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Comment by askafriend | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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