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AirPods Suck in Video Conferences

30 points by jh00ker ↗ HN
Am I the only one that has trouble understanding people that use Airpods on video conferences? Overall I think I can understand over 95% of what someone using Airpods says, but it takes so much more mental energy and focus, compared to the people that have a little boom mic on a legit headset or have a desktop mic. If someone using Airpods has a non-native-English accent, then my comprehension drops even more and I find it really taxing to piece together what they are saying. In 2022, I really started struggling with so-called Zoom-fatigue and I've narrowed down the biggest factor to struggling to understand what people are saying with Airpods (combined with having to crank the volume of my headphones on my end).

I have dug into the issue with specific people and often we discover that they were inadvertently using the mic from their laptop or webcam. When we restored audio input to the Airpods, there was an improvement, but the audio quality still, for the most part, kind of, just ... sucks.

Is it just me? If not, can this serve as a PSA to Airpod users to upgrade to a simple, legit headset or desktop mic for the benefit of your fellow employees?

Airpod users: Do you find people asking you to repeat yourself in meetings? Have you tested out your set up (where the video conf app records your voice and plays it back to you)? Side question: Do you have any health concerns about making wireless earbuds your long-term choice of audio hardware, given we're going to be using video conferences for the foreseeable future? I'm sure Bluetooth is generally "safe," but what of the health effects of long-term (3-8 hours per day for the next 5+ years) use of two wireless radio transmitters so close to your brain?

38 comments

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lynndotpy
I think part of it is that Airpods, at best, add around ~150ms latency.
smoldesu
Wireless microphones in general suck. Dankpods has a good video[0] comparing a few Airpods models to the Earpods, and it's obvious that the fancy Airpods beamforming mics are no match for the small tumor attached to the Earpods. My understanding is that wirelessly transmitting and receiving audio data is hell on your Bluetooth bandwidth, so most headphones will switch codecs to playback and record at the same time. AFAIK, Airpods will switch between SBC and AAC depending on if your mic is getting used.
kayodelycaon
A $50 wired headset beats almost every wireless set I've used. The only wireless headset I'll use is my AirPods Max (what a stupid name). They seem to do a good enough job... and they cost 11x more.
skydhash
If your mic is on, I believe it’s HFP or something, it’s so bad I always have an earbud in my backpack. I’m not a native speaker and I don’t want to make work communication more difficult.
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mmastrac
Holy crap, yes. I started having conferences with people using Air Pods and they're dropping out so much. Please get an external mic!
piva00
Don't think this is an issue with AirPods. In my team more than 50% of us are using AirPods during meetings for years and we never had an issue with dropping sound, at all... Jitter on people's Wi-Fi networks, yes, that causes a lot of issues with video + audio but specifically from AirPods?

Getting an external mic for what reason, exactly? More e-waste for what benefit?

toast0
If nothing else, a wired mic is going to have a lot lower latency. Latency is the mind killer. Latency is the little-death that brings total obliteration. Etc.

Adding bluetooth latency to the rest of a generally awful stack of latency can push you through tolerable latency into the kind of latency where you have to start adding over after each transmission. And worse when it's inconsistent. Wired mic, wired ethernet helps with consistency.

mmastrac
For me it's the random up/down volume for voices. I can usually tolerate a small amount of dropouts but for whatever reason, someone using airpods tends to vary so much in volume I just can't parse what they are saying.
mhh__
If you have money get a good mic. People will like you more.
derekp7
Not only that, but a good mic can make you sound more authoritative. I won't go as far as to say it is a make/break type of deal, but when you have external customers on the line it really helps them take what you say at face value.

Personally I also run EasyEffects with a noise reduction plugin that takes out the A/C noise from the utility room across from my home office. Other plugins can help too, such as the deesser and equalizer. Best way to dial in your settings is to start up a Teams or Zoom meeting with just yourself, join from the computer and your phone, put good headphones on connected to the phone and hear yourself through the computer mic (there will be a slight delay which helps with "test... test..."). If you don't like the sound quality of your voice, play with the equalizer, and also the pitch adjustment plugin to make your voice a few cents higher or lower. Just subtle adjustments that is still "you" but better.

kryptn
I tried some AirPods Pros for a couple weeks. People consistently told me I sounded fine, but when on Zoom the audio would not sync up. One of them would be just slightly delayed from the other and I couldn't stand it, so I returned them.
pyrolistical
I also found this to be true when using AirPods. When my gen2 AirPods are used as both the speaker and mic, everybody sounds horrible. But when I use my standalone mic the speaker quality is great.

I suspect something to do with Bluetooth bandwidth.

Also AirPods speech to text on iOS is unusable. There is a fairly 1-2 second delay before it actually starts recording what you said. But if you use the built in mic on the iPhone it’s just fine

mikewhy
> used as both the speaker and mic, everybody sounds horrible

Yup, this is the curse of Bluetooth headsets

skydhash
It’s bandwidth related. It’s either a good codec when you’re only listening or the horrible one if you want to speak as well. Even when I wear a Bluetooth headphones I almost always chose the device microphone
nostromo
I think all wireless / bluetooth headsets have this problem.

Everyone should get a wired USB mic.

skydhash
I bought a cheap one that’s good enough to record songs with it. It was around USD 35. I added a USD 15 stand for more flexibility.
cdmoyer
I'll be honest, after several years, I've never noticed this. I probably have google meets, slack huddles, and phone calls with people for 2-4 hours a day, and most are using AirPods and nobody is asking anybody to repeat things. (Except when they weren't actually paying attention.)

I also record those mini slack screencasts with them all the time and have no problem understanding on review.

I know I personally am a loud talker, so maybe that helps. I've also upgraded to airpod pros, but did a year of remote without and many coworkers don't have them.

But, one coworker slowly turns into a robot when using his AirPods. Maybe it's about how much interference is in the area? But he's defaulted to using his laptop mic and AirPods to listen.

js2
The problem is mostly due to the Bluetooth Hands Free Profile's (HFP) limited 64-kbit/s bandwidth and the mSBC codec:

https://habr.com/en/post/456182/

Apple has switched to a higher quality codec (AAC-ELD) with the AirPods 3 and Pro:

https://medium.marco.zone/apple-implemented-the-biggest-impr...

https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/430411/airpods-3-u...

diebeforei485
But the new codec won't be used if the computer/phone being used for the call doesn't support Bluetooth 5.0 correct?
js2
I'm guessing it won't be used unless paired with an iPhone/iPad or a Mac running a recent version of macOS 12 (Monterey).

I currently use a wired Jabra headset that's falling apart that I want to replace with wireless. After reading up on it, I concluded that Bluetooth is a huge step backwards for wireless headsets compared to a dedicated protocol. I just ordered the Logitech H820e which uses DECT instead of BT. Some of the Steelseries wireless gaming headsets also use a dedicated protocol, but those are much bulkier than I wanted.

miki123211
AirPods, just like any other Bluetooth device, basically have two modes of operation. If you're just listening to audio, they use the A2DP profile, which lets one side send high-quality, stereo audio to the other, but not vice versa. The other profile, called HSP, works in both directions, but the audio quality is much lower, both for the headphones and the microphone. Therefore, as soon as you start using the AirPods' mic, your audio quality drops massively.

In fact, AirPods are slightly better than this than other headsets in some ways, if they're new enough and are connected to a compatible device, they use a slightly better codec than any other Bluetooth headset on the market, although they seem to have an obscene amount of noise reduction and other such filters.

Because of the fact that Bluetooth cuts out the higher frequencies, the effect is a lot less noticeable on male voices than on female ones, at least that's my impression. Women with higher voices, especially younger ones, are almost impossible to understand on some headsets, while some very masculine voices are almost perfectly clear.

If you desperately need a wireless headset that doesn't suck, they do exist, but they don't use Bluetooth. They are usually intended for gaming, so they offer low-latency, a much better microphone quality (although still not as good as what a wired mic can do), and work through a USB dongle. Therefore, you can only use these with a computer, not a phone. If you're going into that market, don't expect anything decent under $100 though, and you might even pay a lot more.

dogma1138
Most Bluetooth headsets these days use HFP profile for headset mode not HSP since HFP does come with more features and most importantly higher quality audio codec for call mode than the GSM coded that HSP supports.
andruc
Correct me if I'm wrong, but OP is complaining (IMO rightfully) about the quality of Airpod microphones, not the quality of incoming audio while using Airpods.
pseudosaid
how this is the top comment here illustrates the kind of intellectual folly I come here for
kkielhofner
I cringe whenever I join a call and someone is using Air Pods. You know you’re in for a muddied audio experience due to the aggressive noise reduction and the higher cognitive load for understanding speech that comes along with it.

Most of the time the person is in a quiet home office type environment. Almost any other mic is a better option.

I suspect the Air Pods input audio design was largely intended for a walk and talk on a busy urban street (as one example) and they do very well under those conditions.

Hopefully the implementation will eventually be a lot more adaptive.

That said the gaming headsets are cringey as well - audio quality is good but it’s visually distracting to see someone in a meeting look like they’re doing air traffic control.

crmd
I spent $90 on a Shure SM57 and desk stand, half the price of my airpods, and never got another complaint. Bonus: if you have the displeasure of working in a country/culture that normalizes interrupting and speaking over people, it’s exceedingly difficult for them to do this to you if you low key have a pro signal chain and enable the high bandwidth option in your video conference software.
ricardobeat
I have the exact opposite experience, and strongly recommend AirPods Pro as the most cost-effective upgrade for online meetings - it improves voice quality without any physical or aesthetic impact, has great audio and decent battery life.
danaris
I've not had these problems, either as an AirPods user or when I'm talking to one, and I've been in both positions plenty over the past few years (in fact, I was regularly doing video chats with AirPods even before the pandemic started; they were a huge improvement over more standard gaming headsets with boom mics for all but the quietest speech).
pwinnski
This is such a bizarre thing to read, as it runs completely counter to my own experience.

If your problem is that people have AirPods in their ears but are actually using external mics, as you say, then okay, you've run into something I haven't, but I'm not sure that's an AirPods issue.

If your problem is that people using AirPods sound bad, I'm just not sure how that's possible. I have been in many, many, many video conferences with people using them without any issues that I can think of ever. I use them myself, and have never had anyone ask me to repeat myself or express any issue with hearing and understanding me. I've played back recordings in which I and others are using AirPods, and they sound fine.

Are these actually AirPods people are using, or cheap white bluetooth earbuds?

thefz
You are wearing them wrong.
carlosvega
I have used airpods since the beginning of the pandemic, never I have been told to repeat myself in meetings.
softwaredoug
I always use my webcam mic, not the airpod mic.

Not only is the quality higher, it is mitigates a nightmare scenario of accidentally walking somewhere like the bathroom with airpods on.

(But yes the mic also cuts out a lot for me)

jh00ker
Thanks everyone! Feedback here is mixed, some agree, some disagree and some bring up some good edge case ideas. For example, I think it's true that SOME Airpod users sound horrible and others not too bad. So maybe it needs to be addressed in a case-by-case basis.

I think main point is that wireless earbuds offer less audio input quality than other options and in a world of constant video conferences, we should probably consider upgrading to higher-quality audio options (mentioned by others) for the benefit of others on the call and to help mitigate everyones "Zoom Fatigue."

wkearney99
When using Windows I make it a point to use the Device Manager to disable anything other than the intended audio and video input devices. This way you either get the right sound and video or none at all. No more whoops, fall-back to the crappy built-in mic or webcam on the laptop or even the crappy mic inside the add-on USB webcam. The latter being a little trickier to manage if you've got a lot of USB ports and you're not using them consistently, but still do-able.

My spouse does a LOT of video conferencing and has, time and again, gotten compliments on how well her audio comes through. This using a SoundBlaster USB dongle with an old-school wired analog headset. Though the favored headset has long-since been discontinued and finding a good replacement (comfort and audio quality) has been a bit of a challenge. No luck with NOS searches via ebay anymore either.