Distorted, robotic-sounding audio on Google Meet from AirPods 2 (via microphone)
When using AirPods 2 for Google Meet video calls on macOS, my voice gets very distorted and sounds 'robotic'.
Only happens with Google Meet running the the browser, but no other apps.
I looked around (Google support forum, 2, 3, and also on Reddit, 2) and found that many other people are having this problem.
How can I solve this?
What I’ve tried with no success:
- Resetting the AirPods
- Switching to use the MacBook’s mic
- Safari and Chrome
- No such problems when using Meet/Gmail.app on my iPhone
- No such problems with wired headphones
Some think it's a CPU issue: Chrome/Meet using lots of resources. I am running on a 4-month old MacBook Pro (1.4 GHz Quad-Core i5, 8GB 2133MHz RAM) so can't imagine that could be at fault.
Also, don't know if it's relevant, but seems that the AirPods 2 are using the SCO codec instead of AAC:
I've also already tried selecting the internal microphone, this didn’t help as long as the AirPods were connected:
Solution 1:
I have a similar issue and found that a sudo killall coreaudiod via Terminal fixes the issue. From what I understand this resets the audio.
My issue is exclusively with a Google Meet in Safari. A Meet in Chrome doesn't have the issue. Everyone's voice that I hear is garbled. They can hear me fine. Maybe about 25% of the time if I switch audio sources and back it's fixed.
Solution 2:
The issue is fixed in Safari Technology Preview (but not in the beta). I use that until a better fix appears.
Be warned however, that Safari Technology Preview doesn't share data with the regular Safari, so it doesn't have your bookmarks, configuration etc.
Also, I'm facing another issue with Safari Technology Preview and Google Meet, where my session dies as soon as some other participant leaves or stops presenting.
Solution 3:
I was experiencing the same issue with AirPods 1 on macOS Big Sur. Enabling the AirPods microphone (so the headphones starts using the lower latency codec) fixed it. It looks like Google Meet doesn't like adjusting the audio latency, resulting in the garbled sound.