AirPod Pro Microphone Call Quality

Yes it is happening to me as well!! People say I am muffled and cannot hear me very well. 😡

I paid a lot for these and to have the Pro name there should not be any muffling when using the mic to talk!!! Come on Apple..........

Dear Apple, Apple AirPods Pro are, in fact, faulty for anything voice related. This includes calls, Siri, voice recording, etc. 

The microphone does not work properly and this has been confirmed by hundreds of users and actual tests.

My software and firmware are both up to date.

I’ve tried switching from Noise cancellation on, off, and transparency mode - all 3 are extremely bad. 

Here are my tests on a moderately quiet airplane:

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/uhbhtxu7le71can/AAB-F6NkTy4Pcf97RX15lT1ja?dl=0

My suggestion to fix this is that Apple should:

1. Make a public announcement quickly that the AirPods are only good for listening to music and not making calls
2. Give the option to the customers that have purchased to get 100% refund and receive a $50 gift card for their troubles or B. Get a $50 gift card and wait for AirPod Pro 2 that works correctly.

If Apple, with its hundred billion dollars of surplus cash, doesn’t do what’s right quickly, customers should team up with lawyers and file class action lawsuit asap. 

Having said this, I am a loyal and faithful Apple fan, but Apple should do the right thing.

$250 is a lot of money for some folks and they trust that Apple products will “just work.” Well, these don’t!

Having said that, AirPods Pro are fantastic for listening to music and noise cancellation. Apple, please just do the right thing.

Mike Krilivsky

I'm glad someone has raised this as I have encountered exactly the same issue. In fact, it's so bad that I've even stopped using the Airpod Pros for voice calls. I presume others have the same problem. Get it sorted Apple.

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!

Oh my! I am also having the same exact issue and repairing didn’t work for me!

apple support I think it’s time you respond as there are lot of people affected by this issue and for such a premium product!

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 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.

firsr I will say, Sound quality and noise cancelling on the new airpods pro is very good. but after only 5 days I must sau the microphone quality is next level cr*p. People keep telling me that I sound far away, or too much noise, cant hear me, and thats on normal calls, on whatsapp, fb messages, on viber. Everywhere, it is like it doesnt know the diffrence between my voice and outside noise, first I thought it was just because I was in traffic, but even in the gym or airport with a little bit of background music the mic is completely unusable. This is unacceptable, I regret this purchase so much, and paying equivalent of 300 usd for them. Ive tried to reconnect them 10 times, installing new version

of my iphone max software, tried to select only mic on left and on right ear. still same result. I think apple needs to give back the money for this, or make a solution or change them and give us some airpods which work.

Now I have to send them in which will take 2 weeks to check if everything is correct. so far I will say to people definitely not worth the money.

I’ve managed to solve my own issue by forgetting the AirPods and re-pairing. There is more than one way to pair them and I don’t think the noise cancelling works properly unless they are correctly paired as per the manual. Worth trying. Hope it works for you.

Reset your Airpods Pro (2C54). It worked for me:

1. Put your ‌AirPods‌ in their case and close the lid.
2. Wait 30 seconds, then open the lid. 
3. On your iOS device, go to Settings -> Bluetooth and tap the circled "i" icon next to your ‌AirPods‌.
4. Tap Forget This Device, and tap again to confirm.
5. With the ‌AirPods‌ case lid open, press and hold the button on the back of the case for about 15 seconds until you see the status light flashing amber. 
6. With the case lid open, place your ‌AirPods‌ close to your device and follow the steps on your device's screen to reconnect your ‌AirPods‌.

And that's all there is to it.

I’m having the same problem mainly around calls, I used to have the same issue with Gen 2 so sold them and got Gen 3 which I have now. People I’m on the phone to complain they can hear background noise such as cars passing louder than they can hear me or I sound very quiet and far from the phone.

Sometimes I fix/Go Round the problem by doing the following:

• push the airpod(s) in your ear more because I’ve found a full seal seems to improve the quality of sound to the other person on the phone
• disconnecting and reconnecting from the phone using “forget AirPods” in the Bluetooth menu
• book an appointment with apple and they will take your AirPods to the back to perform sound tests, then clean them and give them back. This works for around 2 weeks and is not a long term fix. Apple says it’s a build up of ear wax and I highly doubt all us hundreds of people with the same issue don’t clean out AirPods and ears out regularly already have thought of this ourselves… but there we go lol

I think this is a design fault of Apples. Most likely to be addressed in Gen 4 but for now using both AirPods at the same time will overall give you and your caller a better experience overall.

Hope this helps :)

For all people who is experimenting poor call quality: do you pass the fit test every time?!I’m wondering if there’s a connection between them.

Try to re-pair as per Apple AirPods instruction and try if something improves: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT209463

I really hope that a fw update will fix this but I’m really skepcitcal.

It's possible this is a more systemic problem. I've been having this issue with my gen 1 AirPods. Not sure if it's since iOS 13 or the iPhone 11 Pro since I got them around the same time. My AirPods worked great for calls previously and now I can't make it though a single call without having an issue. I've had a ticket open with support for over a week now. They're actively working on it, but the engineers haven't come up with anything concrete yet. I had asked if it could be a gen 1 problem but the support tech came back saying "I have seen this issue effecting both" which I took as gen 1 and gen 2. Could be effecting the AirPod Pros as well.

My AirPods Pro have worked well for about 4 months, then transparency mode stopped working. I had them replaced without issues (free of charge). Following this, they worked perfectly for about 2 months and in the last few days people started telling me I sounded muffled. I initially thought it might be related to the latest IOS 14.1 update, but then I realised that it was released on 20 October, so that can't be it. I just reset and re-paired them but, regardless of mode (i.e. transparent or cancelled) it goes muffled/clear/muffled/clear. I'll have them replaced again I suppose (https://support.apple.com/en-nz/airpods-pro-service-program-sound-issues)

Thank you for your reply but it has nothing to do with the noise cancellation, something has changed with the AirPods when using for phone calls, it’s people on the other end of the phone call cannot hear you at all if there is any background noise, it was the same with my AirPods 2, I thought that the AirPods 2 weee faulty so I got the pro and they do the same, there is an issue with the microphone picking up any background noise, this was not a problem with the version ones, read through this discussion and it is a massive common problem and needs to be rectified as I cannot use them for phone calls if there is any small amount of background noise