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Apple Releases New Firmware for AirPods Pro 3, AirPods Pro 2 and AirPods 4

I personally didn’t like the harsh highs at 6-8kHz. They unsharpened that now which is nice IMHO. But now in general upper highs and mids are missing which leads to a muddy sound.
Easier to hear at loud volumes now, but far less immersive.

I don’t like it.

Apple needs to add EQ for the end customer.
 
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lindijones said:
I personally didn’t like the harsh highs at 6-8kHz. They unsharpened that now which is nice IMHO. But now in general upper highs and mids are missing which leads to a muddy sound.
Easier to hear at loud volumes now, but far less immersive.

I don’t like it.

Apple needs to add EQ for the end customer.
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yeah I agree, ive always been a treble person, I know not everyone is, but now it sounds wrong, yeah they need to let us change it ourselves
 
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Kylo83 said:
what the hell have they done, the sound is completely changed, the highs are much lower, they dont sound good now, they sounded perfect before, it feels to much on the lower end now. I want the treble back. Doesn't sound immerisve now
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It‘s a real problem. I wish Apple would face a lawsuit here. You buy the sound you liked and get an inevitable change afterwards which you can‘t change. Very annoying or even inacceptable.
 
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Waiting for mine to update. For the last couple of weeks, I've had a pretty bad issue where much of the time the AirPods won't work on a phone call. They're definitely connected to the phone, but when I make a call, about half of the calls they're unresponsive; I can't ear anything, the mic doesn't pick up or transmit ... I have to remove them and hold the phone up to my ear or go into speakerphone.

Really hoping this update fixes that.
 
Just got my APP3's... cannot notice much of a difference over the APP2. I have heart rate now, but I use my Powerbeats when I workout. Should've just stuck with the 2's.
 
BGPL said:
Just got my APP3's... cannot notice much of a difference over the APP2. I have heart rate now, but I use my Powerbeats when I workout. Should've just stuck with the 2's.
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Really? I think they have a lot more "oomph" with the lows. I'm a bass person so that pleases me greatly. They're not audiophile quality, but a welcome upgrade for me.
 
If I had a dollar for every "new AirPods firmware, we don't know anything about it but here's the version number" articles, well, I'd have a few dollars.

Why post this stuff? There's no actual information here.
 
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is this an official release or a beta cause on the website from apple its says 8b34
Screenshot 2026-03-24 at 7.42.26 PM.png
 
Peter Alexander said:
is this an official release or a beta cause on the website from apple its says 8b34View attachment 2616546
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It’s official as mine updated earlier.

I love the bass, so I’m very happy with this update. I found the bass pretty strong with older firmware, particularly the ones closer to when these AirPods Pro 3s first came out. As the updates came out when they tried fixing the noise issues, which I never hard personally, the bass did seem to go down a little bit which I didn’t like.

It definitely sounds stronger again at lower volumes. Really don’t know why Apple couldn’t add an EQ to the settings page for these headphones that get saved to the headphones themselves. Surely this would make everyone happy, and the EQ settings would apply to any device they are paired to, as they would be stored on the buds themselves and not the device.
 
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Radeon85 said:
It’s official as mine updated earlier.

I love the bass, so I’m very happy with this update. I found the bass pretty strong with older firmware, particularly the ones closer to when these AirPods Pro 3s first came out. As the updates came out when they tried fixing the noise issues, which I never hard personally, the bass did seem to go down a little bit which I didn’t like.

It definitely sounds stronger again at lower volumes. Really don’t know why Apple couldn’t add an EQ to the settings page for these headphones that get saved to the headphones themselves. Surely this would make everyone happy, and the EQ settings would apply to any device they are paired to, as they would be stored on the buds themselves and not the device.
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how did you update it ? I have my AirPods Pro 3 plugged in next to my iPhone and no updates
 
I bought the Airpods Pro 3 a couple of days ago. So far I'm not pleased. They seem a downgrade in comfort. The older gen Airpod Pros were perfect comfort-wise for me. The bigger problem is that the noise cancelling is not tuned well at all. In the sense, its better if you only care about sound levels. But it's too aggressive and you can feel excessive pressure on the ear drums. It's borderline unusable. I have a feeling they bumped up the noise cancelling levels so they get to advertise an improvement. But it's not really an improvement if it comes at the cost of comfort. At the very least they should give an option to tune the noise cancelling to a less aggressive level. I'm really wondering if I should return these.
 
Peter Alexander said:
how did you update it ? I have my AirPods Pro 3 plugged in next to my iPhone and no updates
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As I primarily use these on the PC, I made sure I connected them manually to my iPhone, gave it a few second and put the buds back in the case, left the case charge on a MagSafe charger, and eventually they updated on their own.

Updating Apple headphones are a pain in the ass, as it’s just a case of hoping it updates quickly at random. I really wish they would add a simple update button to force these updates.
 
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cubbie5150 said:
Huh, never have had inconsistent firmware versions showing for my APP2 with any previous update I've tried, but mine are showing as follows ("Version" and "Case Version" are different:

View attachment 2616426
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I've had this happen many times. Usually the case is also updated within an hour or so, so no worries 😊 Airpods should also work perfectly fine even during the time firmwares aren't in sync.
 
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