Airpods Pro 2 noise cancellation worse after firmware update 7A294

Same here with the latest update(7B21). I bought mine about 2 months ago, ANC was outstanding. I am so disappointed now. It's sad to see how long they've been doing nothing about it and how they don't care about the problems of many of their customers, which were obviously caused by them. I hope the next firmware update will fix it.

Guess what, same exact issue here. I recently bought my AirPods Pro 2 and was throughly enjoying them for about 2 weeks. One day I was in the gym a noticed that for some reason I could hear every the gyms music like ANC wasn’t even on. I assumed I had acidently turned on conversation awareness but when I check I had not.

This is extremely frustrating and just disappointing from apple to be completely honest. The fact that an update affects the quality of a day one feature is ridiculous to me. I hope that maybe apple will see all of these comments and will respond and hopefully fix the issue but something deep down is telling me that they won’t.

Such a shame as I only got to experience proper good ANC for only about 2 weeks.

Same here. No ANC at all. Im not happy at all that apple dont care about their customers. Like ANC was main thing I was buying Airpods pro 2.. Without ANC, Ive just got very expensive regular headphones I could have from diferent brand for half a price. No more apple ever!

Me too, i had to return the AirPods 4 due to the poor ANC after trying the pro but when I got the pro after the famous update I can hear everything and I feel ripped, the main reason why I bought these is the beautiful ANC they had now they are just a bunch of expansive normal AirPods limit worse than 4’s ANC

Do not use noice cancelling headphones as hearing protection! Because of the physics of the whole thing I suspect you can possibly cause more damage with noice cancelling headphones than no protection. Use plugs designed for hearing protection.

you were mistaken. adaptive cancels out less noise than anc, even when set to “less noise”

what makes me angry is that when anc is on, it doesn’t fully cancel out the noise in that way, that it cancels out 70% of the noise and the most distracting 30% remains. And that remaining 30% uncanceled noise is more distracting than if the noise was 70% uncanceled.

so anc is kinda useless now, in most cases. the remaining uncanceled sounds are more distracting than if they weren’t canceled out.

[Edited by Moderator]

This issue is still occurring with version 7B21. Will this be fixed, or should we start considering another device to manage turning Noise Cancelling on and off? I have Auditory Processing Disorder (I’m on the autism spectrum), and ANC is an essential part of my daily routine

I may have worded it incorrectly, so I’m sorry for that. But what I meant was to keep the ANC active. Yes, I do realize that adaptive means canceling out less noise, but there was a passive setting within the adaptive settings I was referring to that would somehow fix the issue that most of us are experiencing with ANC currently. However, I have since returned them because the fix didn’t last for very long, so I’m not even sure where to find the setting that I was referring to anymore. Best of luck though. I’m truly hoping they get it fixed, because I would love an updated pair! Went back to my first gen pros for now 🥲

I completely agree with you. Unfortunately, my suggested “fix” did not last long. It was not long after that I again experienced the same degradation that you and so many others are currently experiencing with ANC. I have since returned them and went back to my original pros. I may have to charge them more frequently, but at least they work…

so you bring up and interesting idea that anc does harm to the ear because even though anc cancels out the noise, the ear is still exposed to loud sound thus the ear muscles mummify while anc is on? and so that’s why apple silently lowered anc effectiveness.

on the other hand we agree that anc frequencies are harmless to the ear.

and on the other side the risk comes from listening to content at high volumes for prolonged periods, not the noise cancellation itself.

but with these last updates, people now have to listen to their content with at least +50% volume, which damages their ears. so which is worse? 

there’s no confusion at all) you brought up the idea that ANC does harm people’s ears in a way that the ear muscles mummify while ANC is on. Is that correct?

and this is another point, addressed to @all: 

but with these last updates, people now have to listen to their content with at least +50% volume, which damages their ears. so which is worse? 

I used to be able to wear these to block out my cat from meowing downstairs when it's much too early to feed him. Now, plain as if he's right in the room next to me. PLEASE, Apple, FIX THIS!

The original post on this was 3 months ago and NOTHING has changed. Apple's whole "It just works" thing is long gone.

I noticed this morning that I have to put in both to activate the noise cancelling. I usually put one in at work to have my background noise and still hear when people approach me.

Now it says I have to put both in.

when just wearing the one the background noise is just too much. Very annoying, and amplified.

This stinks!

I think they're adding more and more stuff to Apple intelligence, all of these apps in the background trying to access the mic, and random other Apple devices you have sitting around trying to work together to improve performance. Sometimes, it takes me months to figure out what's causing a simple issue since everything is getting more and more complicated.

My issue right now is that, primarily as I'm speaking, I can sort of hear myself a little bit with slight feedback. This kind of impacts the flow of my speech, especially when I'm in meetings.