Blog · SoundPost ·
Why your AirPods suddenly sound bad on a Mac
Music sounds great, then Siri, dictation or a web page touches the microphone, and everything turns flat and muddy for the rest of the day.
What's going on
Bluetooth headphones have two ways of talking to your Mac. For music they use a high-quality, one-way connection. When something needs their microphone, they switch to a two-way "headset" connection that carries your voice too, at a much lower audio quality. That's the call-quality sound you hear.
On a Mac, the switch happens as soon as any app opens the headphone mic: a video call, sure, but also dictation, Siri, or a website asking for the microphone. And it doesn't always switch back when that app is done.
The built-in workaround
Open System Settings, go to Sound, choose Input, and select your Mac's built-in microphone. As long as the input isn't the AirPods, they stay in high-quality mode.
The catch: macOS often switches the input back to the AirPods when they reconnect, and for real calls you probably do want the headphone mic. So you end up in Sound settings a few times a day.
How SoundPost handles it
SoundPost keeps your Mac's own mic as the input, so headphones never drop to call quality by accident and music stays at full 48 kHz. When a meeting app like Zoom, Teams, FaceTime, Slack or Discord needs the mic, it gets the headphone mic automatically, and full quality comes back when the call ends.
You choose which mic to use for calls once, in SoundPost's Audio settings, and stop thinking about it.
More about SoundPost
- SoundPost: headphones that behave
- Get your AirPods back from the iPhone in one click
- Stop ▶︎ from opening Apple Music
- Volume per app on a Mac
OOndřej Romancov · engineer, Prague