AirPod Pro Microphone Call Quality

Dear Syrcle & all other users who has raised AirPods Pro microphone call quality issue, 1st of all make sure you have purchased your pods from official sources.

Try to check model number of your pods. Go to settings/Select your pods/Find model number

For AirPods Pro (2nd generation) with MagSafe Charging Case (USB-C) Model number are A3047, A3048, A3049

Model AirPods Pro (2nd generation) with MagSafe Charging Case (Lightning) Model numbers are A2931, A2699, A2698

If your Pods model numbers are not matching with model number given above then I am sure, you are using clone/master copy of AirPods Pro.

Refer Apple support official website for more information: Identify your AirPods - Apple Support (IN)

Thank you for your time in reading this.

[Edited by Moderator]

Where you in a loud place? did you use the ANC?

This is insane guys. How's possible?

I tested a call in a mild noise club (around 75DB) and the person on the other side didn't have problems in hearing me.

Who DO NOT have this problem can specify more details?

1. call location (noisy? kind of noise, db if possible etc)
2. mode on the APP (transparency, ANC)
3. AirPodsPro firmware version

i firmly believe that on this point there aren't bad units. If the device works works for all, no doubt about that.

Interesting. Read the other posts. We've run through 4 pairs and all still having interference issues. Latest one (last week) yielded same results on Pro iPhones. I returned my pair last night until there's a fix and will repurchase then. (Genius said they've had several reports at their location of similar issues.)

Here's the checklist of what our team did to try and troubleshoot the issue as we tend to take the side of human error. We compared notes when finished and concluded it isn't user error.

1. Potential is electro-magnetic interference
2. Firmware: AirPod Pros
3. Firmware: iPhone 11 Pros
4. Software: iOS
5. Hardware: AirPod Pros

Tests we ran through:

• Turn off noise cancellation
• Ensure battery on iPhone 11 Pro is fully charge
• Ensure AirPods are fully charged
• Test with single AirPod and with both
• Restart iPhone
• Update iOS
• Test with different iOS incremental releases
• Test with multiple iPhone 11 Pros/Max repeat settings, charging, and releases to ensure consistency with testing scenarios
• Check log files
• Check log files for appropriate bluetooth codec being called (developer tools)
• Try with different carriers and and different numbers
• Test with AirPods in ears before making call.
• Try with phone close and increase distance. Does interference increase.

We have tested them while swimming or diving but that would be interesting. AirPods are terrific. Comfortable, sounds amazing and fast pairing with multiple devices. I believe this is a temporary issue that will be solved. Short term may be through adjusting codec, power, channel separation, etc. One factor of course is that these are bluetooth devices that have a 3rd party involved in setting the standards. Voice calls have a much lower range to begin with so packet size is smaller for handling network connections than music. I'm sure engineering is working hard to figure out where the responsibilities lie in fixing the interference for the long term while seeing what can be done through software to improve usage in the short term.

Ok I think I might have solved the issue for the mic within the iPhone.

1. Go to the Bluetooth settings on your AirPods Pro- turn off “Automatic Ear Detection”.
2. Click on “connect to this iPhone”- switch “automatically” to “when last connected to this iPhone”.
3. I also switched my microphone from “automatically switch AirPods” to whichever worked best (record on voice memos to see which one works best)

For Macs tho it’s the same old trick. Can’t have the background noise blocked but at least it’s better than the muffled mic. Go to bluetooth for the AirPods pro - open sound preferences, input- switch Airpod’s Pro to “Internal Microphone”.

Hope this works for y’all!

First thanks to all who replied in this topic.

I tried all the tipps but it does not work. The voice quality is just to low to use them for calls/voice messages/..

• reset the airpods (pressing the button on the back of the case for 10s or so + reconnect)
• switch between transparent/noice cancelling/off
• switch airpod mic only left/right
• turn off noice cancelling of phone

I am now sending in my airpods pro for the 3rd time.

1st time answer: the cannot be checked because I did not also send the case

2nd time answer: we checked 10 things which have absolutely nothing to do with your problem and could not find an issue

3rd time: tbc

I am really unhappy with the technical support. There is not even a way to send this thread as a means for the support to understand the problem. My feeling is that they don't have any interest in understandning the root cause. They just do their checklist and behave like robots. That is how you lose customers who have problems which their products which would be rather easy to correct if the support would have its brain on.

1. Ensure you are updated to iOS 15.1.1.
2. Settings > Bluetooth > Airpods Pro ”i” icon > disconnect. After disconnecting, select Forget Device.
3. open the Find My app on iPhone > Devices pane > Airpods Pro > Remove from Account.
4. Place the Airpods back into the case and connect the case to the charger.
5. on your iPhone go to Settings > General > Transfer or Reset iPhone > Reset > Reset Network Settings.
6. open the lid of the charging case, keep it open with the AirPods inside, and press and hold the button on the charging case. It will flash Amber and then start flashing White.
7. once flashing white, release the button and attempt the pairing process again to the iPhone.

hope this helps!

There are 2 parts to the recall. ANC is the 2nd part.

"Apple has determined that a small percentage of AirPods Pro may experience sound issues. Affected units were manufactured before October 2020.

An affected AirPods Pro may exhibit one or more of the following behaviors:

• Crackling or static sounds that increase in loud environments, with exercise or while talking on the phone
• Active Noise Cancellation not working as expected, such as a loss of bass sound, or an increase in background sounds, such as street or airplane noise"

I have the same issue on my airpods pro gen 1 and gen 2. No solution yet, below are the steps which I had performed:

1. factory reset the airpods
2. verified the recommended software options on ios
3. for the gen 1s I took it to the service centre they just refresh the airpods firmware
4. upgraded from gen 1 to gen 2, issue is still the same
5. the indoor call quality is good on the cellular or on FaceTime. But the outdoor call quality is horrible the caller can hear my environment noise but not mine.
6. tried a 50$ airbuds and it worked better then airpods
7. for now I have logged a case with apple repair to get my gen 2 checked

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.

Choosing just the left AirPod microphone makes a big difference for me. Before it was weirdly muffled and had strange artifacts.

Worth trying. Test it on voice notes.

More total crap from apple… 4 years of this issue and there’s no fix just total indifference by the rainbow squad. What’s the point of $250 AirPods when people on phone calls can’t hear you?!

my AirPods Pro is very horrible I have to shout if other person want to hear my voice during the call, I have to shout 2 or 3 times for reach the voice for other person

I turned off automatic ear detection.. got better.. try it. Then let us know if it works for you too

Mine are not fake, i buy them from an apple store and i definitely get this issue.