Samsung Buds3 Pro's ANC a bit different after Firmware AYB3 🤔
I’ve got some feedback that the Samsung Buds3 Pro’s noise canceling and sound has changed after the recent AYB3 update which replaced the J1 update from 5 months ago.
Coming from my perspective, is it true? Or is it just a clean update that Samsung says ‘improves stability and reliability’? If you’ve seen the title of this video, obviously there’s something there about the noise canceling that seems different, but aside from that, I will also be touching on sound quality, transparency and mic pickup.
Active Noise Cancelling
The Buds3 Pro’s noise canceling performance is a little different after AYB3. It’s not so drastic that people can pick up on that at first, but it’s there if we measure it with FR sweeps, and if we compare some recorded samples side by side.
We can see from these frequency sweeps comparing both firmwares against the no-ANC baseline, the Buds3 Pro after firmware AYB3 is a bit weaker at canceling the sub-bass to lower-mid frequencies, but a little better at dealing with upper mids and treble up to the 11khz region. How that difference sounds like is very subtle, so most people won’t be able to tell, but it’s there, according to these measurements.
Microphone Quality
In terms of mic pickup, compared to before, it seems to be more aggressive now at noise-gating, so it cuts a bit more into my voice. As a result, my voice sounds a bit more muffled, and sometimes it fades out. But in quiet room conditions, their mic pickup sounds similar to when it was running Firmware J1.
Transparency Mode
In terms of transparency, I also ran frequency sweeps before and after the update, which shows a bit more amplification after the update above 7khz. In theory this should make the transparency brighter, but in practice I could barely tell.
Sound Quality
Its sound quality after the update hasn’t changed at all. I did a sweep before and after the update, also listened to the earbuds at length, and the Buds3 Pro sounded the way it did before on all the modes. All the good, all the bad, nothing has changed.
Verdict
So in my opinion, aside from that very minor change in noise canceling, you shouldn’t notice any difference after the AYB3 update. If you do notice a drastic difference, do a hard reset first and try again, it should go back to normal. As for stability and reliability issues, Samsung wasn’t clear on what they were solving, and I hadn’t noticed any signal drops on them yet.
