AirPod Pro Microphone Call Quality

Here's what I found. There are two ways to pair/connect the AirPods.

1) As described in the manual where you simply open the lid of the Airpods and bring them close to the iPhone then follow the instructions.

2) Where you go into your Bluetooth settings and search for and pair the Airpods the way you would do other Bluetooth devices.

The same 2 options also apply to subsequent connections after initial pairing.

When I pair or connect using Option 2 above, the telephone quality is awful for the person I'm calling as they hear background noise almost like it has been amplified. I suspect that is because if I connect to my AirPods this way, the noise reduction functionality doesn't work as expected.

When I connect or pair using Option 1, the sound quality is perfect for the person I'm calling and they hear little background noise.

I'm not saying this will help solve your own issues but I thought it might be helpful to share what I've found.

Thanks

Ian

I found a way to improve things. I’m using APP 1st generation and have struggled with this for years. When in a call, go to control centre then at the top right select “Mic Mode” and then “Voice Isolation”.

When I did this, the other person had no difficulty hearing me by a busy road where previously I would have cut out when cars passed.

Hope this helps.

I have had my AirPods Pro for 3 years and every day I have sworn over the poor call quality on noisy surroundings.

Yesterday when I read in this forum about one user suggesting to change the Mic setting to Voice

isolation in the Control panel was a game changer. I can now take calls on the bus, have a noisy vacuumcleaner or water tap running and the other person hears nothing but my voice.

This setting is only visible during calls or other apps using the mic.

I do not understand all complaints about poor mic quality when this easy setting changes it all. Heck, who am I to say that, walking around with this complaint for years. It should be noted that this setting is only available on "newer" iPhones (mine is an iPhone 14), my old X do not have it for example.

Hi,

Quite simply, I went into Settings, Bluetooth, selected AirPods Pro and clicked “Forget This Device”.

I then re-paired the AirPods with the iPhone X carefully following the correct instructions that came with the AirPods.

For clarity, I didn’t follow the instructions properly when I originally paired with my iPhone. Given that re-pairing has completely solved my problem, I suspect that the way you pair affects the correct operation of the noise cancelling function during telephone calls. On the calls I’ve made since re-pairing, the people I called have reported that I’m coming across very clearly with little background noise.

I am on my Second pair of AirPod Pros because of the call quality. My first pair everyone was saying I sounded muffled and they could not hear me. I called Apple Support and the tech even said I sounded muffled and was having a hard time hearing me. I made an appointment at the Genius bar and they said they had not heard of this before. I switched out my AirPod Pros and still having the same problem. It is definitely worse when you have 'noise cancellation' on, as I have switched mid-call and people said they can hear me a little better when on 'transparency'. Still these are 'Pro' models and I got these for work calls. When I had my original AirPods no one could tell when I was on them.

Please fix this Apple!

I had originally purchased a pair of earbuds that were not Apple, but had very high ratings of where I looked. They worked great there noise cancellation of transparent mode for fantastic but nobody could hear me on the phone which was a problem because at work I speak to large groups of customers for long periods of time and they couldn’t hear me. So I bought the best AirPods Apple makes, but unable to use them on the phone because people couldn’t hear me. The funny thing is when I used my wired earbuds that come with an iPhone I would get comments from customers about how fantastic the audio is and the lack of background noise that they heard. Now it’s the opposite. It has gotten better since Apple introduced that mode where you can change the microphone to cancel noise and or boost vocals. I can’t remember it’s called off the top of my head but you have to go onto the control panel and hold the earbud button or something and it pops up. And I would’ve been happy with that except that’s only available if you’re using FaceTime or Teams or Highfive or some other form of video communication, it’s not available to use when just using the phone, which makes no sense to me at all.

Anyway, just tried a bunch of different things while making voice recordings and reading the back of my PECO bill. I probably look like a crazy person repeating the same paragraph over and over, but I did figure out a couple things that may help people.

If you go into the accessibility settings, then audio/visual there is a setting at the top that’s called headphone accommodations. When that is off the microphone quality is significantly lower than if that is on. It doesn’t make a whole Lotta sense since none of the settings in there are related to the microphone as far as I can see. The settings I have are as follows:

Tune audio for: Vocal Range

The slider is right in the middle (moderate)

In the “apply with” section, I have Phone and Media turned ON

there’s another section under that for transparency mode, but as far as I can tell that is only to increase the sensitivity of the microphone for transparency mode. And that’s when you start getting a lot of your own voice feedback and it just really sounds terrible. I saw a couple people complaining about transparency mode being horrible because they can hear their own voice in the middle of their head and all of that. Turning that transparency mode on in my settings menu will do that, so be careful.

I also saw some comments where people said turning off the noise cancellation setting for the phone, which is also in the audio/visual settings page, Fixed their microphone issue. I made a whole bunch of voice recordings and I didn’t notice any difference with that on our off. I put two screenshots below but i don’t know if they show up or not. I don’t recall ever seeing a screenshot accompanying a reply.

Hope this helps some people.

Also, COME ON APPLE!! WE PAY GOOD MONEY FOR YOUR STUFF BECAUSE WE EXPECT IT TO BE THE BEST. FIX IT!

just to reiterate, having the headphone accommodations turned on made a noticeable difference in the quality of the microphone pick up during speech. Also, if you are using anything like Teams, Zoom, or FaceTime, make sure you pull the control center menu down and then check to make sure that you have it set to boost the vocals. I don’t remember the actual name they use. Vocal Isolation or something.

I had this problem when using the AirPods Pro with my MacBook Pro. On the iPhone the quality wasn't great, but people could understand what I was saying. While having work calls with my computer I could not use the AirPods Pro, they said I sounded like a robot. It worked just fine the 1st couple of weeks. I tried re-pairing, restoring them to factory settings and it don't not work. I called Apple Support and they told me to reset the Reset NVRAM or PRAM on my Mac (https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204063) and that worked. Audio quality on the mic is now perfect.

There’s definitely an issue with my AirPod Pros. If I’m indoors in a quiet location they work great for calls. If I’m outside walking people I talk to frequently say I sound like I’m far away and they can’t hear me. I figured out the wind is what is causing that as if I wear a hat that covers the AirPod Pros people can hear me just find. It doesn’t have to be that windy. A slight wind is enough to cause this problem.

It’s been doing this since I got them late last year. I may have to call Apple to get these replaced.

Air pods and more so Airpods pro are great at reducing ambient sound and wind noise, however sometimes they reduce the wind noise so much that the voice disappears also, this is worse on the Airpod pros that the standard ones. This can be changed in "Accessibility" not under the air pods settings.

Try -

Settings - Accessibility - Audio visual - Phone noise cancellation - Off

Or on older ios

Settings - General - Accessibility - Phone noise cancellation - Off

I agree with Robert. None of the selecting mics or transparency mode or noise cancellation off works. I have had replacements and I have been tearing my hair out. BUT as Robert says, SDantigua’s post seems to work. I’ve had no complaints since doing it. You need to turn the phone noise cancellation off. Nothing to do with AirPod settings.

SDAntigua on the previous page:

Air pods and more so Airpods pro are great at reducing ambient sound and wind noise, however sometimes they reduce the wind noise so much that the voice disappears also, this is worse on the Airpod pros that the standard ones. This can be changed in "Accessibility" not under the air pods settings.

Try -

Settings - Accessibility - Audio visual - Phone noise cancellation - Off

Or on older ios

Settings - General - Accessibility - Phone noise cancellation - Off

I finally went to the Genius Bar and they changed both AirPods Pro. The right mic was unusable and both had sound and filter problems. It took around one hour to diagnose (they were in the middle of a rush).

It’s like day and night, they sound so good now, wow!!

I have/ had the same issue only a month after purchasing the Airpods, so I contacted Apple CS via phone, which was actually helpful.

TL;DR: It was only one of the Airpods that produced the issue, we figured out which one it was, changed the mic setting to the other as an ad-hoc solution and I will have them repaired/ exchanged as a long term solution.

If your Airpods are connected, go to settings-->bluetooth and click in the little (i) next to them. Under "microphone" you have the options "Automatically Switch Airpods" or to have the mic always on the left or the right one.

Go on a phone call with someone as a test call and go out to a noisy environment (train station, busy street, kindergarten...). Speak with them as e.g. cars pass and let them give you feedback on how well they could hear you and the ambient noise while you go through the different options (especially left and right).

For me, this lead to me knowing that only my right airpod produced the issue. I will bring it in to a certified retailer of Apple, they will conduct a "sound check" on it to confirm the issue and then repair or replace them.

For now, I have switched to always have the mic on the left Airpod and I haven't had any complaints.

Hope it works for you!

I have had this for months, but some calls ok. Yesterday it changed during a call … 🤔

This solved calls: Setting Bluetooth AirPods Pro Microphone. Default is Auto. First set to left, record a 10 second memo. Set to right, record a 10 second memo. Play them back.

My right microphone sounds ok for a few of seconds but then muffles the sound. I could then set to always use the left microphone to fix calls. Transparency mode had sounded a bit wrong for a long time, and this is not fixed by this.

This auto setting can be why some of the other fixes mentioned are temporary/intermittent.

I have had this same issue for a long time, so I never used my Airpod Pros for calls. I was just on the phone with support and I found a workaround that seems to work for me.

Connect them to your phone. On your phone - go to Settings -> Airpod Pro -> Microphone

Mine was set to Automatic and had the issue. Then I changed to Always Right -> issue persisted. Changed to Always Left and it worked fine.

Be on a call with someone and change the settings asking for feedback on the quality. It will take a few seconds to switch the setting on the Airpods, but they will likely notice a difference.

This is by no means a fix, but a workaround. Apple said I would need to get my right pod looked at to fix the issue correctly.

I found the ‘voice isolation’ setting on phone as opposed to the AirPods fixed this issue.

I activated it while on a call by swiping down on the top right, and as opposed to adjusting the AirPods found the ‘Mic Mode’ widget on the top right and selected that and chose voice isolation, which fixed this problem