Apple's AirPods Max 2 H2 chip has significantly increased its performance, with the aim of making future models only limited by acoustic physics. The H2 is an audio streaming processor that was co-designed by acoustics and firmware teams and provides a significant increase in processing performance, especially for headphones. The chip change also introduced Adaptive Audio, which can block some sounds while letting others through without a specific frequency band, and allows for significant headroom for more improvements in audio quality. Apple's VP of Platform Architecture Tim Millet and Director of Audio Product Marketing Eric Treski also highlighted the potential of the changes. The company's 1.5x improvement in active noise cancellation was driven through processing, with no related physical components being changed at all.