Airpods Pro 2 noise cancellation worse after firmware update 7A294

Yeah 7a305 broke my AP2's ANC completely. I'm certainly Apple's captive, and they can apparently do anything they want to me, but after reading all of this, I'm even nervous to pay their ransom and re-buy AP2's, because apparently it happened to new ones as well. Very, very disheartening for the brand.

SAME!!! I have both AirPods Pro 2 and AirPods Max and up until recently they were both incredible for noise cancellation - I’m autistic and I often need this for sensory issues, I was SO impressed before because noise cancellation felt like instant silence whether I used my pods or my max headphones. Now, I would definitely not recommend them and am actively looking for another brand that performs the way Apple used to…the “noise cancellation” is so bad now that I actually can’t even tell if it’s on because I can hear everything, even things that aren’t very loud. They are basically not much better than foam ear plugs, I have to run a white noise app to block ambient sound now and it still doesn’t really work. PLEASE FIX THIS APPLE, you had the BEST product and now it sucks :(

Shame to see the best ever feature in the Airpods pro 2 that no one could deny became such a mediocre noise reduction at best, I’ve bought them less than a month ago and I am really regretting my decision now

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.

Just want to add my comment here in addition. Completely agree that my AirPods Pro 2 noise cancelling feels about 60% as effective as before. I do a daily commute on a train and like to use noise cancelling to drown out noise, now I can hear everything, just reduced. If this doesn’t get resolved asap I will be forced to move to other earphones.

Exactly. Get as many people to post here and comment on X(former Twitter) on Apple support posts. Let's get their attention.

7A305 essentially entirely disabled both ANC and transparency on mine. I reset them, cleaned them, everything. I just threw them out, I'm done with Apple hamstringing these AirPods more with every update and now they're essentially useless as the sound quality also took a major dive.

I just got new pro2 buds from a applecare replacement, and the ANC is still nowhere near as good as it used to be, if I had to try for an educated guess based on Apple's history, I'd say they are prepping for a new AirpodPro model in the future that will have "The best noise cancelling we have ever made".

I'd like to figure out how to revert to the old software versions to confirm these suspicions.

Same here as of 7A305. Huge step back for me. I live in a city with relatively high levels of noise pollution (Hong Kong) and my AirPods Pro 2 used to be life saviors while outside. Now even indoors I am able to hear (and be distracted by) AC and fan noise, street construction noise, etc. Huge +1 for the capability to be brought back at previous levels, hopefully sometime soon🤞

i have been very impressed with my original AirPod pros noise cancelling. Purchased pro 2 as Apple advertised 2x noise cancelation performance. They currently cancel 50% as well as my old ones did. Generic over ear headphones currently cancel noise better than the pro 2. This has to be a bug. Cleaning does not help. Apple please fix this!

Same here. I used to use the ANC when sanding and using a drill and it provided enough noise cancelling, on par with other certified ear protection plugs.

Now after the firmware upgrade the ANC is not strong enough to use them safely on those activities.

Extremely frustrating.

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.

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.

exactly the same for me. 3 months old AirPods Pro 2 cleaned regularly suddenly went from good ANC to not enough.