Airpods Pro 2 noise cancellation worse after firmware update 7A294

Same here. It's so frustrating because I am a guitarist of a rock band, and I use my AirPods Pro as ear protection in loud shows. It used to have the perfect amount of noise reduction in adaptive mode. Now, even in noise reduction mode, I can hear much more noise than in adaptive mode. I was so happy to have found the perfect protection for my ears, and now Apple took this out of me.

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 :(

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.

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

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

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 really need apple to address this issue, its driving me crazy. I can hear minor keyboard clicks, mouse clicks, very light snapping, even my girlfriends phone volume on 10 percent across the room with the ac on, I hear the AC AND MY GIRLS PHONE VIDEO with noise cancelling on, this is awful from apple, its like its not even on.

Edit for context these are air pod pro 2s only 1 week old. Brand new from best buy, ear tip test was fine, they are clean as they are brand new, the music quality is great, the noise cancelling is awful.

I have the same issue. If it doesn’t get worked out soon I need to find a different solution.

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.

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.

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.

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.

If I’m not mistaken, I may have found a workaround for this. I believe I’ve identified a bug in the “adaptive audio” feature with the Generation 2 Pros. Although your adaptive audio feature may be disabled, go into settings and tap on your AirPod Pro 2 set. Then scroll down to audio and then select adaptive audio. After that, set it to “less noise” so that you’ve basically got nothing coming in. I don’t know if this is the exact sequence involved (I went through soooooooooo many different settings last night), but after I did that it completely drowned everything out (finally!!!!!) Even as I’m sitting here typing this, it would have already started letting more noise in at this point. There would be certain sounds that it would try to drown out (heat, fans, humidifiers), and while doing so, it sounded like I was on the freeway with my car window rolled down. Not anymore!!! Works well now 🤩