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Comment by synaesthesisx | Hacker News Reader

It's likely because the microphone/input channel is being activated - forcing the low-quality audio codec.

Yup, this seems to happen whenever AirPods convinces itself that it needs to use its microphone, which seems to necessitate degrading the audio quality.

Doesn't happen on iOS though, which leads me to think it must be a limitation of the Bluetooth hardware in Macs but not in iPhones and iPads?

I have seen this happen when using Siri or calling people on iOS.

All of my iOS devices are rather new, perhaps it depends on which one. I've used Siri, made calls, and spoke in channels on Discord without having it happen on my iPhones 7 and XS, and 2018 iPad. In comparison, my Macs are a 2013 Macbook Pro (running Mojave) and a Hackintosh desktop (still on High Sierra).

I’m using an iPhone SE, so it might be that it doesn’t have the necessary features to support this?

I encounter this issue with a different headset (Steelseries something or other) and both a MacBook Pro and a Lenovo something or other.

As soon as the headset is told to turn on the mic, quality drops significantly.

I figured it was by design, and using a better codec/more bandwidth whenever it could afford to, but dropping down to half that in order to run the mic channel side by side.

If I play PUBG Mobile on iOS with AirPods and activate the microphone ingame, the sound immediately turns to some weird mono channel low quality stuff. I always thought this was some kind of bug in the game, but apparently, this thread is the real answer.

I've had this happen with other Bluetooth headphones (Creative Aurvana Gold), my solution was to ctrl+click the volume icon in the menu bar and unset the headphones as Input device

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