MacBook – Distorted, robotic-sounding audio on Google Meet from AirPods 2 (via microphone)

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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:

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I've also already tried selecting the internal microphone, this didn’t help as long as the AirPods were connected:

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Best Answer

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.

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