Apple often rolls out background software updates to its truly wireless earbuds like the AirPods Pro. Usually, these updates focus on minor bug fixes, but a recent AirPods Pro update appears to have made some notable changes to sound quality and noise cancellation. Following user reports on Reddit and other outlets, RTINGS decided to retest AirPods Pro after updating to firm 2C54. The testing revealed a few notable changes, for better and for worse.
RTINGS tests found the AirPods Pro’s noise canceling capabilities to be worse after firmware update 2C54. But affected customers say the trouble began even earlier with firmware version 2B588, which rolled out in November. According to the audio testing firm however, not everything is really bad. The update also brought some marked improvements to the performance of the AirPods Pro.
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One of the biggest improvements, according to RTINGS testing, came to frequency response consistency. This describes the “variations in a headphones’ frequency response due to their fit on your head.” Prior to firmware 2C54, RTINGS described the frequency response consistency of AirPods Pro as “just okay.” The update, however, made things ”significantly better.”
Another significant improvement came to bass accuracy. While RTINGS had already described AirPods Pro bass accuracy as “excellent,” the 2C54 update makes another “fairly significant improvement.” Elsewhere, RTINGS says the update included a “very slight reduction in mid accuracy” as well as a slightly reduction in treble accuracy.
While Apple has not formally acknowledged these complaints from users, it has pulled the the 2C54 for AirPods Pro. This prevents additional users from installing the update, but it doesn’t do much for those users who had already installed it. The update was initially released on December 16 and was pulled shortly after that. Whether this is in acknowledgement of the worse noise cancelling or otherwise, we don’t really know.
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