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Ask HN: How to prevent audio downsampling with AirPods?

20 points by aloukissas ↗ HN
It seems that whenever I'm using AirPods (Gen.1) on an app that requires both audio output and input (microphone), the sound output seems to be automatically downsampled to what can be described as super low-quality MP3. Using e.g. the laptop microphone seems to fix the issue. This doesn't seem to happen with other BT headphones (e.g. with my Beats Studio).

Even worse, this is system-wide (e.g. bad audio quality is across apps, e.g. a YouTube tab or Spotify).

Any ideas?

17 comments

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tW4r
I would guess this is the expected behavior as afaik the AirPods have to switch Bluetooth profiles from the stereo audio output A2DP to the mono audio input and output HFP to allow for mic audio
BenGosub
Turning on your mic requires real-time audio and because Bluetooth is slow, the sound is compressed.

Hq audio through Bluetooth has some latency

thesandlord
While Bluetooth audio streaming quality has gotten much better with standards like aptX and AAC, the headset standard (which is required for two-way audio) falls back to standard A2DP which is much much lower quality.

AFAIK there is no solution for this aside from disabling the mic on the headphones and only using your laptop mic or another mic.

soared
Is it possible to disable the airpods mic? I don't see that setting and didn't find a solution on google. I put my airpods through the wash, so the speakers work but the mic doesn't.
dmitrygr
False. Not a2dp (that isn't a codec but a protocol, and NOT the one used for headset profile)

Much worse

Cvsd(baaad, one bit per sample, similar to ADPCM) or mSBC( similar to mpeg layer 1 audio bad)

Source: worked on this for years.

thesandlord
That makes even more sense, thanks for the correction!
Ratiofarmings
But why is the audio quality fine for example on a facetime call. If the two way standard is that bad, wouldn't it be universally bad?

Beyond that, is anyone working on a better one. I can see using AirPods as normal wireless headset if it wasn't for above described issue. They're great otherwise.

jonplackett
I came across this problem the other day too. I was trying to make a website that used a peer to peer audio connection between clients and binaural positioning and just couldn't get it to work. I thought it was the code and after far too long realised it was just my damn Airpods switching down to mono when I turned on the microphone.

Only figured it out by listening to binaural audio in one browser window and turning on the microphone to record in another and it still stopped the binaural sound working.

No solution as far as I know, they only have 2 channels and when you need one for voice you lose one for your ears.

sscarduzio
Is this solved in the new airpods pro?
TheGoddessInari
No. It's an inherent problem with Bluetooth.

The airpods pro also suffer from crippling firmware updates that make everything worse and active noise cancelation effectively useless.

djannzjkzxn
On Windows, the AirPods Pro maintain two connections with the PC, one using the headset protocol and the other using the better-sounding media protocol. It seems like they both work at the same time - I’ve had good experiences on video calls where somebody is streaming background music and it sounds the way it’s supposed to.

Also the noise cancelation definitely works although it’s impossible for me to objectively judge if it’s different than how it worked in the past (seems super hard to know without a blind test given how brains habituate).

noodlesUK
Yes, it is just a side effect of the only bidirectional profile in Bluetooth being the HFP profile, which is mono and generally sucks. You just can’t get audio that sounds better than a 2005 earpiece over Bluetooth if you need a mic. I hope there’s some serious engineering effort to fix this. I think there’s some proprietary magic that makes that work better in iOS.
mhdhn
What crap. Triggering my rage at Apple's stupid headphone (headset) port elimination on iPhones :(
floatingatoll
The app ToothFairy has an option to force any BlueTooth audio device into “output only” mode, as a per-device setting.

You can option-click the built-in Volume menu to get to the Input selector more rapidly.

If you’re on Windows, I believe you have to disable the Hands-Free device associated with each Bluetooth device? That’s as reliable as I’ve managed it to date, anyways.

windex
Apple has crippled gen 1 airpods with the 6.7.8 & 6.8.8 update. The thing just drops connections and sounds terrible. No way to downgrade them to the earlier version of frmware. Same thng with the newer airpods and ANC.