A recent firmware update completely obliterated AirPods Pro’s noise-canceling feature

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If you own AirPods Pros, you might have noticed that a recent update broke your expensive headphone’s noise-canceling feature. The culprit? The latest firmware update, which appears to have improved the sound reproduction while having a detrimental effect on your precious noise canceling.

I mean, if you wanted mediocre sound without noise canceling, you would have bought the normal AirPods in the first place, right?

If you own AirPods Pros, Apple just broke your noise-canceling

Apple has pulled the latest firmware update (2C54) after users started complaining about the Active Noise Canceling (ANC) of their AirPods Pros being broken. If your pair has already updated, you’ll just have to sit tight until Apple pushes a firmware that fixes the issue, there’s no way to roll back to the prior version.

The main trouble is that the noise-canceling of lower frequencies is drastically reduced. That means the main sources of noise on your commute won’t be blocked as well as before, like train or bus noises.

You can check your AirPods firmware version by connecting them to your iPhone, opening Settings, scrolling to the General section, and tapping on About. From there, scroll way down until you see the name of your AirPods. Tapping on that section will show you your current firmware version.

Hopefully, Apple will fix the issue and push out a new firmware update quickly. Maybe a future update could include the ability to tweak the ANC to your tastes, with different levels of strength working with the existing automatic ANC.

What do you think? Had you already updated your AirPods Pros? Have you noticed a difference? Let us know down below in the comments or carry the discussion over to our Twitter or Facebook.

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Joe Rice-Jones

Maker, meme-r, and unabashed geek with nearly half a decade of blogging experience at KnowTechie, SlashGear and XDA Developers. If it runs on electricity (or even if it doesn't), Joe probably has one around his office somewhere, with particular focus in gadgetry and handheld gaming. Shoot him an email at joe@knowtechie.com.