[owenversteeg]

In my experience AirPods have excellent mics for what they are. They're definitely a million times better than the built in mic on the various (high-end) phones and laptops I've used in recent years. I wonder how they compare to a standalone mic or a decent headset mic (or that ModMic you mentioned.)

[esolyt]

AirPods have a worse mic than pretty much anything you can get. Macbook Pro's built-in microphone or Apple's $20 wired earbuds both have much better mics than AirPods.

I would suggest recording yourself using different microphones and comparing them to see how bad Airpods mic is.

[wenc]

Just did this. My AirPods Pro sounded a lot worse (very soft, muffled and way less resonant) than the pair of analog 3.5mm wired earbuds that came with an older iPhone.

I suspect it's because the wired earbuds had a mic near my throat whereas the Airpods' mic were up near my ears. The difference is very noticeable.

Looks like I'll be keeping my wired earbuds around for future conference calls.

[httpsterio]

Airpods can't compete with a decently priced boom microphone that actually comes close to your mouth. The distance from your mouth to your ear (where the mic resides) is quite long especially considering how little space they have to throw in a capsule into.

So, either you'll get a lot of ambient noise, the signal is quiet or Apple will do some algorithmic trickery that tries to approximate some kind of echo cancelation on the audio signal, but compared to a simple dynamic microphone that just has a more favorable position and form factor, it'll always lose.

[owenversteeg]

Hmm. I just measured the distance between my Airpods and the corner of my mouth at 3" or around 7.5cm. Very approximate measurement, but it seems to be not far off of recommendations for where to place headset boom mics (google says 1-3 inches from the mouth.)

Also, it's worth noting what the goal is here. The aim is not to capture the most accurate sound period. I've had calls with people who clearly have very expensive setups, but I end up hearing pen clicks, keyboard sounds, breathing, swallowing etc. The Airpods seem to do a great job of making my voice sound good in general. I've gotten compliments on my audio (so it can't be that bad) and the Airpods don't seem to pick up my breathing, typing, etc so I'm happy.