AirPods Pro 2 have been widely praised since their release last month, but there have been a few early bugs. Many AirPods Pro 2 users are now taking to Reddit and other online forums to complain about a pesky audio drifting issue, which occurs even when Apple’s features like Spatial Audio and dynamic head tracking are disabled.
Audio drifting is an issue with headphones where the sound shifts between each side of the two earbuds. The audio will move back and forth between earbuds and can also get out of sync with videos. In this scenario, the audio wouldn’t lineup with the mouth of whoever is speaking in that video.
For AirPods Pro 2 specifically, affected users say they are experiencing a combination of audio drifting and shifting, as well as volume levels randomly increasing or decreasing. One user explains on Reddit:
This is my second pair of AirPods Pro 2 and the audio still seems to shift/drift all over the place sometimes it can compress the volume of a song and than randomly raise the volume. No, it’s not head tracking or spatial audio I have turned those off.
Another AirPods Pro 2 user specifically notices the issue most often in the YouTube app:
I’ve had a similar issue with my APP2. I’m using spatial audio and watching YouTube, and for almost videos, after an ad plays, the AirPods go out of sync with each other. As if one is slightly lacking behind the other. I ti sounds like the voice of people in videos are right at my ears instead in the middle of my head like it’s supposed to sound. The only way I’ve been able to combat this is to turn off and back on spatial audio which seems to re-sync up the airpods. Pretty annoying
A few other users also chimed in:
“I’ve been experiencing this recently as well. I kept thinking it had to do with how sometimes one of my pods keeps getting more loose than the other. I’d constantly adjust it and this audio drifting would continue to happen. I’m hoping it’s a software issue.”
“I actually exchanged my AirPods Pro 2, to see if it was a hardware issue with that pair, but I get the same issue with the new pair.”
“Same here! Thought I was going mad. It drifts slowly to the left, the right eventually going silent altogether. Stopping and restarting audio by squeezing the stem helps, though sometimes it comes back with the two AirPods (Pro 2) out of sync.”
Elsewhere in the thread, another AirPods Pro 2 user speculates that it could be an issue with noise cancellation or Adaptive Transparency:
Noise cancelling or [Adaptive Transparency] results in weird shifting of the sound stage and random volume changes in some frequency ranges. Some tracks are impacted far more than other tracks and there seems to be some dependency on external conditions. I’m attempting to map it out.
Of note, these users all say they have Apple’s Spatial Audio and dynamic head tracking feature disabled. Spatial Audio with dynamic head tracking is designed to follow your head as you move it around, creating the illusion that the music or video audio is always centered and is “coming from all around you.”
Apple has yet to acknowledge this audio driving issue affecting AirPods Pro 2 users, and it’s unclear whether it’s a software or hardware flaw. It doesn’t appear to be an incredibly widespread issue, but it’s one that Apple will ideally fix soon with an AirPods firmware update.
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