This whole thing started with this tweet from The Economist’s Hal Hodson:
Twitter, a mystery: I’ve been walking around New York a lot the past few days, AirPods in, tunes going, great vibes. Almost every time I cross a street, though, they cut out. Why? Crossing roads is the only time the cut. Can not figure it out
This appears to happen consistently, and to a lot of people. Here’s mystery solved, via a sequence of tweets from The Verge’s Dan Seifert.
First:
I know the exact spot when crossing 5th Ave in front of the library where every pair of Bluetooth headphones will cut out. to the step.
Experience the same in the middle of Grand Central Terminal. to the step.
And then, the answer:
I’ve asked headphones makers why this happens in past and here’s best explanation I’ve received:
BT needs surfaces to bounce off to work efficiently (walls, ceilings, etc). very different from WiFi. in the middle of the street is farthest from large flat surfaces.
Which begs the question, how come my AirPods work in the middle of a field?
You may wonder why this doesn’t happen in an open field?
Bluetooth doesn’t have any other signals to compete with out there, doesn’t need to be at peak efficiency.
Any Bluetooth experts out there want to weigh in here? This is fascinating to me.
Imma NYer and experience this often, but don’t think surfaces has anything to do with it. My APs work in the desert just fine.
Wouldn’t that be covered under the “field” situation?
What about…other signals? RF Smog. Seems obvious. The Author even answers his own question. With a keen intellect such as his, he’s wasted in tech journalism. What a bunch of f*cking geniuses…sorry, what was the point of the source article, again?
I rolled my eyes so hard at this one, my field of view inverted.
You walk into a crowded room, everyone is shouting to be heard over everyone else, the person next to you asks a question. You reply, “What? I can’t hear you over the noise!” To which they reply, “What? I can’t hear you over the noise!”, except you can’t hear them over the noise.
Roadway loop cables?
Maps is protecting you from yourself
The lack of competition so it doesn’t need to be efficient sort of makes it clear why the HomePod can’t use Bluetooth to stream music. The standard allows it to work with really bad bandwidth. So Apple chose to not let it be a mode of data transfter because the HomePod is for audiophiles, so it requires significant data bandwidth.
And here I thought it was all the other crap in my jacket pocket.
For me, when the microwave oven is running and I’m in the kitchen is the only predictable drop out I experience with AirPods. Or any Bluetooth headphone I’ve used, but it’s not as bad with AirPods.
Yup, didn’t read to the end, lul.
I had a RaspberryPi 2 set up in our kitchen with the standard 802.11b/BlueTooth USB dongle and shairport AirPlay audio receiver software and a set of computer speakers. We could stream music from our Macs and iPhones until we needed to use the microwave.
What do 802.11b, Bluetooth and microwave ovens have in common? They all use frequencies around 2.4Ghz.
All microwaves leak some and while it’s hopefully not harmful to humans it’s enough to confuse the hell out of 802.11b wifi and Bluetooth.
The thing that goes unmentioned here is that AirPods have unbelievably good range amongst BT headphones, let alone earbuds. I’m amazed how far they work around my apartment. Maybe those stems were, in fact, a good design decision. 🙂
Thanks for digging this up, Dave! The middle of 5th Avenue must be a veritable cloud of BT devices at this point. I don’t spend as much time in Manhattan as I used to, but I assume AirPods are extremely popular there and have “worsened” this.
(The fact they’re open-air and therefore crappy for the subway has never stopped people from blasting tunes at max volume through their EarPods or other open-air designs. That’s the only thing that’s unfortunate about AirPods—I wonder if they’re encouraging more people to listen to music at unsafe levels since they’re so darn convenient. I keep my older BT LG Tones around precisely for subways and planes, but use AirPods for everything else.)
Happens to the best of us.
Try walking by an Apple store w/ AirPods in… They drop out like crazy walking by the WTC store in NYC.
Get a Pi 3B+ and you’ll get 5GHz 802.11n/ac as a bonus.
At $35 it’s a very affordable upgrade.