After I update my Sony 1000xm3 to 4.1.1, like many friends in Sony forum and Reddit did, I found out that my headphone cannot block out high frequency sounds for example human voices like it used to!(I do feel a difference because I updated it on a train and before that I couldn’t hear other passengers’ conversation but I did after the update)
I found the possible cause of this problem in Belgium Sony forum (I can speak French so let me translate for you guys): 4.1.1 international version implemented a voice assistant. And as an always stand-by implementation, Alexa may always focus on human voice in order to receive our commands and respond to it immediately. And it may cause a little bug that “focus on voice” is turned on as default but can’t be shut down even if we don’t press the button “focus on voice”! So in a word, maybe the ANC is fine that is why the problem cannot be detected( I sent my headphones to official repair station and waited for 20 days and got informed that it was fine! And very angry, I contact Sony millions times to ask them solve this problem but they just did not admit it) because may be “focus on voice” is the truly cause and it give us an illusion that ANC got butchered by 4.1.1 update
Eventually I found a way to downgrade my headphone to 2.0.0 thanks to a friend in Reddit called formaldetail5 his degrade link but it didn’t solved the problem, maybe that is because 2.0.0 also has a voice assistant (Google assistant)? But many you guys said the ANC problem appeared after the process from 2.0.0 to 4.1.1, so I am a little confused now and I don’t sure if “focus on voice” is the true cause.
So may I ask Sony to at least provide us with previous firmware of 2.0.0 (1.0.8 for Chinese version) which I think don’t have voice assistant as implementation so we can ask someone to write the script of degradation. Or more conveniently, you Sony just fix this goddamn problem and stop keeping blind eyes about it! But you guys let us wait for months and do nothing about it, I am kind of dispointed at you so just at least provide us with firmware without voice assistant to let us try and keep your enginer team sleeping with paid salary.
