Airpods Pro 2 noise cancellation worse after firmware update 7A294

I am also experiencing the same issue. I even tried purchasing a new set to see if maybe mine were faulty, but the new ones did the same exact thing. This is really frustrating considering my AirPods Pro 1st Gen were fantastic and I “upgraded” to the 2nd Gen for even worse performance.

Same, when I bought these a few months ago, I couldn't hear my son talking to me sitting in front of me. I can now hear him from another room.

Factory reset, deleted and repaired with the same problem.

it started about a month ago.

Guess what, same exact issue here. I recently bought my AirPods Pro 2 and was throughly enjoying them for about 2 weeks. One day I was in the gym a noticed that for some reason I could hear every the gyms music like ANC wasn’t even on. I assumed I had acidently turned on conversation awareness but when I check I had not.

This is extremely frustrating and just disappointing from apple to be completely honest. The fact that an update affects the quality of a day one feature is ridiculous to me. I hope that maybe apple will see all of these comments and will respond and hopefully fix the issue but something deep down is telling me that they won’t.

Such a shame as I only got to experience proper good ANC for only about 2 weeks.

you were mistaken. adaptive cancels out less noise than anc, even when set to “less noise”

what makes me angry is that when anc is on, it doesn’t fully cancel out the noise in that way, that it cancels out 70% of the noise and the most distracting 30% remains. And that remaining 30% uncanceled noise is more distracting than if the noise was 70% uncanceled.

so anc is kinda useless now, in most cases. the remaining uncanceled sounds are more distracting than if they weren’t canceled out.

[Edited by Moderator]

Everything was simple and clear before the recent airpods pro 2 firmware updates: 

If you want to hear all of the outside sounds — use transparency mode.

If you want balance between ANC and transparency — use adaptive mode.

If you need to completely block the outside environment — use ANC mode.

So what do we have after the update:

Transparency mode amplifies the external sounds by 200-300%. What for? We paid for headphones with good ANC, not for medical hearing aid device! 

Adaptive mode - what is it now for? I don’t understand.

ANC mode - is completely funked up. It leaks so many high pitched sounds, which are quite distracting. In fact, in many cases it’s more annoying with ANC than without. You can clearly hear speech, transport noises, etc, while ANC is on. Which is disgusting and not how it used to be and not how it’s supposed to be and not what I paid for, in my humble opinion.

Apple, why not keep it working like this:

Transparent is transparent, ok.

Adaptive - keep it adaptive, balanced.

ANC - noise cancellation! Cancel out 97% of external noise, which is technically possible, as we remember from life before the  dreadful update

Rhetorical question. Of course they follow this topic, but will never react 🧐🤣

I have an iPhone 15 Pro Max and had AirPods Pro until losing them near start of the year. After ages and much deliberation and research of other models against the newly released AirPods Pro 2nd gen I finally decided to bite the bullet and budgeted to afford to replace my old ones, confident that they were going to be as good as my first AirPods Pro, and hopefully better form what reviews had been saying. Well. It’s Christmas. I opened and received my brand spanking new AirPods Pro directly delivered from Apple. It’s been a while since I’ve had the pleasure so at first the noise cancelling (muffling) seemed to work and I was impressed with the new modes. It’s now been a day - a bustling, busy British Christmas Day - and I am very confident that these AirPods are just downright worse at CANCELLING noise. I could hear talking, music, barking, pretty much every sound outside of background noise, just muffled to be less loud. That’s not what I want, and that’s not why these USED to be praised as the one of the top contenders for sleek and efficient ANC headphones. I use my headphones for chill quiet me-time and to block out convos so I can focus at work. I’m so sad to say after looking forward to them for so long (they were my main present to myself), that I’ll most likely be going back to Apple and returning them unless they sort this out.

As literally hundreds and countless people have pointed out (bear in mind there are thousands others who probs just haven’t bothered), the problem clearly wasn’t present before a specific firmware update. Is this a silly safety thing beoimg

forced? Evil marketing so it looks like the next AirPods have improved cancellation?? Idk. But please fix it. I’ll be looking elsewhere for now, probs Sony or Beats, and will be a lot more cautious trusting Apple in the future. My mother caught an awful cough over Christmas and is on the other side of the room fully audible spluttering away as I’m typing this.

Suffice to say I’m left feeling extremely bitter and frustrated. Merry Christmas 👍

Same issue here. First time I noticed this was when noticing that I suddenly could hear the peep when pressing a code to enter at work. Before I could never hear this. Then I started noticing a lot more noise when commuting. The final blow was when I went on a plane.

I would say my airpod pro 2 is now no better noise cancelling than my 2018 Sony WH-1000XM3. And of course these have a lot better sound than the airpods.

I recently got my AirPods Pro 2 replaced a week ago, and everything was working perfectly until yesterday. It seems like the noise cancellation feature has gone haywire again. Before the replacement, I could only hear people talking within a meter, but now I can clearly hear them from 10 meters away. It’s quite frustrating!

Currently on iOS 18.2.1, firmware 7B21 with the same issue. Very disappointed—these are brand new & I’m now using my Bose from 2014 because they are better. I also tried the hearing aid function, and it has a very long way to go. I may try to return these.

Same issue here. I had to fight with Apple for them to send me a new pair even though I have AppleCare+. They said I had to send mine back without a replacement until mine were fixed. I told them absolutely not, I paid for express replacement and I want express replacement. The guy argued with me for a while but he finally relented. I got my new set today and I was so excited. That excitement was short lived. As soon as I put them in, same issue. Very, very disappointing considering what I paid for these. I’m looking for a better alternative if anyone has any suggestions.

I can even hear myself snap my fingers on writing at my keyboard, something I definitely could not before.

I keep checking whether transparency is on instead of noise cancellation - it is not.

The change is enormous. Noise cancellation was the only reason I bought AirPods Pro 2, and now the feature is essentially completely gone. This will spread quickly by word of mouth and inevitably hurt their sales.

Apple needs to fix this ASAP. I was gonna upgrade to AirPods Pro 3 when they come out but that feels like a major gamble now considering the lack of noise cancellation.

Exactly the same for me I was gifted these as a valentines gift 2025 to replace my old AirPods Pro 1s.

My girlfriend is now really upset that I am having this issue - going from great noise cancellation that I used to brag about to stating these are the worst apple product I have ever used, and for the first time even apple were awful to deal with is the support and appeared really uninterested and not wanting to be helpful which I thought was there whole USP!

So I have been told to send these back to the supplier she purchased them from and get a replacement, when asking if the new ones would be better I was told... "some of the products might be a manufacturing defect. Rest assured you will get the best functioning model".

I am not filled with confidence after reading this support page that for £220 the new ones are going to be any better. I am really appalled with the service and support I have got after years of using thousands of pounds worth of apple products

2 macs

3 ipads

too many iPhones to count

3 apple watches

2 Apple TVs

4 HomePods

Just Followed How to clean your AirPods Pro - Apple Support to clean up. No help. Can hear a guy talking 5 meters away

I've just searched to see if there was anything outside this thread that could be useful, and I found several threads from a year ago of people complaining about the exact same thing after the IOS17 upgrade!!! replies stop around January but nobody goes back to those threads to say if it was finally fixed or not.

In one of the threads someone pointed to this feedback form to direct our complaints:

Feedback - AirPods - Apple