AirPod Pro Microphone Call Quality

I have spent hours talking with apple customer service about it and nothing!

people I talk to can dissect whether I’m walking on gravel or asphalt, if I’m driving a car or just standin close to an AC-unit; but can’t for the life of it hear if I say “Hi how are you doing?” or “blanddheudncgnrkssnvfgg”

1. for us - the users/owners it’s very hard to determine since it is on the other end they experience the problem - this also makes it hard to explain
2. from all replies here it look like they ignore it as if it’s not a problem…
3. there is no way to fix it; you can try resetting, forgetting etc, it’ll most likely not solve it.

it is beyond crazy that the most expensive & high end audiodevice can be so useless. It’s impossible to use them for professional business calls, as you really annoy the ones you are speaking with.

"I have used the AirPods Pro extensively with Teams etc since before the Corona and during, without any issues whatsoever. As soon as I upgraded my Macs to 11.5.2 this issue started popping up with muffled sound coming and going."

Tested the APP on a Sony phone and got the same issue, which should leave the latest Mac OS update off the table and possibly indicate that the firmware in the APP (3E751) might be the culprit..

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 got a brand new Apple AirPods Pro 2 USB C and got the same problem with the microphone

I've had 2 pairs already, this is absolute garbage, I have to disconnect bt every-time I want to send an audio to someone then pair it again to listen to their response, and on and on.

Hello,

I see that there are some concerns about the sound quality of AirPods Pro during phone calls while using Active Noise Cancellation. I know it's important for AirPods Pro to work as expected; I'd like to help. The steps in this resource may help to troubleshoot the behavior: If Active Noise Cancellation isn't working as expected on your AirPods Pro

These resources provide additional information about AirPods Pro that may be helpful as well:

• Wearing your AirPods, EarPods, and Beats devices
• How to clean your AirPods and EarPods
• AirPods Pro Active Noise Cancellation and Transparency mode

Take Care.

I have just upgraded from air pod pro to air pod pro gen 2. Using the fantastic new adaptive noise cancellation has been a great experience … until making a phone call with it on. Callers say I am muffled, hard to hear. If I move back to transparent noise cancellation, they say the audio is much better …. But switched back to adaptive and boom, the muffle comes back. How do I resolve this ? Do I take my earphones back and have them replaced as a fault? Surely I don’t have to change settings every time I take a phone call ???

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

Apple has issued a recall for some AirPod Pros manufactured before October 2020 due to sound issues which could include crackling or noise cancellation not working as expected. There is a service bulletin here: https://support.apple.com/airpods-pro-service-program-sound-issues

They work fine for work calls. I've been using them for wfh for several years now. The issue is when out in the street, when noise reduction kicks in. Then people have trouble hearing me.

Over 4 years later and I’m using Pro 2 that I got last Christmas and looking into this. Clearly Apple doesn’t want to fix their products. For clarification, I have had the regular AirPods (gen 2) for several years and would talk to my friend on the phone for several hours multiple days per week and we don’t have the problems as the Pro 2. I got my girlfriend the Pro 2 and it goes both ways her quiet sometimes as well as me. Don’t buy the Pro AirPods if you want to do voice calls.

Oh man! I thought I was the only one facing this issue.

Everyone that I call using AirPods Pro complaints that they can’t hear me properly and my voice is muffled.

I am going to try the above advice of forgetting and re pairing to see if it works. If not, I am going to go back to Apple store for help.

I’ll message again on how I go.

Cheers.

So I figured out how to fix muffled microphone of apple airpods pro.

solution:

1- go to settings app

2- scroll down to accessibility

3- select Audio/Visual

4- untick (turn OFF) Phone Noise Cancellation.

ever since I done that, people on the other end of the phone call commented on how much better my voice was compared to how it was before.

this way solved my microphone issue during phone calls using my airpods pro, but it didn't solve the problem in voice memo recording (or voice notes on whatsapp)

please try the above solution and let me know if it works too

good luck

First of all i want to say THANKS for customers who has raised this issue, i know im not ALONE with this issue.

Same issue for me, this muffled mic happens after i reset AirPods Pro,

Then nothing helps:

Changing mic for left or right

Reset Airpods Pro,

Connecting from bluetooth,

Connecting from notification window whats informing you about fonded airpods Pro --- nothing work, just nothing, muffled mic, broken Active noise cancelation.

For me it like headphones which using same mic what working for noise cancelation and for talk/voice or video calls/recording voice mic sound from mic very bad i can't believe apple can make products like this, without pre testing and then asking customers to send their airpods pro back to apple for testing, i was changing airpods 6 times and i will stop when AirPods Pro will working like they need to work, Apple released 2 firmware updates and both are very bad, fix fix fix and very fast, a lot of customers are not happy with Pods Pro

2 month or more with ANC issue - https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250887615

2 month or more with Muffled mic on voice/video calls and voice recordings - https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250813242

Waiting for update, in this time i'll just change them every 10 days.

Fix this in next update or feel free with refund for customers :D

Apple doesn't even bother to read about this issue. We all should make sure that this thread is getting shared all over social media with the mention of the following accounts. Let's share this thread on twitter, reddit and facebook, let's use the power of social media to make everyone aware, then they will have to act!!! Here's the link we should be sharing:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250813242

and here are the account names we should be tagging:

@Apple

@AppleUK_

@AppleSupport

and this hashtag could be beneficial too:

#applescandal