AirPods Bad Sound Quality on Mac - Apple Community 3/13/19, 10(57 AM

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mxmtsk

Level 1 (32 points) Notebooks

Q: AirPods Bad Sound Quality on Mac

Hello,

I'm using the latest MacBook Pro with TouchBar together with my AirPods. Sometimes the sound quality switches to a
bad, noisy sound as if I would listen to some 2$ headphone from Walmart. Sometimes it just takes a few moments and it
switches back, sometimes it stays for hours even if I reconnect. Has anyone experienced similar issues and found a
solution? Is it possible that my MacBook or AirPods are broken?

Thanks,
Max

Posted on Jan 4, 2017 3∶53 AM

Reply I have this question too (507)

mxmtsk Level 1 (32 points) Notebooks ! Solved

A:
So I just had a call with Apple regarding this and it seems to be that they are aware of the issues and a temporary
workaround is to switch the mic from the AirPods mic to the internal microphone.

That workaround is working fine for me.

I experienced the issues in premiere pro and XCode who both seems to use the microphone all the time which causes
the bandwith of the bluetooth connection to shrink (or whatever, this is what the guy told me )

Posted on Jan 14, 2017 3∶36 AM

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AirPods Bad Sound Quality on Mac - Apple Community 3/13/19, 10(57 AM

ncookleon Level 1 (9 points) Notebooks Helpful

Apr 12, 2017 3∶11 PM in response to bayonguy

Switch to the Internal Mic in Input Sound settings. It really does fix it. The problem as I understand it from Googling is that
when the mic is in use, the AirPods (having to technically function as standard Bluetooth earbuds) switch to this weird
industry-standard mode for both sound input and output to happen at once. Basically, it sounds like garbage, and it's
weirdly inconsistent. There's no way Apple didn't notice this; they must have simply not found a workaround in time for
launch, and any such workaround would involve a lot of work in software on macOS and iOS to fix it. When connected to
Android phones and PCs, the AirPods would unavoidably still have this issue.

Tech problems.

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