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Fixing the volume on my Bluetooth earbuds

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11–20 of 88 posts

Re: Fixing the volume on my Bluetooth earbuds

#11

NICE! Way to stick with it OP! Speaking of loud earbuds, I might have the opposite problem. I use Bose exercise earbuds on the treadmill at what I believe is a comfortable and conservative volume, but my iPhone gives me a notification that the volume is too high and I am wrecking my hearing. Is the phone correct? If so, I'd be willing to sacrifice a bit of enjoyment for a bit of ear health. However, there's a compell…

My phone (Android 5, and I barely use it, frankly, so until it stops working I don’t need anything newer) does the same thing when connecting it to my car over Bluetooth, the first time after every reboot. It’s simply and flatly a stupid feature. If I could root the device I could turn off that switch ’cos it’s in a config file somewhere, but I’ve never succeeded (Samsung Galaxy J1 (2016)).

Yeah, that's what I'm afraid of lol.

It all depends on the implementation. A $2.6 trillion dollar company could probably rummage up the spare change to buy and measure the most popular earbuds/phones -- but why do that when you can

    if (volume>14) alert("You're killing your hearing!")

Re: Fixing the volume on my Bluetooth earbuds

#12

NICE! Way to stick with it OP! Speaking of loud earbuds, I might have the opposite problem. I use Bose exercise earbuds on the treadmill at what I believe is a comfortable and conservative volume, but my iPhone gives me a notification that the volume is too high and I am wrecking my hearing. Is the phone correct? If so, I'd be willing to sacrifice a bit of enjoyment for a bit of ear health. However, there's a compell…

I don’t think the OS knows how many dB’s come out of the other end. My Boses act differently with different Bluetooth chipsets. On Linux I have to do 150% volume to hear much of anything

The computer knows what it's sending to Bluetooth and it knows some model identifiers from Bluetooth. This could be implemented well. But I agree, it probably isn't.

Re: Fixing the volume on my Bluetooth earbuds

#13
post #6

My Sony headset (wh-1000xm4) has the exact same problem, but they apparently encrypt the firmware payloads and decrypt them on device. I've come this close to taking it apart and trying to dump and probe everything, but my shaky hands are too likely to break it. I would pay very good money for a hackable noice-cancelling headset.

> I would pay very good money for a hackable noice-cancelling headset. https://pine64.com/product/pinebuds-pro-open-firmware-capabl... ?

Thank you. I normally like over ear headphones, but I'll definitely consider going that route

Re: Fixing the volume on my Bluetooth earbuds

#14

Man I wish someone would do this for my bluetooth sleep mask. It's pretty great except for one thing: When the battery is low or it's going to power off it announces it to you at full volume. On a sleep mask.

What does it do? Why do you want a bluetooth connection when you are trying to sleep?

Plenty of people use audio to fall asleep - be it relaxing music, white noise, nature sounds, podcasts, talk radio, boring speeches, or whateverelse. Not everyone likes the same sleeping audio as others sleeping in the same room.

Re: Fixing the volume on my Bluetooth earbuds

#15

Man I wish someone would do this for my bluetooth sleep mask. It's pretty great except for one thing: When the battery is low or it's going to power off it announces it to you at full volume. On a sleep mask.

What does it do? Why do you want a bluetooth connection when you are trying to sleep?

You can use it to play music, I go with audio books.

it's actually better at pairing with my iphone and ipad than my apple devices, which is wild.

Product page: https://www.amazon.com/MUSICOZY-Headphones-Bluetooth-Everyth...

Re: Fixing the volume on my Bluetooth earbuds

#16

This is the one thing I dislike about Apple Airpods. I also don't like the connection sound effect because it adds a needless 2 second delay. Would love to get rid of both sound effects.

Likely the delay is not because of the sound effect. But the other way around - they added the jingle to mask the delay.

Re: Fixing the volume on my Bluetooth earbuds

#17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think the OS knows how many dB’s come out of the other end. My Boses act differently with different Bluetooth chipsets. On Linux I have to do 150% volume to hear much of anything

The computer knows what it's sending to Bluetooth and it knows some model identifiers from Bluetooth. This could be implemented well. But I agree, it probably isn't.

What if the manufacturer changes the sensitivity but keeps the Bluetooth identifier the same? I assume Apple would rather set a conservative limit for everything than risk getting sued for allowing hearing damage with an incorrect custom limit.

Re: Fixing the volume on my Bluetooth earbuds

#18

NICE! Way to stick with it OP! Speaking of loud earbuds, I might have the opposite problem. I use Bose exercise earbuds on the treadmill at what I believe is a comfortable and conservative volume, but my iPhone gives me a notification that the volume is too high and I am wrecking my hearing. Is the phone correct? If so, I'd be willing to sacrifice a bit of enjoyment for a bit of ear health. However, there's a compell…

> Is the phone correct? If so, I'd be willing to sacrifice a bit of enjoyment for a bit of ear health.

Noise cancelling headphones/earbuds solved this problem for me. With noise cancelling I can keep volume below 20% and have a comfortable listening experience that doesn't blow up my ears.

For me, I know the Apple notification is probably right because I started noticing ear aches after long workout sessions a few years ago. This has completely gone away after noise cancelling.

Re: Fixing the volume on my Bluetooth earbuds

#19

NICE! Way to stick with it OP! Speaking of loud earbuds, I might have the opposite problem. I use Bose exercise earbuds on the treadmill at what I believe is a comfortable and conservative volume, but my iPhone gives me a notification that the volume is too high and I am wrecking my hearing. Is the phone correct? If so, I'd be willing to sacrifice a bit of enjoyment for a bit of ear health. However, there's a compell…

I miss exactly two things from android on iOS. Both involve Bluetooth not sucking.

The first one is that the minimum volume on my Bluetooth earbuds is too damn loud on iOS. This is true for every third party set of headphones I have tried. People have been complaining about this online for a decade. The EU even passed a law to make them fix it (spoiler alert: it did not work).

FFS, min volume in the UI should map to hardware volume level integer one!

The second issue is that third party apps can’t expose music or podcasts via the car bluetooth media browsing menu. They can on android.

That means I can listen to podcasts and stream tidal using the jogwheel on my car with android, but not ios.

Other Bluetooth complaints:

Why does my Apple Watch blacklist car stereos?

Bluetooth is really buggy in iOS version N and N-1.

Re: Fixing the volume on my Bluetooth earbuds

#20
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The computer knows what it's sending to Bluetooth and it knows some model identifiers from Bluetooth. This could be implemented well. But I agree, it probably isn't.

What if the manufacturer changes the sensitivity but keeps the Bluetooth identifier the same? I assume Apple would rather set a conservative limit for everything than risk getting sued for allowing hearing damage with an incorrect custom limit.

If not raising an alert is "allowing hearing damage" then they already do plenty of that, as does everyone else. It's not a reason to do a poor job. Maybe an excuse, but not a reason.
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