On the occasion of the release of the AirPods Max 2 which adopted the H2 chip last month, Tim Millet and Eric Treski, respectively vice president of hardware technologies and director of marketing for audio products at Apple, were interviewed by TechRadar. Tim Millet maintains that the integration of this chip, which dates from 2022, is far from being anecdotal. “At Apple, when we design chips, the important thing is the product. We don’t sell our chips on the market, which allows our team to know exactly what they are designed for.”
Compared to the H1 chip of the previous model, the gain in computing capacity would be very significant in order to allow 1.5x more effective noise reduction without changing the design of the headset. “Some of the processing we do here exceeds the computing power typically available on Macs, but because we designed it specifically for audio, it fits perfectly into these ultra-compact devices.” The improvement in noise reduction would not concern specific frequencies: “We calculate an average of 1.5 times across all frequencies. We don’t select individual frequencies or a particular range.”
“Achieving such an improvement in active noise reduction (ANC) – without modifying the hardware – is extremely difficult. This is possible thanks to the computing power and improved algorithms of the H2 chip.explains Eric Treski. The H2 chip also brings support for new features inherited from AirPods Pro 3 such as adaptive audio, conversation detection, voice isolation and instant translation. “The H2 platform continues to demonstrate that it still has potential for evolution.”suggesting that other features are in the pipeline… Apple will unveil what’s new in iOS 27 at WWDC on June 8.
The H3 chip would be in preparation in Apple’s laboratories, said Mark Gurman last October. It would equip the future AirPods 5 and AirPods Pro 4 which are not expected before next year, and it would notably provide better latency and better audio quality.
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