Hi guys, David is David here from payetteforward.com and upphone.com, and in this video, we're
going to explain what to do when your iPhone speaker sounds muffled. When your iPhone speaker
is muffled, it can happen all the time, or it could be muffled just during speakerphone
calls, or the earpiece speaker can be muffled, or it can be muffled if you're listening to
music in the Music app. So we're going to hit the big problems first that sort of address
every single problem, and then we're going to move into the more specific fixes for the
more specific problems. So a good place to start is by playing a ringtone to make sure.
Yeah. By playing ringtone to make sure, just so we can see if it's muffled all the time
or just sometimes. Right. So let's say it's muffled during speaker phone calls. Let's
see if it sounds muffled when you play ringtone. So I can just head to settings and then sounds
and haptics, and just drag this around and you'll hear a ringtone sound. Normally it'll
be much louder than that, but I'm doing a screen recording. Yeah, so it's going to be
kind of soft. Yes. But you'll be able to tell. So let's say that it is still muffled. Yeah,
all right, so it's muffled all the time — speakerphone calls, music, always. Well, then you're gonna
take your phone out of its case and then clean out the microphones and speakers. Exactly.
So I already took it out of the case because it's kind of a pain to get out. Yeah, so to
clean out the microphones and the speaker, we just want to use an anti-static brush.
And if you don't have one of those lying around, use a brand new toothbrush — one that you've
never used before. Yep. Doesn't matter — Oral-B, Crest... we are equal opportunity toothbrush...
Yes, right. So on the bottom of your iPhone you're going to have the speaker here. Just
brush it out gently. And then also the microphone; brush that out gently. Now, the microphones
work with the speakers to cancel out background noise, especially during phone calls. So if
you're having a problem with a muffled speaker during a speakerphone call and you're wondering
why we're talking about cleaning out the microphones, this is why. There's another microphone up
in the top near the earpiece speaker. We're just giving it an overhaul here. A nice little...
Looks great. And then on the back, there's another microphone right in the camera assembly.
It's a little... looks like a pinhole there. Okay. So now we've cleaned out the microphones
and the speakers. Alright. So we've done that and it's still muffled. Yeah. Well, real quick,
we're just going to restart your iPhone and make sure it's not some weird minor software
glitch going on. There's a few different ways to do this. It's easy if you just go to General
and then scroll all the way to the bottom and tap shut down. Tap shut down. Yeah. iPhone
will turn off. Wait a few seconds, side button or power button to turn it back on. Exactly.
So if that didn't work, it's now time to move to the accessibility settings. So we're going
to go there by opening Settings and tap General. So General, accessibility — accessibility,
right? And first we will look at the mono audio. Mono a Mono! It's not stereo. Just,
we're going to look at all the audio settings that can affect the way that the sound comes
out of your iPhone. That's kind of obvious, but that's we're going to do. Mono audio,
it should be off. If it's on it can change the way the sound comes out of your iPhone.
Noise cancellation, especially if your speaker is muffled in the earpiece speaker, by turning
this off, that might fix that problem. And then this is the most common issue that we
would see the Apple Store. It's this LR Left Right slider. It says underneath, "Adjust
the audio volume balance between left and right channels." A lot of the time would be
all the way over there on the left. Well, that's no good. Right. And so people would
be listening and the speaker's muffled, but it really just one of the speaker's was working
at all. Or if it's somewhere between it's going to sound weird. So make sure that this
slider here is right in the middle. Perfect. So if it still sounds muffled, what if you're
just listening to music and it sounds muffled only, then you're going to want to check out
the EQ settings in the music section of the settings app. So I'll go back to the main
settings page, tap back to settings, scroll down to music — to music. There it is. And
then down to EQ. So right now I have EQ off, but especially if it sounds muffled, maybe
you've got treble reducer on. Well, you don't want that on. Right. So just go back up to
the top here. Make sure that EQ is off. Also, make sure that volume limit is off and sound
check is off. Well, just turn them all off. Everything off. Everything's off! So if it's
still sounds muffled we're going to do a reset all settings and try to kill a deep software
issue. That's the way to do it. So go back to the main page of the settings app, tap
General; all the way down to reset. And then tap reset all settings. You'll have to enter
your passcode. A confirmation alert appears. Tap reset all settings again. Your iPhone
will turn off. It'll reset turn back on and everything in the settings app will be reset
to factory defaults. So your Wi-Fi passwords are gone. Your Bluetooth devices are gone.
Your wallpaper is gone, but you don't lose things like contacts and photos. Perfect.
Yeah. And I mean if that doesn't work, it's still muffled — if it's still muffled it's
probably a hardware issue. Yeah. Apple Store is a great option. There's also some good
third-party repair shops we'll recommend in the description section below and the comment
— the card up above. Right. If you're under warranty, Apple Store. If you're not under
warranty, this is a pretty easy repair because it's just the speaker you can do, which is
great. So a third-party repair shop might be the way to go. Right. And I just want to
plug real quick that the newer iPhones have better speakers. So if you — if you're
on an older iPhone, this might be a good time to upgrade if the speaker's really important
to you. You can check out upphone.com/phones. Yeah, to compare all the latest cell phones.
Might be — now might be a good time to upgrade. Yeah, it's not just a little better.
It's a whole lot better. It really — it really is one of the biggest improvements.
So thank you guys watching this video. Give it a thumbs up if you found it helpful. Leave
us a comment down below with any other questions. Don't forget to subscribe to this channel.
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Check out our other videos — 14 great iPhone battery saving tips is somewhere on the screen.
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