QC35II White noise after firmware update

[Jessie_O]

Hi ANC, 

I can appreciate your frustration. 

However, there are many of our customers that have not experienced this issue that have updated to the latest firmware. 

If you do not wish to update, I would recommend reaching out to Customer Service in your Region.

You can find the details by clicking HERE, selecting your country of residence and scrolling down to 'Contact Us'.

Have a great day!

Kindest,

Jessie O - Community Support

[m1sterd]

In fairness there are many customers (me being one of them) that upgraded their BOSE QC 35 II (AE) from firmware 3.1.8 to something greater and experianced the noise with ANC on that quite a few people have described, and we have been creating posts for a long time, yet we just get the boiler plate BOSE response of, reset it, re-pair it, try a different phone, and that the firmware/software developers at BOSE have been asked and nothing has changed in the ANC code, yet for over 1 year I and many others have commented how a firmware update has impacted the ANC. I ended up downgrading my firmware to 3.1.8 (before BOSE droppped that potentially useful feature) again in the hope that it would fix the issue, its questionable if it helped the noise issue but it certainly didnt take them back to where they were prior to the original firmware update. Also, many people are probably not so effected by the noise introduced in the firmware, and I guess there could be hardware/component differences meaning that some headphones are impacted more/less than others, but I bet only a small portion of actual customers would actually come the BOSE forums to report an issue.

I have 3 pairs of BOSE headphones with the QC 35II's being my latest and I hoped greatest, but they just arent since updating the firmware. Please, please, please BOSE, just listen to your customers, we can hear noise after updating the firmware, both on AE and AZ headphones it seems, something has changed.

[Legitti]

Dear BOSE, please take a look at this article for a solution to this problem: 

https://builtvisible.com/understanding-customer-value/

1. Think of everything you do in terms of delivering value to your customers and audience with the understanding that they have choices and you are not the only choice.
2. Understand your market well enough that you can break it down into individual segments with unifying characteristics that will respond in the same way to a given value proposition.
3. Always look for the opportunity to create new value propositions. If you sit on your laurels, your competition won’t.
4. Look for avenues to communicate this value at the right time and in the right place.
5. Listen to your customers. Learn their perceptions about what you offer. Do not hesitate to change based on what you learn. The customer, in this case, is always right.

[joelirwin]

@LegittiGreat information but I would question the "Dear Bose"

1. What you share will certainly be read by the users who come here - it is truly a user forum.  I personally place customer service as I high priority - certain on par with my products in my own two businesses (As a small business person, I am both a film composer and wedding videographer).

2. The Bose people who are in this forum are front line support people - they are here mainly for troubleshooting and directing people (typically through 'boiler plates') to other support people.  Your comments and this link really does not pertain to their job(s).  They say they pass suggestions and issues up to their engineers.  I have and see no evidence in this forum that they ever get anything back to pass on to us publically other than their official utility and firmware release annoucements.

3. It may be possible that other Bose people visit this forum but we would not know who they are as they do not communicate with people here - again they view this as a user to user forum.

4. The values and information you pass on undoubtably imho are things the senior Bose managers at their HQ in Framingham, Mass are aware of.  We often here don't agree with their lack of communication with us but we also can pretty much agree that either they don't view this forum as the vehicle to do so or they don't place a high value on public communication with those here.  I have had over the last 6 or 7 months some private communications with senior Bose people but getting ahold of them is nearly impossible and the conversation topics are quite limited as I am an 'outsider'.

Bose like any other company is profit oriented and support is a not a money maker.  Neither is making improvements to existing products (versus spending the resources, time and money on engineering new products).  So my experience with Bose and those support people here is that they give it their best shot when it comes to addressing our issues as long as it doesn't require significant resource allocation with engineering modifications (read - changing the firmware).

So with all due respect, when you say "Dear Bose" - I get you want someone in Bose to look at the link and read your post(s).  We will and the front line support people will and we all may agree, but that will realistically have no impact on what goes on since the shots are being called from Framingham and I have not seen or heard anything to suggest they look at anything here.

[Gaia]

I have the same problem intermittently with mine - and they're AE series, so it's not just the AZs. My bedroom is right next to the bathroom, and it used to be that i could go for a leak without them cutting out - 7 out of ten times not anymore. 

The maximum range of Bluetooth is, I think, around 100ft (33m), so going to the bathroom shouldn't affect anything!

[joelirwin]

I upgraded my AE QC35ii the day after the latest firmware came out and I mentioned here I heard the white noise/hiss when everything else was perfectly silent.  I don't recollect hearing that on the previous firmware release.  Agree with you.  IMHO it's the firmware - not AE or AZ.

[CaptainStarbuck]

I came to this forum for no reason other than to lookup issues with crackling and then whitenoise / hiss.

For no apparent reason, my QC35-2 AE had a bad crackle in the right cup whenever ANC was low or high. I did the standard reset with no difference.I suspected it was a bad auto-update of the firmware, but there are no logs to support that theory, and we can't rollback the firmware to test the theory. I attempted to upgrade to firmware 4.3.6 using the Bose Connect app v8.1 for Android (Pixel3XL with latest Pie v9). This app has a problem (for me) with random disconnects, so I suspected that the firmware update failed even though the app showed the current version. Usually this leads to bricking (in phones, routers, etc), and I was really concerned that the headset was permanently ruined. I loaded the Bose Updater utility for Windows. The browser UI provides no feedback about what it's doing other than it's ready to update. After retrying that page several times, and patient waiting, I did get an Installation Successful message. The crackling is gone. But now with 4.3.6 successfully installed I have white noise with ANC on, and that brought me to this recent thread.

The ANC is definitely working, and high is slightly better than low. But the new hiss is definitely there, it's new, and I'm hoping Bose can do something about it.

Since we're here, many things about this device and these issues have concerned me:

- I completely understand the distance between the company and the public forum. I've been employed at a different company in Support where we could not interface directly with people in the forums. But the strong disconnect here is obviously a Marketing/Sales issue that Bose needs to address.

- References here to official Support, while entirely appropriate, have still left people with no resolution, sometimes no response (reportedly). In a situation like this, the customer has been inflamed three times: Once with a misbehaving device, once with no help in the public forum, and once by Support. By the time someone actually gets to Support, by definition, they're probably upset. Leaving problems unresolved at that step is really bad for business.

- I completely understand that some/all Moderators here are not directly linked to Support and that there is only so much that they can do. However, copy/paste responses, lack of attention to detail, and complete avoidance of some questions and details, have obviously angered many people who have purchased relatively expensive products. This is also a Marketing/Sales issue that Bose doesn't understand yet.

- I went from a new problem to reading forum posts. I saw people angered. I saw a cordial and well-crafted note by moderators about how firmware updates don't affect ANC ... despite the fact that many people have been drawn to these forums exactly like me, with no reason to be here other than "something" changed in their devices. Was that actually due to a firmware update? We don't actually know. But the disparity between "we have a problem" and "updates didn't cause your problems" leaves a huge gap for "OK, so what else can cause all of these issues that seem to coincide with updates?". Lack of answers in that space have led to a great deal of angst here. Stop telling people to re-adjust the cups on their head or to replace the $40 pads. The company needs to offer a firmware downgrade, and a log of all firmware changes, so that people can verify the exact effects of each firmware change.

My experience is not unique. I've stumbled on similar posts from over the last two years by different people. The company needs to take note of commonly reported issues, and address them in documentation and/or in software changes (firmware, Update utility, Connect app). The above mentioned note about how ANC issues aren't cause by firmware updates was a very good start except that it just left many people hanging and frustrated. This is all about communication. This is where the company is failing and losing money to competitors ... I haven't seen a single post in my searches on these topics that indicate a hardware or manufacturing defect. That is why we have these devices. It's a tragedy that this company puts so much care into the engineering of fine products, and then let's it all fail with software failures and poor human interactions.

Thanks for the soapbox.

[Jessie_O]

Hi CaptainStarbuck,

Thank you for your post and welcome to the Community!

I'm sorry to hear of the issues you are experiencing with your QC35 II. I'd love to be of assistance. 

If you have tried all the troubleshooting provided in this thread then I would recommend reaching out to your local Technical Support Team for assistance. Click the link HERE, select your country of residence and scroll down to 'Contact Us'. Unfortunately, there is no more troubleshooting we can advise about this issue. 

Please rest assured that information about an issue that we cannot solve here in the Community is passed on to the relevant teams who will analyze and look for potential fixes. We do not always have information on when these will be available. There is normally an announcement on the community when new firmware is available. I'm sorry to hear that you are unsatisfied by the moderator presence on the community and our responses. I can assure you we are extremely active in the community and, whilst we help where we can, there is not always an update we can provide for our users. 

We will update the Community when we have more information regarding this issue. 

Kindest,

Jessie O

[joelirwin]

@CaptainStarbuckWell said!  I am too concerned about the slipage of Bose branding as customers who come here get increasingly frustrated.  I have shared / expressed many similar observations these past months.  The ANC issue I have observed can be a very 'subject' one.  When I first upgraded my QC35ii to the latest firmware, I immediately heard the 'hissing' you are referring to.  But for some reason over the last few months I am hearing it less and less.  Could be the sound is different here in my studio - I don't know.  Right now, the room is totally quiet except for the room Air Purifier which is blowing on high and the ANC has totally masked it and I don't hear any hiss.  I personally have no current issues or complaints myself with my QC35ii ANC when set on high.  So the milage will vary by customer, imho.

As far as Bose participation:

1. I believe given the job tasks that the moderators have, they are doing a commendable job.  They handle most of the front line troubleshooting and suggestions and forward people on to the phone people (unfortunately with 'templates') when they have no idea or run out of ideas.  Their 'hands are tied' - in that they can only pass things on and can't say or do anything without authorization from above.  I get that.  They also can't recommend or talk about other vendor's products and can't do extensive in-house testing since they don't have everything we are having issues with (especially various windows machines).

2. I used to think that no one other than the moderators lurk in our forum.  I was really wrong on that one.  Let's just say that Bose people know how to get ahold of me off this forum and earlier this week I made a response to a post that I was contacted about by a non-Bose moderator about 20 minutes after I made it.  Yes.... the Bose people do come here (and will read this response too!  ..... 🙂 ).  I am very greatful they take the time to incorporate what they read here into their jobs even if we don't know how that is happening.

[Legitti]

Updating now to the latest version, let's see if it helps at all.