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Fixing the volume on my Bluetooth earbuds
- ravenstine 3y agoThis 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.
- playingalong 3y agoLikely the delay is not because of the sound effect. But the other way around - they added the jingle to mask the delay.
- actionfromafar 3y agoI wish I had such faith.
- distract8901 3y agoBluetooth link negotiation happens in a few dozens of milliseconds. Any perceptible delay is down to the host operating system setting up audio drivers. The headset can't know what the host is doing or even that there is a delay.
- K2L8M11N2 3y agoYou can change the volume of those sounds under Settings > AirPods > Accessibility.
- jjoonathan 3y agoNICE! 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 compelling alternative hypothesis: these earbuds have a distinctively lower physical volume at a given volume setting than others I have used, so lazy modeling on Apple's part could be expected to generate a false notification like the one I receive. I want to commend Apple if they did the right thing and built a database mapping (model,volume_setting)->physical_volume. Unfortunately, the complete lack of details in the notification and feature description do not inspire confidence and I do not want to make my workouts shittier just because Apple put a college homework quality model into production. Does anyone here know if the data science backing these notifications is competent?
- chrismorgan 3y agoMy 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)).
- jjoonathan 3y agoYeah, 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!")
- coffeebeqn 3y agoI 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
- jjoonathan 3y agoThe 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.
- mrob 3y agoWhat 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.
- jjoonathan 3y ago
- Vicinity9635 3y agoMan 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.
- twelvechairs 3y agoWhat does it do? Why do you want a bluetooth connection when you are trying to sleep?
- zoky 3y agoFor listening to music/white noise/droning YouTube videos while falling asleep.
- astura 3y agoPlenty 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.
- Fnoord 3y agoThe application such as Spotify could have a timer. The headphones apparently don't, nor do they have an auto go off when battery is depleted, or a way to more silently announce battery is low.
- Vicinity9635 3y agoYou 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-Everything-Christmas/dp/B07TPLZY74?th=1 https://www.amazon.com/MUSICOZY-Headphones-Bluetooth-Everyth...
- simonklitj 3y ago
- tux3 3y agoMy 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.
- yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago> I would pay very good money for a hackable noice-cancelling headset. https://pine64.com/product/pinebuds-pro-open-firmware-capable-anc-wireless-earbuds/ https://pine64.com/product/pinebuds-pro-open-firmware-capabl... ?
- tux3 3y agoThank you. I normally like over ear headphones, but I'll definitely consider going that route
- StimDeck 3y agoYes, this is cool, but what is this: > User needs to use the programming tools provided at wiki page. Any device brick caused by hacking or improper programming may void warranty. And: > Excessive flashing Pinebuds can potentially brick the device. It’s hackable or it’s not, choose one.
- lightedman 3y agoI'd like a way for phones to know if the headset that is connected is a speaker set, IEMs, bone conduction, etc. The "Volume is too loud" notification is annoying when I'm using my regular speaker set and WANT the volume cranked so I can hear it across the house, and doubly-annoying when I'm using bone conduction headphones as they need to be at an appreciable volume for you to hear them well.
- solarkraft 3y agoI love this stuff. All of a sudden this model of earphones is quite interesting to me. Side note: The system sounds a bluetooth device makes are among the strongest differentiating factors (with some being completely awful; see https://youtu.be/J2wPsH64JEM https://youtu.be/J2wPsH64JEM). Yet I have never seen a review or product page which tells you about what sound (which you will have to hear multiple times per day, with no way to opt out!) the product will make. The ability to change them also seems like a pretty easy differentiator.
- msrenee 3y agoI really wish I could turn down the play/pause beep on my aftershokz. It's perfect in a loud shop with earplugs in. Sitting in a quiet office with my music down low to concentrate, it's uncomfortable and startling. I don't understand why the system sounds don't respond to the volume level.
- yaomtc 3y agoSpeaking of aftershox how about disabling the absolutely useless "redial last number" function... I've accidentally triggered that like three times. I would never ever want this feature. Actually, one of those times was on a different bluetooth headset so it's not Aftershox specific... just the unreasonably locked down, uncustomizable nature of Bluetooth devices I guess!
- abdullahkhalids 3y agoWhy 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?
- toast0 3y agoI 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.
- krackers 3y agoBluetooth audio uses SBC codec by default (unless your device something modern like aac or apt-x) right? I imagine that there's probably some all-in-one decoding chip that includes various codecs.
- abdullahkhalids 3y agoYeah. So Bluetooth never uses mp3 for transmission as far as I am aware - it is simply not one of the codecs specified in the protocol. So why does that decoding chip have mp3 decoding, and why use mp3 when you could just use SBC.
- distract8901 3y agoMP3 decoding is just math. If you have enough CPU to decode a compressed audio stream, it doesn't cost anything to also have it decode MP3. Sure, you could store those clips in a more appropriate codec, but what do you gain? It's dead simple to encode an MP3, every audio editor from the last couple decades can do it. How common is SBC support? If MP3 decoding is free, and MP3 encoding is free, why bother spending any effort at all on anything else? Sometimes good enough is good enough and cheap and easy wins over correct every time.
- causality0 3y agoI kept a pair of Tozo T6's in my pocket for several years. Honestly... buy better buds. You don't even have to spend more money. I haven't touched my Tozos since I got a pair of Comfobuds Mini.
- Namidairo 3y agoAh, lucky that this is an Airoha target without firmware encryption. Also there's an 010 Editor template for the firmware format if you're curious. https://github.com/ramikg/airoha-firmware-parser https://github.com/ramikg/airoha-firmware-parser
- contravariant 3y agoI appreciate the skill, but I can't help but lament the effort needed to do something as basic as just slightly modifying the volume a file plays at. Getting a tool to do what you want probably shouldn't require this much effort.
- kls0e 3y agothis was fun to read. enjoyable to follow. thanks
- maxglute 3y agoI wish more people complained about loud / bad system sounds.
- mongol 3y agoThis adds yet another argument to my list of why I prefer cheap wired earbuds. But great determination!
- dave8088 3y agoTo each their own, but for me, high quality wireless buds with ANC are worth every penny.
- 3abiton 3y agoThat was an amazing read. Learned quite a lot from your journey! I wish such simple things didn't need much user hacking.
- WhereIsTheTruth 3y ago> I asked them via email about this and they responded promptly and said that there was nothing they could do, which is understandable No, this is not "understandable", you paid for the product, it's a problem that should be fixed
- eviks 3y agoA sad state of affairs in the realm of hardware and firmware design when fixing such trivialities requires so much effort
- sir_brickalot 3y agoI would need the opposite: The volume on my Airpod 2 are waaaaay to low on my Samsung phone. No problem with the Airpods on an Ipad or with my Bose QC II on my mobile. Bluetooth is such a pain.
- nicman23 3y agodisable or enable absolute volume in dev settings
- numpad0 3y agoQuick note: I got a used Tozo T6 after reading this, visually looking to be manufactured rather recently. I was unable to recreate this. In fact, I could not even have headset recognized by the official Tozo app, nor verify that the headset uses Airoha chipset, identified by AAC support. Mine only supports SBC. Either I got a fake, or internal changes were made since author purchased one. Some of audio files sound same as what are included in partial Airoha SDKs on the Internet, but it also plays other novel voice files. If anyone is looking to independently verify/play with this result, fake AirPods might be a better path towards it.