AirPod Pro Microphone Call Quality

Have just purchased brand new airpod pros. I got them replaced in the 7 day warranty period as I thought the mic was that bad that it must be the unit that I purchased. It wasn't. I can not use them to make calls. I brought them as I talk on the phone and listen to music about the same amount. However many phone calls I have are quite long and I need the other person to be able to hear me. I have tried it in all sorts of modes, ANC on and off, repaired and reset them, and nothing works. The music quality in them is amazing, but this mic issue is terrible, honestly the air pods are better, I wish I had purchased them.

This is one of the reasons I didn't buy AirPods. I have several coworkers and friends who all use AirPods or the new AirPod Pros, and their microphones are picking up so much background noise during conference calls. Whether it's a mouse dragging on a desk, keyboard clicks, and even someone in the next room handling kitchenware or dishes, the AirPods not only pick up these sounds, but seem to amplify them so much it sounds like we're all tumbling inside a dishwasher. I can confirm that this happens on Zoom, Webex, Microsoft Teams, JoinMe. Even when there isn't excessive background noise, their voices sound muffled and bass-heavy. This thread makes it clear that this isn't a rare complaint. They are pairing the AirPods with MacBook Pros for these web conferences, so it's still within the Apple family.

It would be great for Apple to figure this out. I'm asking for a friend. Literally.

Same issue, my use case is walk in the park - recipient of the call can hear any other sounds instead of my voice. In addition to this, any sound from my end disappears for recipient during even slight wind. This never happened on earpods 1 and 2 non pro. Support routed me to repair which obviously did not help during covid instead of refunding (purchased through amazon and their refund time is done already). It is ridiculous to see apple still selling the product with problem affecting each pair of pro being sold. That is fraud. I dont care about money i have spent on this particular pair. Quality issues are across each apple device i bought for last three years. Iphone 11 pro camera has light glare and reflection issue, headphones does not work for calls, 2 macbooks pro 2018 loses hdmi connection, bluetooth connection to any mouse and keyboard and overheat and turn off. I guess time to dump apple for good.

For a "Pro" device the call quality is very poor, when out walking the dog people struggle to hear me as my volume drops but cars passing are amplified. I upgraded to these from my old AirPods. I think Apple focused all their efforts in sound cancellation in the ear but forgot the mic for calls.

These are only usable in a quiet room, poor for business calls. I don't think there will be a fix for them.

Same for me too. Seems like this is part of the Apple experience. By purchasing their product, we’re in agreement with how it works. There’s no place to submit feature requests, so this is the closest you’ll get to voicing out your opinions to other Apple customers.

Hey @Akram147

I had mine replaced, paying 170 pounds that will only be refund after 45 days. Bad experience.

And... after all of it, the new ones came with the same problem. So, as we can see in many reviews here. It is a problem with the product line. I am replacing apple slowly but I really regret about this phone. :(

I have the exact same problem. I’ve been in contact with Apple “senior advisors” about this for couple of months and there have been no working solution. They clearly don’t know how to solve this. I have Apple Care so they even changed my pods once but the problem is still there. This is a major issue in Air Pod Pros. I won’t recommend this product to anyone!

Most disgusting thing to understand is how deflective support in attempting to resolve situation. For ex. they employ a lot of tricks to route the discussion away from your problem, they do not even track when you state that problem is not solved after repair and 3 hours in communication with apple support, they do not verbally acknowledge the issue you state to them on support phone which based on this support topic has happened to more 5+ customers and they do not say to you that this problem is reported already and there is no fix planned.

this gaslighting is extremely toxic

Ok so I’ve got some of my experiences to add to this- I’ve had a pair of AirPod Pros since they were first released and primarily use them for listening to stuff rather than phone calls. That said, on Monday I went to Sydney and was walking through the busy streets and made a couple of phone calls to my wife while I was there and straight away she was saying that she couldn’t hear me over the background noise. I tried various settings with ANC, transparency mode etc and resetting with no improvement.

Similar to others on here I believe the algorithm that filters the microphone output in the AirPods is not doing its job.

I was on the phone to support the other day about the sound issue with my AirPod Pros and mentioned this thread and it got me thinking- I’m making an assumption here, I reckon Apple monitors the ‘me too’ responses in various threads and once it reaches a threshold they start taking action.

I bought two AirPod Pro sets for my partner and I, and both have the same problem (firmware 3A283). In noisy or windy environments, the speaker's voice is intermittently severely muffled. The muffling seems very similar to @mdadk 's test on page 7 with recordings from an airplane: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/uhbhtxu7le71can/AAB-F6NkTy4Pcf97RX15lT1ja?dl=0

During my own testing, I found that background music volume was reduced even with a single AirPod microphone, implying that an algorithm always attempts to identify background noise (i.e. not only filtering via multiple microphones)

From my experience, it seems that the muffled voice problem appears around sharp noises, traffic and even slight wind, apparently by reducing the speaker's voice along with the background noise. It is annoying that there is no way to turn off this behavior, since the phone microphone appears to deal with it fine, by allowing more background noise. This is very clear in the airplane recordings mentioned earlier.

It might be possible to reproduce the issue by playing a recording of street, kitchen or white noise while talking.

---

Unrelated to this issue (?), there seems to be a different microphone-related problem in the recording provided by @hakakaha on page 20, who recorded at home with some music in the background: https://1drv.ms/u/s!AjkBPOBNj27Cg69GX5fi9Px17Ra6Cg?e=5jFdTf

I tested the latter while using either one or both Airpods as the microphone, and could not reproduce this behavior.

I'm having the same issue, I'm about to return them. This is ridiculous that we are having this issue for the cost of the headphones. It's unacceptable. Feel free to have someone contact me at njcromartie@gmail.com.

Same here. Everything works fine when indoors, but as soon as I go outside and there is any wind or traffic noise, the people I talk with say that it is almost impossible to hear me. They describe it as the sound disappearing, as if they've lowered the volume. Trying to re-pair or setting the microphone to specifically use either left or right device does not help at all.

I'm really disappointed with them, to be honest. For listening only, they are fine, but the horrible microphone quality when outdoors means I now do not trust them at all so in case I need to answer the phone while out, I resort to using the phone without AirPods.

I've had people report that the mic quality is significantly better when I turn off noise cancelling. (press + hold the stem of the airpod). It's been over a year that this issue has been around, any chance of a fix (I bought these specifically for speaking to people!)?

I had the same issue, muffled sound on the other end of a call and especially in windy conditions, fixed it in a strange way. I’m using and iPhone 11 Pro and an Apple Watch Series 6, I tried a lot of times to unpair and pair the AirPods Pro with no success. But then I tried to unpair from the Apple Watch, confirmed that the AirPods Pro where also unpaired from the iPhone, and then I repeated the normal pairing process on the iPhone.......and now.....for some strange reason, the AirPods Pro are working fine, even in windy conditions!!!!! Very strange........