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Fixing the volume on my Bluetooth earbuds

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Re: Fixing the volume on my Bluetooth earbuds

#31

Post by toast0 »

crazygringo wrote: post #29
hedora wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. That's wild. I've never experienced anything like that -- not with AirPods or Bose or a cheap brand TOZO. Are you sure it's not a problem with the earbuds themselves, that their minimum level is higher than it should be? If you've dug into it, what is the range…

> That's wild. I've never experienced anything like that -- not with AirPods or Bose or a cheap brand TOZO.

I had something similar with a usb 'sound card' I was using with a mac. I had to use some DSP software to artificially reduce the sound level to about 1%, and then it was usable. Worked fine on windows as I recall. I had a similar issue with a set of logitech usb speakers; one pair worked great, so I ordered a second pair, where (on windows) the lowest output volume is tremendously loud, I couldn't get the DSP software to stick though, and ended up replacing them.

In conclusion, computers are awful.

Re: Fixing the volume on my Bluetooth earbuds

#32

Post by Eisenstein »

jjoonathan wrote: post #3

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…

The volume which comes out of speakers and into your ears is dependent on many different things. Some that come to mind are the sensitivity and impedance of the speaker drivers, the amplifier in the earbuds and the fit over/in the ear.

They are most likely just setting a toggle at a percentage of maximum volume level. The phone has no way of knowing what the sound pressure is at your eardrums.

You can rest easy knowing that you can ignore the warning if you think it isn't loud enough with the caveat that you could be damaging your hearing over time.

Re: Fixing the volume on my Bluetooth earbuds

#33

Post by toast0 »

abdullahkhalids wrote: post #24

Why do the earbuds have the sound files in mp3 format rather than some raw uncompressed format? Doesn't this mean that the earbuds must now have a mp3 decoder? Is there a resource-usage argument for preferring mp3?

I dunno how big the sound files are, but mp3 is going to use a lot less storage than uncompressed PCM. Using a smaller flash chip saves money on the BOM.

Bluetooth headphones already need to manage several formats to decode, and the chipset that does that may also decode mp3, and mp3 is easy to work with to prepare the files.

Re: Fixing the volume on my Bluetooth earbuds

#34

Post by jjoonathan »

Eisenstein wrote: post #32
jjoonathan wrote: post #3

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…

The volume which comes out of speakers and into your ears is dependent on many different things. Some that come to mind are the sensitivity and impedance of the speaker drivers, the amplifier in the earbuds and the fit over/in the ear. They are most likely just setting a toggle at a percentage of maximum volume level. The phone has no way of knowing what the sound pressure is at your eardrums. You can rest easy knowi…

> The phone has no way of knowing

It could make a useful guess based on device identifiers. Or it could make a useless guess based on industry averages or some random device an engineer had on their desk one day. It clearly does one or the other, the question is which. Useful or useless?

Re: Fixing the volume on my Bluetooth earbuds

#35

Post by Fnoord »

Vicinity9635 wrote: post #4

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.

You really do not want to deplete batteries on devices where they're difficult to replace. Whether that is true for your sleep mask, I HAVE NO IDEA. A better way to deal with it is have them disable themselves after a timer. Maybe you can enforce that from the other side (I assume that is your smartphone?). Like, you can do some device automation with e.g. MacroDroid.

Re: Fixing the volume on my Bluetooth earbuds

#37

Post by throwmeaway1212 »

Vicinity9635 wrote: post #4

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.

I ended up just using a pillow speaker with a 3.5mm jack cable. Avoids problems like this I was having with bluetooth.

Re: Fixing the volume on my Bluetooth earbuds

#38

Post by Eisenstein »

jjoonathan wrote: post #34
Eisenstein wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The volume which comes out of speakers and into your ears is dependent on many different things. Some that come to mind are the sensitivity and impedance of the speaker drivers, the amplifier in the earbuds and the fit over/in the ear. They are most likely just setting a toggle at a percentage of maximum volume level. The phone has no way of knowing what the sound pressure is at your eardrums. You can rest easy knowi…

> The phone has no way of knowing It could make a useful guess based on device identifiers. Or it could make a useless guess based on industry averages or some random device an engineer had on their desk one day. It clearly does one or the other, the question is which. Useful or useless?

Occam's razor says they are not going to keep a list of all devices and their configurations including types of ear pieces and their sound pressure level output at each volume setting when they could just say if (volume > .75){ warning();} and call it a day. There is no benefit to going above and beyond in this case -- they just need to say they warned people.

Re: Fixing the volume on my Bluetooth earbuds

#39

Post by actionfromafar »

hedora wrote: post #19
jjoonathan wrote: post #3

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…

+1 here

Re: Fixing the volume on my Bluetooth earbuds

#40

Post by actionfromafar »

Swizec wrote: post #18
jjoonathan wrote: post #3

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 ye…

Mmm, Bose works great for that. But if you accidentally go one past "lowest volume but not silent" (which is still a bit too loud when everything is quiet around you!) into "silent", then the Bose headset makes a VERY LOUD DING SOUND to alert you. Thanks Bose.
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