AirPod Pro Microphone Call Quality

At the Genius Bar now. We tried removing the tips and one of them was stuck inside; he had to use a tool to remove it. When we replaced the tips things sounded so much better.

It's worth a try and I hope it helps someone.

I had this problem either,

but after I changed microphones setting from ‘automatically switch AirPods’ to ‘always left/right AirPod’. The call quality is better.

For me, this also works on both of noise cancellation mode and transparency mode.

Of course never use noise canceling when you’re calling.

you can also try to force the right/left mic to work instead of automatic, set by default.

You can find that option in the Bluetooth setting of AirPods Pro

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.

I had these issues as well and this is embarrassing but make sure you have your AirPods in the right ears. Sounds stupid, I know, but it happens. I thought I was having intermittent microphone issues but I was, in a rush, sometimes putting them in the wrong ears. Unlike the first gen AirPods, the pros, when in the wrong ear, don't feel too different. I was on the phone and happened to look in a mirror and realized my mistake. Hope this helps.

Hi i too faced the microphone issue

All i did was forget this device in bluetooth and connected again

Make sure to reset airpod

After forgeting the device

Try holding the AirPods connect button on airpod for around 15 seconds and connect to the iphone once there is the orange/red light

My issue was solved

Hope it helps everyone

It has solved my issue

I think with 17 pages of this we can conclude there is an issue with the Airpod Pros with regard to call quality whether it's ANC conflict or design. I've reported through product feedback with bench testing we've done using a number of devices, software updates, AppleCare directives and purchase of several new AirPods. Our company went through every conceivable path and found in each one we could replicate the issue and reported each of them here.

The only remedy at this point if you are noticing this issue on calls and it's not usable, is to return them. We are confident that this will be addressed by Apple in future releases. For now, we simply chose something else. That is the best way to get Apple's attention.

Hello all, I have been through 5 pairs of Air Pods 2nd Gen all with my wife complaining she could not hear me well in the car. Muffled and not clear, she hated talking to me on my Air Pods. I bought Air Pods Pro and she still complained. So i returned all of them. I recently bought the Air Pods Pro again and i think i have found a solution that might work. Still testing, but so far so good on call quality. Air Pods Pro have a setting where you can set Noise Cancellation on 1 Air Pod(in Accessibility menu on iPhone) For calls I always only use 1 pod(Left). I have the setting to only using the mic on the Left Pod and that is the only one I use for calls. Once you set Noise Cancellation for 1 pod on(in Accessibility on iPhone), it seems to work for calls pretty good. I have been struggling with this for some time, cause i really wanted the Air Pods to work. I hope this helps you...

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.

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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 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........

So I called in to Apple and got bounced between Chase(who I bought it through) and Apple. I called an Apple tech and they complained they couldn't hear me and I said "That's why I'm calling". She let me know that Air Pods Pro manufactured before October 2020 and before are facing recall. So if you have problems, contact them. I inconvenienced myself and went down to the store at 7:30pm and they checked them, paired them with their device and had me make a call. I couldn't tell if it was much better or not, but it seems the latest IOS update was out and I had to go home and install it to test it and try it out...so I installed the last update last night and I haven't tested it yet, but don't think it will have fixed anything. Then I have to go back to Apple and THEN take the thing and send it back to Chase for a replacement. What a pain...

After suffering for weeks and keep raising the same complaint,again and again they replaced my rt earpiece after demanded them to connect me with the head office , this is day 3 and I didn’t have the same problem so far. Will update you.

Im not sure if I ever will trust Apple products again

I called Apple support few days ago and they change my AirPods Pro for a new ones.

At the beggining I’ve spoken well with it but one day after they has updated to the last firmware and the call background noise returns.

I have test using voice memos app and it’s incredible the difference to a worse sound.

I hope an update soon,

I think I may have solved this for myself.

I too, had problems where no one could hear me. I went into setting for the iPods and noticed that both left and right side have a mic and both were checked as on.

I turned the left mic off and finally had a successful phone call.

Hi,

I was having a similar issue using my Airpods Pro with my iPhone to take phone calls. The start of each of my sentences was muffled and hard for the other person to hear.

I seem to have fixed this by repairing my Airpods Pro (following the guide that came in the box) and setting (settings > Bluetooth > airpods pro 'i') noise cancellation to off and Microphone > always left.

Hope that helps