APM Selecting bad audio codec on Mac?

[jclardy]

I've been loving the AirPods Max so far, but I have one huge annoyance. Every time I connect them to my Mac (M1 on 11.1) they seem to select the bluetooth headset codec (The one that activates the microphone for voip calls.) The problem is this makes all audio on the system sound like complete garbage. I then can just option click the volume menu bar item and deselect the APM as the microphone input, then they switch back to the quality codec and everything is fine.

The problem is with auto-switch, if I play something on my iPhone, then go back, the Mac will again activate the mic on the headphones and give me the crappy codec. I have no voip software running, nothing running that uses the microphone. Is there some setting somewhere on my Mac that could be causing this?

 

[Mascots]

I've found macOS is super janky with bluetooth audio and experienced this with all BT headsets that have mics. Thankfully, I've got a solution bookmarked that has worked without any problems over many years:

Open the standard "Audio MIDI Setup.app" utility, and click the + at the bottom to create an Aggregate Device. Then select the Internal Microphone as the only component in this aggregate device and select it as the default input. For some reason this prevents Mac OS X from selecting the Bluetooth Microphone from now on and it will stay on the internal one when you reconnect.

After creating that aggregate input, go to your usual System Preferences -> Sound -> Input (tab)

The original post is here, if you are curious on details: https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/340434

 

[jclardy]

I've found macOS is super janky with bluetooth audio and experienced this with all BT headsets that have mics. Thankfully, I've got a solution bookmarked that has worked without any problems over many years:


The original post is here, if you are curious on details: https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/340434

Thank you! This seems to be working so far. It didn't work right away on Catalina, but after a restart it seems to "stick" to the aggregate device microphone. With auto-switching enabled it was getting insanely annoying as just unlocking my iPad would cause my Mac to switch the mic input.