Airpods Pro 2 noise cancellation worse after firmware update 7A294

Same here. I could work previously with kids running in the background. Now I can hear them yelling at each other. This is NOT what I purchased. Please fix this ASAP. It's impairing my ability to work remotely.

Same here. No ANC at all. Im not happy at all that apple dont care about their customers. Like ANC was main thing I was buying Airpods pro 2.. Without ANC, Ive just got very expensive regular headphones I could have from diferent brand for half a price. No more apple ever!

I raved about my AirPods. Just bought another pair too. Now I wouldn’t recommend them to anyone and debating returning the ones I just got. They are horrible now with noise cancelling. I would often just wear 1 AirPod so I could hear my podcast/book clearly while still being alert of surroundings. Now I have to wear both and still can’t hear audio well. Apple needs to update and figure this out. My cheap ones from amazon are better than my AirPods.

See, and here I thought it was just me or my imagination that the ANC got worse. I swore that I could hear better with the ANC on rather than a few months ago where I couldn’t hear anything with it switched on.

I can hear someone talking to me clear as day whom normally I have trouble hearing with my AirPods Pro 2 off my head.

So yes, I’m experiencing this issue, too. Hopefully Apple fixes this because sometimes that feature is needed in my case.

Just got brand new 7A294s today and will be returning them because of this. I was so looking forward to being able to focus at work, and can't believe I didn't see all these forums complaining about the ANC changes before I purchased, as I usually do really good research.

Commenting to pile on so hopefully something changes. I am genuinely so sad and really hoped these would be a solution. If anyone has found any comparable solutions for sound sensitivity that are buds and not over-ear headphones, please feel free to reply and make a suggestion.

It happened to me that someone was calling my friend in a large room and I had the permeability mode on my AirPods pro 2. I had the music completely turned down.. And suddenly I hear as if someone was calling me who was calling her.. Loud and completely clear and I was about 10 meters away from her. She had no idea and I could hear her call beautifully and she didn't have a handsfree..

Same here. Noise canceling on my airpod pro2 virtually non existent. It muffles sound slightly, but you can hear conversations, tv almost any sounds. Passed airpod seal rest. Airpods 4 being without rubber tips, are doing better anc at the moment. Not better what airpods pro 2 did. Before on airpods 2 filtered all but very loud or sudden sounds, and those were very muffled. now i can have normal conversations with noise canceling on.

I recently noticed this as well after using them in a noisy server room. ANC was less comfortable than both adaptive and even off. It felt like ANC doesn't remove certain mid range frequencies anymore, so they felt loud with it enabled.

Tried it in other situations and noticed I can hear people speak relatively easily. Tried a running sink and it was only slightly quieter than adaptive (set to less noise). As I was testing them just now I heard my refrigerator turn on and I have no issues hearing it continue to run.

If I’m not mistaken, I may have found a workaround for this. I believe I’ve identified a bug in the “adaptive audio” feature with the Generation 2 Pros. Although your adaptive audio feature may be disabled, go into settings and tap on your AirPod Pro 2 set. Then scroll down to audio and then select adaptive audio. After that, set it to “less noise” so that you’ve basically got nothing coming in. I don’t know if this is the exact sequence involved (I went through soooooooooo many different settings last night), but after I did that it completely drowned everything out (finally!!!!!) Even as I’m sitting here typing this, it would have already started letting more noise in at this point. There would be certain sounds that it would try to drown out (heat, fans, humidifiers), and while doing so, it sounded like I was on the freeway with my car window rolled down. Not anymore!!! Works well now 🤩

I am badly affected by this. Tried cleaning, resetting but I can hardly tell the difference between NC on and off. This was the main reason for getting the Air Pods Pro 2 and for almost a year I had zero complaints

Same here, mine are now picking up the sound from my room tv at low volume, that never used to happen.

would have loved if we had a slider to adjust the amount of noise canceling that we needed instead of apple deciding for us.

guess it’s time to make the switch to a better competitor.

Hello, I have the same issue with my airpods pro 2.

I thought it was a problem

with the tips, so I bought brand new ones with a cleaning tool kit but the problem was still there after replacing them.

After some research I found your post on reddit and what I feared came true. Apple literally deleted the most important feature of this product.

I'm done with them. I'm out of the ecosystem.

I'm selling my Iphone 13 mini, my airpods pro and my watch series 6. I'm going OnePlus with the phone and Sony for the earphones.

And I went back to Qobuz.

Enough is enough.

Noticed exactly same issue. I never heard my Mac keyboard while typing but now i can clearly hear every press, just with slighly reduced volume. Tried to reset them, but didn't help. Then found this thread.

I bought AP Pro 2 in October 2022, basically after launch and was amazed by ANC to say the least.

Now it's awful to say the least, i don't even use transparency mode because i can hear everything with ANC on.

7B21 didn't fix anything, imo it has got even worse. I can hear cars outside, distant noises and so many other things that never bothered me throughout almost 2 years since i bought my headphones.

I'd love to use older software (i never use conversational awareness) but sadly there is no such option. Only one that comes to my mind is to buy new pair of headphones and never use them with any Apple device, but it's not really what i bought them for.

Hopefully this will be addressed soon and we get some response from Apple. Extremely disappointed by latest updates, ANC is a highly valuable feature that was one of the selling points of Pro models initially.

I’m curious as to why Apple will not address this issue. Likely because this was intentional on their end. Maybe because they want people to buy the AirPods 4 when they come out. Whatever the reason, it is unacceptable and I think this is the end of my relationship with Apple. I’ve been an Apple user since the first iPhone came out. I loved my AirPods Pro 2. The noise cancellation was incredible. Now I can hear a pin drop. Apple even replaced my AirPods and the new ones have the same issue. I can’t believe I’m about to say this, but me thinks it’s time to switch to Sony.

Thanks, I had a great laugh 😂 they should add this to the next ad campaign.

People, please take a second and submit your feedback to

Feedback - AirPods - Apple

where it might actually be heard (no pun intended)