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AirPods Pro High Pitched Whine

When ANC is on, if you push on either bud there's a high pitched whine (tea kettle like) that can increase/decrease with the amount of pressure and angle you use. Additionally, it reduces the battery life by about 50% after only a few minutes of playing with it.


I called Apple support and they weren't really interested in the issue and advised me to return mine at the closest Apple store. I did and sure enough these do it as well! Something about the ANC and maybe the auto adjustment sound capabilities are causing this issue? Nobody else has mentioned it but this is my second pair now.

Posted on Oct 31, 2019 3:16 PM

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Posted on Nov 13, 2019 5:27 AM

*Update* took my second pair to the Apple "Genius" folks and he was pretty shocked when he heard it. He even had another employee who owner their own pair do it with theirs and he was surprised as well. They documented it and said it's probably affecting all AirPod Pros. Your move Apple...

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Question marked as Best reply

Nov 13, 2019 5:27 AM in response to MDK210

*Update* took my second pair to the Apple "Genius" folks and he was pretty shocked when he heard it. He even had another employee who owner their own pair do it with theirs and he was surprised as well. They documented it and said it's probably affecting all AirPod Pros. Your move Apple...

Nov 13, 2019 4:59 PM in response to MDK210

I too have this problem on my left Airpods


I believe this happens because when you are touching or putting on the airpod without a good seal the active noice cancellation's feedback loop its trying to compensate for the noise outside as result its trying to be as "loud" as it can to cancel it out.


This is similar to when you have a microphone too close to the speaker and have that high pitch feedback.

Nov 1, 2019 7:54 AM in response to MDK210

I have the same issue. It actually woke my dog up when I got the "tea kettle" sound in my ears.


Turning off "Automatic Ear Detection" seems to help, but doesn't eliminate the issue entirely. I set the "Noise Control" to "Off" as well.


It looks as though with "Automatic Ear Detection" enabled that it resets the "Noise Control" to "Transparency" once you take out the AirPods and subsequently put them back in your ears. This might be intended behavior for safety/liability reasons.


However, with Auto Ear Detect disabled, Noise Control will keep the last manually selected. This seems to help to dial down the number of occurrences for me.

Nov 1, 2019 5:41 PM in response to MDK210

Mine did the same thing. As I would push them in to get a good fit, there would be a high pitched feedback noise. I took them into the store and they weren’t sure what was going on, but multiple employees tried mine out and were surprised. They didn’t have a replacement pair for me so I just returned them and will purchase them again online if this isn’t a hardware issue and can be fixed via update.

Dec 24, 2019 5:55 AM in response to Duncan Ramsay1

Not sure. I did a bunch of troubleshooting with a different department within Apple. They ran diagnostics on my phone remotely for about 4 weeks and even sent out a new pair but does the same thing (4th pair now). While using them to talk to the Apple rep he could actually hear the noise during the phone call so that was cool. We think it's the mics in the AirPods and the better seal you have the easier it is to have happen. Only when the isolation and transparency are off does it NOT have the issue. Bottom line, when the AirPods are acting as "normal" earbuds they are fine but everything else causes the issue.

AirPods Pro High Pitched Whine

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