjust the ANC even when the AirPods aren’t static. Beyond that, the equalisers are being micro-managed at the same time.

“It’s even computationally more intense in many ways than it is with the AirPods Pro,” Bergeron said.

Eric Treski, AirPods marketing chief, added: “It’s really, really hard to create this great ANC quality in a non-ear-tip product. The power of the H2 allows that, so we’re actually doing a lot with the H2 chip to manage ANC quality and listen from the mics for environmental noise to make sure we’re canceling as much as possible.”

We’ll have a full AirPods 4 review in the coming weeks.