A while back I figured out why my AirPods (connected to my Mac) sound bad sometimes: some apps (especially those that use a microphone) force a different codec.

A while back I figured out why my AirPods (connected to my Mac) sound bad sometimes: some apps (especially those that use a microphone) force a different codec. If you hold down the option key and click on the Bluetooth menubar icon, then go down to your headphones, you can see the active codec in the pop-out menu. It should be AAC. When some apps are open, the codec switches to SCO and music sounds so much worse... https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208896 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208896