Apple has built one of the quietest rooms in the world inside its audio lab, and it plays a crucial role in shaping the sound quality of AirPods Pro. Known as an anechoic chamber, the space is designed to eliminate echoes and block external vibrations, creating an environment so silent that even footsteps and claps fade instantly. Foam wedges line the walls, ceiling, and floor, while visitors walk on a suspended grid above more sound-absorbing material.
Lance Ulanoff, who toured the Apple Audio Lab, described the room as “almost like a building within a building,” noting that it is separated from the rest of the structure by several feet to keep vibrations out. He recalled how Apple explained it as “one of the quietest rooms anywhere in the world,” and that standing inside it was an uncanny experience. “We all stopped chatting for a moment to listen to the silence, which in itself is almost deafening,” Ulanoff wrote.
The chamber is not built for dramatic effect but as a precision tool. Apple takes products like AirPods into the space to identify and eradicate any unintended sounds. As Ulanoff put it, “any sonic imperfections impact the quality and fidelity of the audio Apple products are designed to produce.” By isolating faint hums, rattles, or mechanical vibrations, engineers can guarantee that AirPods Pro reproduce only the sound Apple intends.
The chamber also supports advanced spatial audio testing. Inside sits a chair surrounded by an arch of speakers that allows engineers to measure how sound travels around the body and into the ear canal. “To create an algorithm that matches that real-world experience, they measure it against how people perceive the actual spatial audio arriving in the room,” Ulanoff explained. This research is behind features like Personalized Spatial Audio on AirPods Pro 3, which adjusts playback based on individual ear scans.
Beyond the chamber lies Apple’s most theatrical audio space: the Fantasia Lab. Named after the first surround-sound film, it houses a spherical array of dozens of speakers with a rotating chair at the center. Engineers use this room to test active noise cancellation, transparency mode, and spatial audio under highly controlled conditions. Sounds like traffic, chatter, or a live concert are piped in from all directions, allowing the team to check whether AirPods Pro block noise effectively, reproduce outside sounds naturally, and simulate a 360-degree environment with accuracy.
Ulanoff described sitting in the Fantasia Lab while a live recording played: “sound was coming from all directions — including the roar of the crowd singing along. I closed my eyes and I was there.” The experience underscored Apple’s pursuit of immersion, blending silence, precision hardware, and computational audio to make earbuds feel like a concert hall.
Together, the anechoic chamber and the Fantasia Lab demonstrate Apple’s obsession with refining every detail of AirPods Pro audio. As Ulanoff concluded, “Apple uses the brute force and fine-tuning of audio experts, high-technology labs, and physical construction to create every necessary environment, all to engineer a thumb-sized AirPod Pro 3 that is music to your ears.”
