I am a developer of Tencent. We found that after AirPods upgraded to the new firmware version 4A400, some AirPods microphones may have abnormal sound problems, especially on the iPhone with the system version iOS 13 .
The specific performance is: the sound captured by AirPods microphones will appear intermittently with noise, broken sound, pitch shift, and tremor, and the sense of hearing and intelligibility is poor. Our users have reported that many times when using Tencent Meeting for video calls, the others can’t hear his/her voice, so we tested many iPhones and AirPods and found that they all have some problems. Let’s share our Specific test results:
- iPhone 11 Pro Max / iOS 13.6.1 / AirPods 2, the sound periodically appears noise and tremor about every 20s, it sounds uncomfortable, and when using the system phone/FaceTime/WeChat call/Zoom test, the effect is the same ；
- Use the same iPhone as 1 and replace the earphones with AirPods Pro, and the test conditions are exactly the same as 1;
- Using the same AirPods Pro as 2 and changing the phone to iPhone X / iOS 13.6, there will be occasional discontinuities in the sound, and crackling noises will be heard;
- Use the same AirPods Pro as 2 and change the phone to iPhone Xs / iOS 13.7. At the beginning, there was continuous noise and pitch shifting. After a few minutes of speaking, it returned to normal, and then the sound remained normal;
- Using the same AirPods Pro as 2 and changing the phone to iPhone 12 Pro Max / iOS 15.0.2, the sound is completely normal.
Why does the same AirPods, on different iPhones, have such different performance of the collected sound quality, and the same phenomenon of using various VoIP apps, and all of them have problems on iOS 13? Does the 4A400 firmware have compatibility issues with the iOS 13 system?
We noticed that the previous AirPods hardware sampling rate was 16kHz, but after upgrading to 4A400, the hardware sampling rate changed to 24kHz. Is the above noise related to the change of the hardware sampling rate? Do I need to modify the Audio Unit parameters to solve the above problems?
Our app has a very large group of personal and corporate users. When they find that there is a problem with the sound, they will give us feedback, which brings us more pressure. Hope to get a reply from Apple or other developers, thank you!
