Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

In late July this year, Huawei introduced its brand new flagship TWS headset, Huawei FreeBuds Pro 2. With its ultra-perceptual original sound dual-unit system, joint tuning with Divare, HWA and Hi-Res Audio Wireless double gold mark authentication and other powerful features, Huawei not only demonstrated to the industry the great potential of true wireless headphones in sound quality, but also realized the revolution of digital acoustics again on its own. Become the ceiling product of current TWS headphones.

The strong are not necessarily destined to be alone. Shortly after the launch of Huawei FreeBuds Pro 2, a new generation of Apple AirPods Pro 2 was officially released, the first time Apple has updated its AirPods Pro product line in three years.

With the approaching of double 11, Huawei FreeBudsPro 2 and Apple AirPods Pro 2 have encountered difficulties in choosing TWS headphones. It is an indisputable fact that Apple AirPods series represents the founder of real wireless headphones; however, Huawei's FreeBudsPro 2 is the most representative product of TWS headset sound quality. So in the face of Huawei FreeBuds Pro 2 and Apple AirPods Pro 2, which one is better? How to choose? Below, the author might as well through the sound quality, spatial audio, noise reduction, interaction and other aspects of omni-directional comparison, I believe that after reading, you will have an answer.

The key to comparing the sound quality of TWS headphones is inseparable from three elements: loudspeaker, tuning and wireless transmission. If the sound quality is compared to "cooking", then in this analogy, the loudspeaker (that is, the acoustic structure) can be regarded as the ingredient, which determines the ultimate direction of the dish, whether it is braised pork or steamed ribs, all determined by this set of acoustic structure; while tuning, it can be regarded as the "seasoning" when cooking, salty mouth, light or spicy, tuning is up to you. Wireless transmission (including coding and decoding) can be seen as the cook's control of the heat when cooking, and the more proficient the craftsmanship, the better the taste.

So, like cooking, speakers, tuning and wireless transmission are indispensable. Therefore, in the sound quality comparison of Huawei FreeBuds Pro 2 and Apple AirPods Pro 2, we can start with these three elements and make a detailed comparison.

The first is the hardware, that is, the acoustic architecture.

Huawei FreeBuds Pro 2 uses two independent high and bass sound units, and the 11mm large moving coil unit uses a quadruple magnet dual magnetic circuit system, which has a larger magnetic flux and a greater driving force for the diaphragm, which is 30% higher than that of the previous generation. In the design of the tweeter, Huawei FreeBuds Pro 2 uses a micro-flat tweeter used for high-end headphones, and its voice coil driving area accounts for a proportion of the total area of the diaphragm, which is 6 times higher than that of the previous generation of products. with the independent sound channel of the tweeter, you can hear the rich details of the rise and fall of the music.

Huawei FreeBuds Pro 2 Apple AirPods Pro 2 did not give too specific information, but it can be confirmed that it upgraded the Apple customized high amplitude drive unit and customized high dynamic range amplifier. In the audio part, the big trick of Apple AirPods Pro 2 lies in the powerful self-developed H2 chip and audio algorithm, which can work with custom driver units and amplifiers to make the treble crisp and pure, the bass deep, and the sound more lively and pleasant.

Apple AirPods Pro 2, of course, Huawei FreeBuds Pro 2 also has the advantage of digital double frequency division technology. It can use built-in dual DAC to make music signals "split into two channels", bringing high frequency, medium and low frequency pure sound signals, moving coil unit and micro-flat treble unit do not interfere with each other. Because of this, Huawei FreeBuds Pro 2 can perform well in low, medium and high frequencies, whether it is dynamic DJ or classical concerts. Can present full details.

The second is tuning.

As an old friend of Huawei, Divare once again teamed up with Huawei to fine-tune the innovative acoustic design of FreeBuds Pro 2. For example, in the middle and low frequency tuning, the transition from the low frequency to the intermediate frequency is smoother, and on the basis of keeping the elasticity and diving of the low frequency, it also ensures that the low frequency does not cover the fundamental frequency of the human voice; on the intermediate frequency tuning, the reality and clarity of the human voice are further improved in the 4kHz~9kHz band, while the ultra-high frequency part takes into account the sense of hearing at the cutoff frequency point of the human ear, which is slightly suppressed. Generally speaking, the more professional acoustics technology gives Huawei FreeBuds Pro 2 a more surging bass and detailed pure sound quality.

Apple AirPods Pro 2 is still based on the advantages of its H2 chip. In order to give users a better sense of hearing, it uses a powerful adaptive algorithm to perform real-time calculations according to the shape of the user's ear, so that every detail of the sound can please the user's ear.

Apple AirPods Pro 2 also brings adaptive equalization, which can adjust the music effect in your ear in real time according to the fit of AirPods Pro. The introverted microphone detects what you are listening to and adjusts the song from low frequency to high frequency. Each time the sound is played, it is equally delicate and rich. This process will be very difficult to complete without the cooperation of H2 chip.

Of course, at the algorithm level, Huawei FreeBuds Pro 2 does not want to lag behind. Like Apple AirPods Pro 2, the former is optimized for ear canal adaptation, wear adaptive compensation and volume adaptation, and achieves triple real-time hearing optimization, so that the sound quality can be kept at its best for different users, different scenarios and different volume.

Finally, wireless transmission and codec.

For wireless transmission, Huawei FreeBuds Pro 2 supports Bluetooth 5.2, while Apple AirPods Pro 2 supports Bluetooth 5.3. However, compared with the upgrade of 5.2, Bluetooth 5.3 is mainly enhanced in low-rate transmission, encryption control and so on, with little impact on sound quality. Coding and decoding is the top priority, the process of coding and decoding involves the amount of "loss" of sound source information, which is closely related to the final sound quality performance.

In this part, Huawei FreeBuds Pro 2 adopts LDAC and L2HC 2.0 dual HD audio codec protocols. LDAC is a kind of audio coding developed by Sony, which can achieve the highest bit rate of 990Kbps and high-resolution audio of 24bit / 96kHz. L2HC is a Bluetooth transmission protocol developed by Huawei, which achieves the highest 960kbps audio transmission rate. Compared with LDAC, it has more flexible bit rate space, and can adapt to lower bit rate in some scenarios with strong interference, thus taking into account the sound quality and stutter problems. Compared with the ordinary codec technology, it greatly avoids the sound quality damage in the process of audio transmission.

Apple AirPods Pro 2 uses the ancestral AAC codec, which has a bit rate of about 256 Kbps in Apple products. In this era of high-definition audio, Apple's codec scheme does lag a little behind.

By contrast, Huawei FreeBuds Pro 2's double HD audio codec has more obvious advantages. In addition, Huawei FreeBuds Pro 2 has also obtained HWA and Hi-Res double gold standard certification in terms of acoustic performance, which is equivalent to laying the foundation for Huawei FreeBuds Pro 2's sound quality.

Spatial audio comparison Apple has contributed to the rise of the term "spatial audio" in the past two years. "Spatial audio" can be seen as a more powerful "surround sound", bringing immersive surround effect to users.

This time, Apple AirPods Pro 2 supports personalized spatial audio with dynamic head tracking, allowing you to experience more immersive surround sound effects on a variety of devices. Adaptive equalization allows AirPods Pro to adapt to the ear, ensuring that every sound you hear is at its original frequency.

Even, with the original depth camera on the iPhone phone, you can create your own personal profile based on the geometry of your head, making the sound better suited to your unique ear shape. On this alone, we have to admit that Apple is indeed a company that has a lot of ideas and can put it into practice.

In addition, the dynamic head tracking brought by Apple's AirPods Pro 2 also allows FaceTime calls to have stereo effects, making it sound as if your friends and relatives are close to you.

Huawei FreeBuds Pro 2 focuses on high-definition space audio, which is Huawei's first headset to support Audio Vivid space audio, supporting 3D sound, surround sound and stereo sources. It uses Huawei's self-developed scene-based spatial audio field rendering engine to provide three kinds of spatial audio sound modes: audio theater, cinema and concert hall, matching the original sound source scene and deducing a realistic sense of presence.

Huawei FreeBuds Pro 2 has a built-in gyroscope sensor, which can accurately grasp the subtle movement of the head, so that you can get a strong sense of telepresence when listening to music, watching a play or listening to audio books, just like listening to real music. The head moves and you can feel the sound varies according to your position or direction of rotation.

In order to give full play to the HD space audio strength of Huawei FreeBuds Pro 2, Huawei is also on-line exclusive content in streaming platforms such as Himalayas, Yunling, Huawei Music, Huawei video, etc., together with the dynamic head tracking function, you can feel the process that the sound changes according to its own position or rotation direction, so that every time you listen to the sound, you can "sound" in the scene.

By comparison, we can see that although they are both "spatial audio", the directions of Apple and Huawei are not the same. The latter's spatial audio is more high-definition and telepresence, which is more suitable for users who pursue "immersion" in their sense of hearing.

Due to the new H2 chip, the noise reduction effect of the new generation of AirPods Pro 2 is up to 2 times higher than that of the previous generation. In terms of hardware design, the AirPods Pro 2 noise reduction microphone and rear vents are arranged in an optimized position to quickly detect incoming sound and cooperate tacitly to counteract the noise before you hear it. In addition, the new drive unit and optimized acoustic algorithm can reduce more noise by active noise reduction. In particular, the adaptive penetration mode, with the powerful performance of the H2 chip, can greatly reduce the intensity of loud noise such as sirens or power tools, so that you can hear the sounds around you comfortably.

AirPods Pro 2 Huawei FreeBuds Pro 2's plan is different. First of all, it has a three-dimensional array of three microphones, plus a bone conduction microphone designed for call noise reduction, a total of four microphones, through a more perfect combination of hardware, to assist in more immersive noise reduction, which can achieve the maximum noise reduction depth of 47dB. In particular, when it comes to call noise reduction, four microphones still have considerable advantages, coupled with hundreds of millions of sample DNN calculations, so that Huawei FreeBuds Pro 2 can achieve excellent quiet calls.

Huawei FreeBuds Pro 2 compared with Apple's adaptive penetration mode, Huawei FreeBuds Pro 2 upgraded the double transmission mode of transparent transmission mode and transparent human voice mode, the former is similar to Apple's adaptive penetration mode, while the latter further aggravates the human voice on the basis of adaptive penetration. In addition, the advantage of Huawei FreeBuds Pro 2 lies in the newly upgraded intelligent dynamic noise reduction 2.0, which can intelligently identify different scenes, and then match different noise reduction modes of balanced noise reduction, deep noise reduction and mild noise reduction. For example, for aircraft noise optimization noise reduction processing, the design of a dedicated aircraft noise reduction curve, even on the aircraft with roaring engines, can also be immersed in listening, not disturbed, in short, is to let noise reduction know you better.

Generally speaking, the performance of the two products in noise reduction is excellent. The core advantage of AirPods Pro 2 lies in the organic combination of powerful self-developed H2 chip and self-developed algorithm to achieve unimaginable computing power, so as to improve the noise reduction effect. The advantage of Huawei FreeBuds Pro 2 not only has stronger noise reduction ability, but also has intelligent, convenient and comprehensive humanized noise reduction function experience.

Interactive contrast is also a contrast scene of immortal fighting. Apple AirPods Pro 2 continues Apple's usual advantages in terms of interaction. First of all, AirPods Pro 2 actually has a chip built into the charging box, demonstrating Apple's powerful ability to develop its own chip incisively and vividly. The new U1 chip can use find App to find AirPods Pro up close to see where it is hidden. The built-in speakers can play sound to help you easily locate the charge box.

In other aspects, AirPods Pro 2 also supports convenient Siri commands, audio sharing allows any two AirPods to easily listen to songs or TV shows together, and for example, automatic switching function, which can seamlessly switch audio between your iPhone, Apple Watch, iPad and Mac.

Seeing this, will you worry that Huawei FreeBuds Pro 2 will be subdued? Absolutely not! Huawei AirPods Pro 2 has all the above functions supported by Apple FreeBuds Pro 2! In particular, with the release of HarmonyOS 3, Huawei FreeBuds Pro 2 brings a richer full-scene wisdom experience.

For example, thanks to HarmonyOS's HyperTerminal feature, you can seamlessly stream audio from devices such as your phone / smart screen to your headset with a single click, and it also allows headphones to be connected to two devices at the same time. At the same time, Huawei also introduced the "Audio connection Center" function in FreeBuds Pro 2, where you can see the 10 devices recently connected to your headphones. Select any nearby device and click to switch between multiple devices easily, which is very fast. You can also share beautiful audio with friends more easily, because HarmonyOS 3 supports two pairs of Huawei FreeBuds Pro 2 headphones connected to the same Huawei phone or Huawei Pad at the same time, making it extremely easy to listen to songs and follow dramas with friends.

Moreover, Huawei FreeBuds Pro 2 also has a series of features such as low latency mode, music recognition, face-to-face translation, quick reminder, morning greeting and so on. In terms of functionality, Huawei AirPods Pro 2 is also much better than Apple AirPods Pro 2.

Write at the end: on the Internet, it is often said that the end of audio equipment is metaphysics, which seems to be a joke, but in fact it is also a recognition of the difficulty of audio technology research and development and high-definition audio race. The end of audio is not metaphysics, but science, which is a set of whole-link system engineering, behind which is the investment regardless of cost and the long-term doctrine of innovation.

Today, both Huawei FreeBuds Pro 2 and Apple AirPods Pro 2 represent the top standards of today's TWS true wireless headphones. Although the two products are not designed in the same direction in some details, the ultimate goal is the same-to push the real wireless headset industry into the era of high-definition audio faster.

Back to consumers, how to choose these two products? From the author's point of view, if you are an iPhone mobile phone, then "mindless" can enter AirPods Pro 2; if you have higher requirements for sound quality, pursue "professional acoustics", or non-iPhone mobile phone users, then Huawei FreeBuds Pro 2 will be the most appropriate choice for you, and there is a 150 yuan reduction discount during Singles Day holiday, interested users can start.

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