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Comment by vwadhwani | Hacker News Reader

I just want a pair of airpods that allow me to have a conversation outdoors. I'm always getting feedback that the ambient noise makes it difficult for people to hear me talk. I can't even do the dishes while on a call without people complaining.

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I believe iOS 15 includes a little-touted feature: "Voice Isolation" mode; I haven't tested it comprehensively, but other similar technology (e.g. RNNoise [1]) has very impressive results in the scenarios you allude to.

[1] https://jmvalin.ca/demo/rnnoise/

I wish I could upvote this 10x. I don't know what Apple does with their processing, but the quality of the Airpods microphone is very poor (the worst I've ever heard). Especially outside, but even indoors.

I'm commenting to see if that's everyone's experience, or if we're outliers.

I think many people have that issue. Voice isolation mode, new to iOS 15, helps.

By chance I bought a Sennheiser headset for Zoom calls, and the real killer feature is a high quality mic with firmware noise cancellation. At the time I was in a hurry and bought the most expensive Senn's I could find on Amazon, and lucked out. I've had two people at work ask me what I use. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00J8ME6QA

I think the key difference is the microphone boom. If a microphone is close to your mouth, then most of the ambient noise cancellation is done.

I assumed this as well before I had an issue with the device where the firmware somehow got corrupt and I had to update it. Without the firmware noise cancellation, people complained that they could hear everything, the creaking of my wooden floor every rustle of every piece of paper and so on. But once I fixed the firmware all of that went away. That said I think you're right and putting the mic closer to your mouth is probably a good thing in general

I've had better luck with the Jabra Elite wireless earbuds. Less complaints of background noise or muffled voices than the AirPods I tried using for a very brief period.

Try to pair them again! My girlfriend said the same thing, as if my voice was attenuated instead of the other way around. All it took was re-pairing them.

I have this problem too. A shame as walking the dog is a good time to catch up on phone calls

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