Sony WH-1000xm3 firmware - Noise cancelling issues

[miguelito]

The Sony WH-1000xm3 was the best active noise cancelling headphone around - until Sony updated to firmware 4.1.1 in January. 

 

There's quite the uproar all over but Sony has not yet fixed the issue. 

 

Someone has started a petition to prompt Sony to fix the issue. If you are experiencing this issue, please consider signing the petition:

 

http://chng.it/mLwLcb2M5M

 

Thx!

[miguelito]

I have found the sound quality to be great, supports pretty much all codecs (including LDAC, which sounds amazing on the Sony ZX2), and the ANC WAS amazing.

 

Firmare 4.1.1 truly screwed up ANC. I have two WH-1000xm3 and one WI-1000x - same issue in all of them.

 

So bottomline, I would wait to see if Sony is serious about customer service!

[miguelito]

BTW... I have owned all three versions of this headphone. I still have v1. It used to be that v3 had much better ANC than v1. After the firmware it is worse than v1. So my comparison is objective.

[miguelito]

17 hours ago, One and a half said:

If a store has build dates before Jan 19, good chance to escape the problem. Is that normally printed on the box somewhere with Sony product?

Pretty sure firmware version is not printed on the box. What you want to look for is support for Alexa advertised on the box. Firmware 4.1.1 was the first to support Alexa.

 

By the way, support for Google Assistant was already there with firmware 2.0, without an adverse effect to active noise cancellation, so I don't think it is a compromise to accommodate Alexa that resulted in a much reduced active noise cancellation.

[miguelito]

4 minutes ago, PAP said:

Sony used to such a reliable company.

My old sony professional tape machine still works, so does my minidisk and mp3 player.

But my phone had problems, so did my sons phone and the phones of several colleagues.

And no support from Sony what so ever.

I think I will stay away from them until I hear that they have improved their costumer service.

Probably wise. 

 

Those affected by this firmware flop: please sign the petition:

 

http://chng.it/mLwLcb2M5M

[miguelito]

On 4/7/2019 at 3:43 PM, Bones13 said:

I am glad that my headphones have the older firmware, they are truly excellent headphones in this segment. Perfect travel headphones for me.

Yes, they WERE in my case. Do not update.

 

BTW... There are 194 signatures in the petition already. Consider that each one of those 194 could make 5 people in their network not buy these headphones, each one of those 5 could influence 3 more, and each one of those could influence 2 more. That's a total of 9,700 sales lost.

 

And I am pretty sure I am being conservative as those signing are the most angry. If there are 400 pissed customers, that's a total of 20,000 lost sales.

[miguelito]

7 hours ago, firedog said:

Has Sony reacted to this issue publicly anywhere?

Not to my knowledge, aside from a few "social media support" moderators on the Sony forums. 

 

BTW... There are 200 signatures on the petition already.

[miguelito]

The petition has 211 signatures already. However, I have not seen any engagement whatsoever from Sony support, only Sony social media support - which is obviously worthless.

 

Any pointers on how to get Sony's tech support to address this? I'm not convinced they even know about the uproar.

[miguelito]

1 hour ago, firedog said:

https://us.esupport.sony.com/support/s/support-contact?language=en_US

I have sent email to support (as per the link above) plus:

 

https://us.community.sony.com/s/question/0D50B00005ryrxwSAA/wh1000xm3-anc-issues-with-firmware-411

 

https://us.community.sony.com/s/question/0D50B00005UrAJZSA3/wh1000xm3-anc-amputated-after-firmware-411-update

 

Nothing yet.

[miguelito]

On 5/18/2019 at 10:30 AM, firedog said:

https://drop.com/buy/sony-wh-1000xm3-wireless-headphones#overview

 

too bad they haven't solved the issue, as they are on sale for $280. 

Can you believe there are 498 signees on the petition, and I have been posting to twitter, and yet zero response from Sony?

[miguelito]

6 hours ago, Quad 405 said:

I was checking the Sony community post yesterday and found a reference to Reddit where apparently a route back from 4.11 to 2.00 was to be found.

 

Here is the url I found but you will need to scroll a long way through it to get to the procedure. I havn't had time to look into it yet but some owners report back after having done the firmware downgrade - it made a difference to some but not others.

 

https://www.reddit.com/r/sony/comments/akynjz/psa_the_new_sony_wh1000xm3_firmware_v411_is/

Thank you. That worked. I was able to downgrade the WH-1000xm3 to firmware version 2.0.0.

[miguelito]

41 minutes ago, firedog said:

So if I understand that site correctly, it’s just a matter of downloading the file and then using it to “update” the headphones’ firmware?

Did the phones return to their previous sound quality?

It's a little more elaborate than that... 

 

You download this python script. Requires that you have python 3 installed in your machine (which I do, on a Mac). You run that python script and it will serve what looks like Sony's firmware url on port 1337. The firmware itself is in the script. Separately on an iOS (or Android) device, you configure the proxy to point to your machine's IP, and port 1337. Then on the iOS device you run Sony's Headphone app - which will now think it is time to update the firmware on your headphone (which you must have paired with your iOS device). So just go through the "update" and you end up with firmware version 2.0.0. Once done just kill the python process on your computer and remove the proxy setting on your iOS device. Not hard, not for everyone either.

 

Yes, the phones are as per firmware 2.0.0 sound quality and noise cancelling.

[miguelito]

15 minutes ago, miguelito said:

You run that python script and it will serve what looks like Sony's firmware url on port 1337

And from this one learns that the firmware updates are independent of app updates (this was not obvious to me before).

[miguelito]

27 minutes ago, miguelito said:

You download this python script.

From here: https://paste.ubuntu.com/p/sfRxbYVZrF/

 

DISCLAIMER: I take absolutely no responsibility for your actions!

[miguelito]

Over 1,000 customers have signed this petition!!!

 

Not a peep from Sony!!!

[miguelito]

On 7/7/2019 at 5:52 PM, PAP said:

No but the issue was that some people felt the noise cancellation worked less after the firmware update.

Correct. It does. I downgraded to v2.0.0 and noise cancelling went back to normal. I have the first version of this headphone as a reference point so it is not placebo. 

[miguelito]

2 hours ago, firedog said:

I’m guessing that Sony doesn’t think there’s a problem, and so they don’t feel there is anything to respond to. In the YouTube video posted above the guy claims there is no difference in performance of the noise cancelling between the 2 versions. 

I can hear the difference. And so can very many people, just do a google search.

 

As for why Sony is not addressing the issue, I can think of many reasons:

1- They don't want to do the work to fix it

2- They will release a new product that will be "better than the old" but really the same as firmware v2.0.0 of the old

3- They had patent violation issues with Bose and thus had to remove some of the techniques in the noise cancellation algorithm

4- They just don't care about customer opinion - after all 1,000 customers seems like a low number