Poor audio quality with AirPods Pro 2 since iOS 16 update : anyone else ?

It affects everyone. If you don’t use the built-in spatialized stereo (*not* the Atmos spatialization), though, you won’t notice it.

Here is a copy/paste of the more detailed post I made on reddit. It has specific steps to reproduce the bug:

"Spatialize Stereo" no longer works with iOS 16.X, for tracks available in Atmos when Atmos is disabled in settings. 

As the title says, and referring to Airpods Pro 1 and 2, used with Apple Music. 

Explanation: there are a couple different "flavors" of spatial audio: there is the built-in stereo spatialization which can work on any audio track, and then there's the special Dolby Atmos spatial audio available on some songs in Apple Music.

In the past, you could choose to either use the "standard" stereo spatialization, OR the Dolby Atmos spatial audio. For tracks available in Atmos, you could disable Atmos in Settings and still use the "standard" stereo spatialization provided by the AirPods Pro.

Now, with iOS 16.0 and 16.1, using Apple Music, the "standard" spatialization does not work for tracks that are available in Atmos. Even with Atmos disabled, if the track is available in Atmos, the standard spatialization does not function. If you try to toggle it between Off, Fixed, and Head-Tracked, nothing happens.

To reproduce the bug: 

• Go to settings > Music > Dolby Atmos. Set it to OFF. 
• Also in settings > Music, turn OFF "Download in Dolby Atmos." 
• Now open Apple Music and find any song which is available in Atmos format. Play it. 
• Open Control Center by swiping down from the top-right of the screen. Long-press the headphone volume slider. Touch the Spatialize Stereo button, and change it between Off, Fixed, and Head Tracked. 
• If you do the above, you will find that changing between these settings does nothing.

This is not how it used to work, and something is broken. Why do we care? Because sometimes Atmos-mixed tracks sound awful, but the normal version of the track using the built-in "Spatialize Stereo" sounds good. Because of this bug, we can no longer listen to any "available in Atmos" track in spatialized stereo, unless we use the Atmos spatialization. And with more and more tracks becoming available in Atmos on Apple Music, this is a growing problem that affects a big proportion of the available music.

Hello, TristanJacquel.

Which firmware version is running on your AirPods? To check, go to Settings > Bluetooth > AirPods. Tap "i", then scroll down to the About section to see the firmware version. If you see something other than 5A377, let us know.

In addition, make sure to restart your iPhone 13 (Restart your iPhone) and reset your AirPods (How to reset your AirPods and AirPods Pro) as those steps may help with this behavior.

Let us know if we can help with anything else at all or if this doesn't settle your issue so we can look into this further with you. Thanks and have a fabulous day!

I know exactly what your problem is. With iOS 16.X, Apple introduced a buggy behavior: On *any* track available in Atmos, you can no longer use the regular built-in spatialized stereo. Even if you turn off Atmos in Apple Music's settings, toggling the spatialization settings on any track available in Atmos does nothing. It's a bug.

And as many of us are well aware, many of the Atmos rendered tracks sound like garbage when Atmos is on.

This is the only workaround I've found:

• Turn off Atmos and "Download in Atmos" in Apple Music's settings.
• Then find and play a song in Apple Music that is NOT available in Atmos.
• This will let you change the stereo spatialization to the built-in fixed or head-tracked spatialization. (It should work as long as the track you're playing is not available in Atmos anywhere on Apple Music.)
• Now, once you successfully have the built-in spatialization working, don't toggle it off or change the spatialization mode. (If you do that while any Atmos-available track is playing, even with Atmos disabled, you won't be able to turn stereo spatialization back on without first going back to a non-Atmos track.)

I've submitted the info and the steps to reproduce the buggy behavior via user feedback to Apple, but who knows if they read it or even care.

The spatialization settings affect the frequency response significantly, so unless you have spatialization completely disabled (including Atmos) in your testing, you might not be comparing apples-to-apples.

Because of the buggy behavior, sometimes it might appear as if spatialization is active when it isn't, and tracks that are using Atmos spatialization make it all the more confusing to interpret because of the bug.

I can't think of any other reason audio would seem to be different on different generations of iPhone. The digital-to-analog conversion is happening in the AirPods themselves. The phones are just piping out the same digital stream to them via Bluetooth, regardless of what generation the iPhone is. The phone hardware shouldn't be playing any role.

My AirPods Pro 2 haven’t been the same since the recent updates. Transparency mode used to be crystal clear now it has a slight muffled sound. The microphones I was so happy after my first GEN got worse with age, and everyone complained constantly about the background noise. I was thrilled that with the GEN 2 everyone was raving about how good they sounded, and no one could hear any background noise but since the updates that’s changed they all comment about the background noise being back. I truly believe Apple is killing them on purpose at this point.

I tested my iPhone XS Max running on iOS 15.1 and compare it to my iPhone 11 that is ruining on iOS 16.2; and the iPhone XS Max sounded better, it has more bass and I can hear more background music.

And on my iPhone 11 (16.2), sounded more muffed and the volume is not higher than my iPhone XS Max (15.1).

Not a single issues with mine.

I just checked my AirPods and they are at 5B59 not sure how to update and my phone is up to date these are airpod pro 2s with a iPhone se 2nd gen