Apple's AirPods EQ: Is It Any Good?

Apple has finally given us a native EQ for the AirPods lineup featuring the H2 chip (AirPods Pro 2/3, AirPods Max 2). It arrives with the iOS 27 developer beta, and naturally, Apple's first user-adjustable EQ it is done the "Apple way"... which means a highly simplified, stripped-down interface designed to be accessible to absolutely everyone.

The big question for audio enthusiasts like yours truly is whether this paired-down approach is actually powerful enough to yield meaningful improvements for the giga-nerds like me, because much of the time these manufacturer-supplied EQ systems are just too limited for anyone hyper-fixated on sound quality to actually get the adjustments they need.

After digging into the quirks and measuring the actual filter behaviors, I am happy to report that it is largely a success, though it does come with a few notable caveats.

The interface itself is clean, typical of Apple, and brings some surprisingly smart features to the table. Most notably, the toggle between the "Recommended" stock sound and your "Custom" profile acts as a near-flawless A/B switch with some of the best level-matching I have ever experienced. It also features a built-in playhead to encourage users to adjust the sound by ear while listening, which is exactly how people should be tuning their audio (graph sniffers out).

It is not perfect, however. The visualized "waveform" in the background of the graph field can and does obscure the zero line, making manual resets of a single band a bit frustrating, and the complete lack of an undo button, saved memory slots, or custom presets is an upsetting omission for people like me who want to compare different tunings.

When you look under the hood at what these sliders are actually doing, surprisingly most of the choices made by Apple's team here are sensible ones.

First, the available gain adjustment dynamically scales based on your listening volume to preserve system headroom, meaning you get less boost capability at maximum volume—some may see this as a downside, but if you're familiar with these kind of systems it should come as no surprise. 

Second, the midrange slider changes its behavior completely depending on the direction you move it. Cutting the mids applies a negative peak at 900 Hz to de-emphasize the mids vs. the bass and treble, while boosting applies a peak closer to 1750 Hz to reshape the ear gain for clarity and presence. It is a reasonable, though opaque way to use a single slider to account for what different listeners may actually want when they ask for "more" or "less" midrange from these devices, specifically.

The placement of the high and low shelf filters is a bit of a mixed bag. The treble shelf is placed very smartly right around 5000 Hz, right where both the AirPods lineup's treble starts to get "editorialized" for excitement, and where human anatomical variation really starts to get wide. This means listeners can easily dial back the AirPods' innate sizzle or add a bit of extra crispness without ruining the already excellent midrange tone.

Unfortunately, the bass shelf sits a bit too high, around 150 to 160 Hz. If you try to cut the bass, it ends up scooping out too much of the upper bass & lower midrange, leaving things sounding a little hollow.

Despite wishing for a lower bass shelf and true Parametric EQ features, in my opinon, Apple came very close to nailing the balance of compromise here. It is an intuitive, highly effective tool that legitimately elevates the convenience of the AirPods into an even better sonic experience, and unlike many implementations of user EQ, it very firmly asserts itself as a tool made to be used/adjusted while listening to our favorite music.

I think when it comes to EQ, such a tool (especially one that works well for that purpose) is refreshing compared to the endless tweakability—which often comes at the cost of looking at lists of numbers and graphs for long periods of time instead of listening to music—we often see from more "granular" approaches to EQ. So I'm happy with this... but if Apple wants to add some Power User features down the line, I certainly wouldn't say no.