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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Hello, and welcome to The Verge Cast, the flagship podcast of Active Noise Cancellation. I'm your friend David Pearce, and today on the show, we're talking about headphones. Specifically, we're talking about headphone microphones, which I have long believed are just a severely underrated bit of technology. We do a lot of headphone testing here at The Verge. We all wear headphones all day.
We all care a lot about sound quality. And if you read a lot of headphone reviews, you can get super deep into noise cancellation features and you can get super deep into the interface. You can get super deep into sound quality. And then there's always just one line that's like a microphone does calls. I want to know more.
Chapter 2: Why are headphone microphones often underrated?
And so every once in a while on this show, we get somebody to bring us a bunch of different devices and we test their microphones. I care about this just as a person, but also because I think this technology matters, right? Like we all make calls increasingly on these devices, increasingly out in the world.
And knowing how you sound to other people is important, both because you want to be a good person who doesn't make everyone's lives miserable. And also because there is lots of evidence, scientific evidence that shows if you sound good, Thank you. So John Higgins, The Verge's senior reviewer, is going to come on. He's got a bunch of stuff. He is, I assume, somewhere very noisy.
And we're going to do some tests. But first, here's everything else happening on The Verge today. This is 90 Seconds on The Verge for Wednesday, June 17th, 2026. Big smart home day. The new Matter 1.6 smart home spec launched today. And stop me if you've heard of this before, but it is supposedly going to make it easier to control your smart home.
Specifically, Matter 1.6 includes this new feature called Joint Fabric, which makes it easier to set up a smart device like a light or a sensor or whatever, and immediately have it be controlled by Alexa, Apple Home, Gemini, and all of your other stuff all at once. Supposedly, it all just works.
There's also a new NFC setup feature that lets you tap a device to your phone to set it up rather than scanning a QR code. As with all things Matter, these are good ideas, and I really hope they work. And as with all things Matter, I am not remotely holding my breath.
Meanwhile, the Google Home speaker, Google's first smart speaker in six years, is finally up for pre-order and finally has a ship date next Thursday, June 25th. The speaker was announced last fall, and for $99, it promises to be the best way to get Gemini smart home control into your house. It also looks really good in red and apparently sounds really good.
There is a remarkable, interesting smart speaker thing happening right now. Alexa Plus, Apple Home, Siri AI, and Gemini are all promising these big AI upgrades to how you control your home. It's all been kind of iffy so far, but we'll see how much these new things really change the game.
And finally, reviews for Toy Story 5 are starting to come out, a movie in which the bad guy is basically an iPad.
Hi there, I'm Lilypad. Let's play! Extinction, not extinction!
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Chapter 3: What is the importance of microphone quality in headphones?
What's not surprising is that virtually everyone, including my colleague Charles Pulliam Moore, seems to love it. What's more surprising is that it seems to be a remarkably, maybe uniquely thoughtful look at the good and bad of what it means to be a person in a world filled with screens. Leave it to Woody and Buzz, man. They get it. You can read more about all of this at TheVerge.com.
That is 90 Seconds for Wednesday, June 17th.
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All right, now let's test some headphones. We like to do this every once in a while because I think we review a lot of headphones and we talk about headphones a lot and we talk mostly about sound quality. And that's fine and good, that's very important.
But as we live in a world where we spend more time talking to our devices, whether we're talking to assistants or we're talking to various dictation apps, the microphone actually matters a lot. Especially if you believe in AI and we're all gonna record our lives and do everything, the microphone in your headphones becomes very important.
So every once in a while, we come on this show and we test some microphones. Joining me now to help do it, The Verge's senior reviewer, John Higgins. Hi, John. Hey, David. Where are you right now?
I am in the beautiful San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles, California. I am sitting at a coffee shop on Ventura Boulevard. facing west down Ventura Boulevard for the Tom Petty fans. It is right around lunchtime, so there's a bunch of traffic right there. We just missed a hawk having a bird fight right above me. So, you know, there's a lot of stuff going on.
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Chapter 4: How do different environments affect microphone performance?
Yeah, so these are like the $20 headphones that are floating around somewhere in most people's houses. The funniest thing about this microphone to me is you sound great. Like it's actually just as a microphone, very good.
And I recommend these to people all the time as sort of backup podcast microphones, because it's a good mic and you sound good, but it picks up every little tiny bit of background noise. Every tiny bit. And so this is one that you're totally fine to use walking around your house, but I really do not recommend using out in the world.
Yeah, well, they don't have a noise suppression really happening with them. They're just like, here's what you get. Good luck.
Yeah, it is a microphone and nothing else. Yeah. So you've brought a bunch of stuff to test, and I think the one I want to start with I want you to guide us a little bit, but I want to start with the AirPods Pro 3 because that I think in terms of like, as a useful control, I think that's a good one.
That is, it's a very mainstream, lots of people have them and we're about to see kind of what's better and what's worse, but I want to see the sort of basic most mainstream options. So let's switch to that and see how we do. Does that sound good? Okay. Sounds good. Let's do it. Let's go.
I am now on the AirPods Pro 3.
Okay, this is fascinating. So you're clearly in a very noisy place because the AirPods Pro 3 actually do a pretty good job of like sort of normal din noise suppression. Like if you want an airplane, the AirPods Pro do a pretty good job of canceling that out. But I'm hearing a lot of background noise still.
It's interesting, too, because a lot of people talk about the call clarity of the AirPods Pro 3, or AirPods Pro in general. I mean, since they were released, it's been sort of a talking point. And I've always been like, they're fine? Yeah. But they're not the thing to focus on. They're not the end-all be-all of call quality. They're just, okay, you can hear me. Can hear other stuff too.
I'm sort of thrown by this one because what I expected and what we get from a lot of these earbuds and what I suspect we'll hear some of here is they compress the crap out of your voice in service of getting rid of all the background noise. And so it's like, you don't sound as good, but I don't hear the background as much. This is kind of splitting the middle in both cases.
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Chapter 5: What are the AirPods Pro 3's microphone performance details?
And thank you, as always, for watching and listening. I want to do this again relatively soon, this time with like all of the high end over ear noise cancellation headphones like the Bose's and the Sony's of the world. Those are the ones I think a lot of people have that they wear on planes and they walk through airports yammering on phone calls. I want to know how those sound, too.
So we're going to have to get a bunch of those in and test them out. If there's a pair of headphones you want us to add to this test or anything else you want us to talk about, we absolutely love hearing from you. You can call the hotline, 866-VERGE11. You can send us an email, vergecastattheverge.com. You can find me on Threads and Blue Sky and anywhere else. Hit us up.
We love hearing all of your feedback about anything and everything. Also, as a reminder, the best thing you can do to support all of this stuff that we're up to is subscribe to The Verge. Theverge.com slash subscribe. It gets you all of our podcasts with no ads, including this one. It gets you all of our subscriber-exclusive newsletters.
It gets you all of our coverage of headphone reviews and everything else. Theverge.com slash subscribe. We appreciate it. The Verge cast is a Verge production and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. This episode was produced by Eric Gomez, Brandon Kiefer, Travis Larchuk, and Aaron Locascio. We will see you tomorrow.
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Odoo replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost. That's why over thousands of businesses have made the switch. So why not you? Try Odoo for free at odoo.com. That's O-D-O-O dot com. Support for this show comes from Odoo. Running a business is hard enough, so why make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other? Introducing Odoo.
It's the only business software you'll ever need. It's an all-in-one, fully integrated platform that makes your work easier. CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce and more. And the best part? Odoo replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost. That's why over thousands of businesses have made the switch. So why not you? Try Odoo for free at odoo.com. That's O-D-O-O dot com.
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