- Some AirPods Pro 3 users say they’re hearing a static or white noise sound
- Seems to be most prominent when ANC is on and nothing’s playing
- Some customers say they’re returning their AirPods, others aren’t having issues
Is there a problem with the active noise cancellation in the AirPods Pro 3? According to some owners, yes.
As MacRumors reports, some AirPods Pro 3 owners have been posting on Reddit and on MacRumors’ own forums about a strange static-like sound that’s particularly audible when ANC is enabled and there isn’t any media playing (though some claim it affects music too).
Descriptions vary – posters have compared it to the sound of rain, to the sound of the ocean, to white noise and to static – but the common thread is that there’s a noise that shouldn’t be there.
Are you being affected by this problem? Respond in our poll below, or let us know in the comments at bottom of the article.
Does Apple have an ANC problem?
MacRumors quotes some of its own readers’ reports: “It just sounds like I have a small fan on in the room all the time (I do not),” one AirPods owner says. It’s “Very pronounced in mine but only in Transparency/Adaptive mode. And only, or at least way more pronounced, in the right one.” And one reader said it got so bad they had to return and replace their earbuds after experiencing a “whistling/wind noise in my right AirPod the whole time” during a long flight.
There are reports on Reddit’s AirPods Pro subreddit too, with some users encountering variations – so for example D_vei_D gets “a buzzing electrical fade sound ONLY when listening to music/etc” but not in any other circumstances, while No_Story_1723 experiences “an ocean or static noise… it’s not loud, but noticeable to me. It sounds a bit like I’m putting my ear into a shell”.
Some of the reports go back several weeks, so this doesn’t appear to be connected with the most recent iOS updates.
Judging by the stories on social media, Apple is exchanging at least some affected units – though one user said that the problem recurred on their replacement.
Multiple TechRadar team members have spent a lot of time listening to these earbuds over the last month for our AirPods Pro 3 review, and they’re the daily drivers for several members of the TechRadar team. We haven’t encountered this issue ourselves at all.
But of course that doesn’t mean there aren’t any issues for other people: when you make and sell as many pairs of AirPods Pro as Apple, an issue that only affects a tiny proportion of customers can still affect a lot of people.
So is this just a case of a few rogue AirPods Pro 3 shipping with faults, or is there something more serious going on? We’d love to know whether you’re experiencing any AirPods woe in the poll above.
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