Nope. The weird Bluetooth audio standards that cause these issues (the entire headset switches modes sometimes just because the microphone is switched) don't apply to wired inputs in my experience.
Unfortunately, this problem isn't _exclusive_ to AirPods though... it has happened with a few other Bluetooth headsets I've used too. I don't seem to have ever had this issue on my iPad or iPhone, though I can't run VMs on them either :)
It’s definitely a Bluetooth audio thing. I can hear mine shift into a lower quality audio when I use them for conference calls. (There’s a limited amount of bandwidth and it has to make room for bidirectional audio.)
As someone else pointed out it is not actually bandwidth problem. Reason behind this is that high quality audio streaming profile A2DP is one-way only and once mic is needed, profile is changed to bidirectional but low quality HSP. My workaround for conference calls is to use my MacBook's internal microphone instead of one of my Bluetooth headset.
I suspect that the underlying reason that the profile switch happens, though, is because of bandwidth limits. That’s what Sennheiser is telling their customers, at least.
The real answer may be more subtle than that. Maybe there is just enough bandwidth, but using it would have an adverse effect on latency, which bidirectional use cases are more sensitive to.
Either way, the profiles were designed within constraints. They’re not arbitrary.
