AirPods Pro 3 ANC quality dropping after long sessions
A few weeks into daily use I started noticing something weird. With ANC on, there's this hollow background sound, almost like an ocean echo, like the earbuds suddenly have a leakage problem. It doesn't happen right away. For me it shows up after about 45 minutes to an hour of wearing them. The main triggers are my own voice while talking or reading out loud, keyboard typing, and weirdly, rustling sounds like a plastic bag. All things the ANC was handling fine when I first got them.
I went through all the basic fixes. Tried different ear tip sizes. Cleaned them following Apple's instructions. Fully reset them. Nothing helped.
The fix that actually works is switching to transparency mode and then switching back to ANC. The hollow sound goes away right away. So this is probably a software bug, not a hardware problem.
I don't think it affects every unit. If it did, there would be a lot more threads about it here. But enough people seem to have run into it. If you've had the same thing, curious if the mode switch fix works for you and how often it happens.