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Comment by inasmuch | Hacker News Reader

A little off-topic, but …

Does anyone else have problems with the current AirPods Pro dramatically prioritizing ambient noise (cars passing on the street, washing of dishes, etc.) over your own voice when on phone calls? This is a major problem with two pairs I've owned and with those owned by my girlfriend, brother, and pretty much everyone else who would humor me and test it out. My girlfriend and I have taken our sets to multiple different Apple Stores for diagnostics and even had one or both of the AirPods (and cases) replaced to no avail.

I kinda feel like I'm going nuts because I can't find many people talking about this online and it renders them effectively useless for calls when anywhere but sitting at home in a quiet room.

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You're not nuts - this has been a huge issue for a long time. It's what makes taking calls outside on a street so frustrating (or even turning on the faucet to wash a mug while on a call).

It's weird because this wasn't an issue with the initial versions of AirPods firmware. But somewhere along the line, they tuned the firmware to introduce the issue you're describing.

Check your settings on your call that it is on Voice Isolation; there are three settings IIRC that tell the microphone what to focus on.

Oh wow, this is really helpful. I did a quick test and this seems to make a big difference!

For anyone reading: if you're on a call, pull down on control center and there's a Mic Mode setting that appears that you can change to "Voice Isolation". This setting won't be there if you're not in a call.

Here's an article that explains it: https://www.lifewire.com/use-voice-isolation-on-ios-15-52064...

I have a problem where Voice Isolation partially cancels out my voice, especially when background noise is pronounced, and actually makes calling a worse experience for both parties. Whenever I'm on a call outside, with my AirPod Pro's, the person on the other end complains that Voice Isolation cancels out every other word. When I experiment between keeping Voice Isolation on or off, almost everyone I've tried this with prefers it off. It turns out filling in missing words takes more energy than understanding my voice with background noise.

I wish Voice Isolation could be pre-trained on our voices, similar to how Face ID pre-trains on your face. That way, the phone's software can know to recognize your voice and not cancel those out.

It's the worst when you're talking to someone with AirPods who is doing other tasks while talking to you, like chores around the house. The noise cancellation is perfect until some loud sharp noise then BAM your ear drums get blasted. As an end-user, though, I much prefer my AirPods to my Bose over-ears in almost all situations.

Yeah this is pretty standard behavior. The worst part is that the headphones cancel most of the background noise out while the mic magnifies it, so you think you're in a perfectly quiet space but everyone else on the call is wondering what's going on on your end.

Enabling "Voice Isolation" might help: https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/iphone/iphb54d5dee2/io...

I don't think the microphones are great but I've found this helps.

Sure do, i wonder if these new ones have fixed that. The talk about a microphone update on apple's site...

Pretty much everyone at my company who has Airpods suffers from this, it seems particularly bad on Zoom for some reason (still happens on Google Meet, but less often).

Zoom's automatic gain adjustments aren't responsive enough in my experience. You can disable it and pick a manual level for mic input. But that's hardly a fix for this issue, of course.

I do. I have a couple of friends with AirPods Pro and absolutely hate calling them because all I can hear is ambient noise.

This happens without headphones as well. Any ambient noise on a call triggers silencing that makes conversations almost impossible sometimes. Like my parents are outside and there's a light breeze and 80% of them speaking is muted.

Happens with normal phone microphone, worse with speakerphone, happens with my calls with my Bose headphones and my AirPod Pros.

It's a phone setting, I'd buy a case of beer for anybody who could show me how to turn off the noise suppression completely. It is clearly happening on iOS, not the headphones.

Call someone within AirPods Pro and then have them remove them and talk you directly on the phone.

The difference is huge! What I mean to say is that AirPods Pro make what you describe even worse

I've definitely experienced the ear-piercing scream of a siren on the other end only to be told by the person I'm talking to that the ambulance is like eight blocks away. I remember that as far back as my LG Chocolate.

But what AirPods are doing is either a dramatic escalation of that or something different altogether. Typically when I encounter this problem, I or the person I'm talking to will hang up and call back without AirPods, using the regular phone mic or speakerphone or whatever, and it will be significantly better if not completely resolved.

Exactly the same issue here.

It’s customizable.

https://support.apple.com/guide/airpods/customize-transparen...

I think you're misunderstanding. This isn't an issue with noise cancelling or transparency mode. The issue is with the way the AirPods Pro mic picks up the user's dialogue (and surrounding noises) and relays/amplifies them to the person on the other end of a phone call.

For example:

Person A calls Person B. Person B answers using AirPods Pro. They begin talking. Person B decides to wash a dish in her sink while talking to Person A. Person A goes from hearing Person B's voice clearly to barely hearing it at all behind the seemingly amplified sound of the dish washing. Person B is none the wiser and doesn't understand why she has to keep repeating herself. Both parties hang up in frustration. Then they break up and enter simultaneous but separate downward spirals until neither can afford AirPods Pros anymore. Then they meet again and decide to talk on the phone. They hear each other clearly. Their lives improve. They can afford AirPods Pros again. The cycle repeats.

That link describes how the person wearing the AirPods can customize how much of the environment noise they (!) want to hear.

The person you were responding to was talking about calling an AirPod user and hearing too much of their (!) environment noise.

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