Airpods Pro: very bad quality in Headset mode on Windows 10

Anonymous
2020-04-02T12:50:11+00:00

Dear all,

I've got my new Airpods Pro, they work well with my iPhone.

Also on Windows 10 via bluetooth, sound quality is good when using the "Airpods stereo" mode.

However, in the headset mode ("Airpods Hands-Free AG Audio") sound and especially microphone quality is extremely bad. I tried to change the default format (see screenshot, it's only 8000Hz), but I cannot change it as it's grey. Any advice to get a better microphone quality?

Windows for home | Windows 10 | Devices and drivers

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Anonymous
2022-01-17T19:57:00+00:00

According to this post it should be fixed already in Insiders Build (currently Dev Channel only).

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  1. Anonymous
    2021-01-22T22:20:01+00:00

    thank you for this detailed response, it helped me to finally understand what is going on....and why;

    • airpod pro audio quality was sometimes terrible in Windows listening to music, but sometimes OK
    • why I see my airpods listed twice in the volume icon (playback device list)
    • why sometimes on video calls my microphone was not picked up as a device option

    With the selection 1; Headset airpods - acts as a headset (with microphone) and audio quality is VERY poor - have to use this for video calls)

    With selection 2: Headphones Airpods - microphone is disabled but audio quality is excellent (much much much better for listening to music)

    Thanks for helping understand.  Just hope at some point this gets fixed to where you can actually have quality sound AND a microphone at the same time!

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  2. Anonymous
    2021-01-07T11:44:59+00:00

    I was also able to connect my AirPods 2 using Jabra Link 370. The advantage is that it now automatically switches between Stereo and Mono as soon as you are using the microphone. It still doesn't solve the problem that the sound quality is much lower when the mic is in use.

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  3. Anonymous
    2020-12-23T09:30:32+00:00

    Hello guys,

    I completely agree with all of you and for this reason we have this topic already open. And if you google another related topics this issue is detected since some years ago.

    I am a Linux OS developer and my conclussion is that ther is a BUG with windows and bluettoth native drivers. This problem doesnt appears in  LINUX or MACOS with same bluetooth device, so the problem is in Windows.

    However as other Windows issues there is not any specialized support. They always response with "you have to go troubleshooting..." or "updates" bla bla bla... anythig works because they don't have a finally solution.  p

    I use some workarounds as mentioned in this thread but another time Windows fails without a final solution.

    Regards,

    Alex

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  4. Anonymous
    2020-12-18T17:15:34+00:00

    Sorry, I disagree. There are some BT headsets, which allow better Mic sound quality, because it is set to 16bit 16000 hz, but with Apple devices the Mic audio is set to poor quality as posted above.

    And yes, you can select Headphone profile for audio playback but you must set handfree for the mic, and THAT is the real problem.

    Another issue is, you don‘t hear the poor audio quality from the mic yourself, only the partners, you are talking to (teams, skype, zoom etc.) will face this poor quality, and this can be very anoying, I do face this effect daily from other colleagues ...

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