Introduction

I was enthusiastic about purchasing a new pair of Apple Airpods 4 this past holiday season, but when I tried them for the first time I found that their sound quality was only average and lacked life straight out of the box. If you purchased AirPods 4 recently and are not thrilled with how they sound, then you might want to try the simple fix that I’ve included here to bring their sound to life and improve your experience using these new little marvels. If you’re running the most recent version of iOS or iPadOS on your devices, then this setting should also help any other model of AirPods.

Those Little White Buds

I’m a long-time user of Apple’s earbuds in their various forms. Initially, there was the circular wired model that came with the first iPhones, iPods, Nanos, etc. Remember those? If you purchased multiple Apple devices for your family back in those early years, then like me you probably have a drawer in your house that’s full of them.

In 2016, the wired earbuds eventually gave way to their wireless counterpart, the AirPods, and Apple has never looked back. As of the time of this writing, you can now purchase all the latest wireless models including AirPods 4, AirPods Pro 2, and AirPods Max.

The AirPods sound over the years has typically been fairly neutral (but slightly shy on bass), and they’ve always been a good compromise for listening to music, podcasts, audiobooks, and phone calls. This is especially true considering that until the AirPods Pro arrived in 2019, all of the Apple earbuds were non-sealing designs that hang on the outer edge of the ear and aim their speakers inward. They’re not inserted into the ear canal with soft silicone tips on their ends to create a soundproof seal. So even considering that open-air design, they still sound good.

I’m not a fan of earbuds that are inserted into the ear canal (I’ll call them in-ear from now on). There are benefits to the sound of using the in-ear design to seal the ear canal from the sounds of the outside world so your music sounds better and more isolated, but I’ve always found in-ear models to be difficult to insert properly and uncomfortable to wear for long periods of time. I’ve therefore always opted for the AirPod models that hang on the outer edge of the ear and simply aim their sound inward.

My old set of AirPods 2 died recently, the victim of a battery worn out from many charge cycles over the years. I liked the sound of them and didn’t otherwise need to upgrade, but I decided to splurge at holiday time and get the latest AirPods 4 with Active Noise Cancellation as a replacement. Enjoying the AirPods 4 required a little bit of a journey though, which hopefully I can make shorter for you if you’re experiencing the same shortcomings with their sound that I was.

Thoughts On Sound Equalization

Let me insert a brief aside here about the equipment I use and a few general tips about choosing headphones or speakers.

I’m a picky listener, and I prefer my headphones and speakers to be neutral sounding. This means a nice even sound absent of booming bass that can make things sound muddy, or over-emphasized highs that can get irritating during extended listening. I like the sound neutral out of the box without the need for a lot of equalization on the device playing the music to get things sounding good. In audio terms, all sound enhancements like noise cancellation and boosted bass or treble should be “flat” (or off) when initially evaluating speakers or headphones. This lets the speaker or headphone speak for itself without being altered, and if they sound good with everything set flat, then you know you’re probably headed in the right direction with regard to sound quality.

For the audio hounds out there who are interested for reference purposes, the headphones I use at home are:

  • AKG-K240 Monitors, which are often used in recording studios
  • Sony WH-1000XM4, which along with certain Bose models have long been the standard for high-end noise-canceling headphones
  • Sony MDR-V6
  • AirPods

My primary home speakers are SVS Prime Towers, and I also have a treasured old pair of Polk Audio Monitor 10 towers.

Once you’ve identified a set of speakers or headphones that align with your listening tastes, then sure, use some equalization if you feel it’s necessary to round out the sound to your taste. My suggestion would be to use it lightly though, since all equalization that you add to your listening is distorting the sound away from its original form.

Apple’s Poor Equalization Approach

One of Apple’s design goals has always been to make its devices easy to use. That’s a good goal, but by doing so, they often build in quirkiness and leave out features that are available on comparable devices.

A perfect example of this is Apple’s equalization (EQ) presets that they offer on the iPhone. They are accessed in the Settings app by navigating to Apps > Music > EQ. In that menu, you’ll see a list of 24 EQ settings for modifying the sound of your music (including Off).

Over the years, I haven’t found any of these EQ settings to be of use to improve the sound quality of headphones connected to my iPhone. They’re heavy-handed EQ curves that significantly change one aspect of the sound but leave the overall sound poorer than before. The only one I find useful is ‘Off’.

This is unfortunate, and Apple could have solved this situation by allowing its users to create a custom EQ setting with exactly the tweaks they want to hear and then save that setting for future use. If I reference one of my other headphones mentioned above, the Sony WH-1000XM4, they have an extensive section in their companion Sony app that allows you to customize the headphone sound to exactly how you like it and save that setting for future use. They even have a robust wizard tool that guides you through the process of deciding what you like by listening to different samples of music with various EQ settings applied to them, and then you just pick one.

So if Apple’s EQ settings are too heavy-handed, and you can’t create your own custom EQ setting to save for future use, how can you modify the sound of your music if you just have one small thing that you want to change? The answer is to try the fix below that might hit your sweet spot.

The Fix

Since I wasn’t thrilled with the sound of the AirPods 4 out of the box, I started hunting around on my iPhone for why they didn’t sound good. I found that all of the sound-enhancing and noise-cancellation features were already turned off, so I was a bit stumped why the AirPods 4 seemed so out of line with the good sound of previous AirPod models that I’ve owned. The midrange of the AirPods 4 sound was muffled, and the highs lacked presence. I considered returning them when I heard this, but before doing so, I did some Googling about how to improve their overall sound quality. I wanted to try to make the sound work for me because I otherwise think these AirPods are the right fit and comfort for me, and they also have a good feature set.

The search results came back with a few suggestions about making changes in the iPhone’s settings for the Music app that I discussed above, so I knew that was a dead end.

As I looked further in the search results, I found one suggestion that I wasn’t previously aware of which sounded promising, so I gave it a try. It worked for me, so I want to share it here.

To implement this change, first ensure that all the sound enhancement features for the Music app and your AirPods 4 are turned off:

  1. In iOS, open the Settings app and within it go to Apps > Music > EQ and set the EQ to ‘Off’.
  2. With your AirPods 4 connected to your iPhone, follow the instructions at this Apple link to turn off the Active Noise Cancellation features.

With the above done and all sound enhancement off, let’s now turn on the feature that I think brings the AirPods 4 to life:

  1. Open the Settings app and within it go to Accessibility > Audio & Visual > Headphone Accommodations, and turn on Headphone Accommodations.
  2. Scroll down in Headphone Accommodations to the section ‘Tune Audio For’ and select either Balanced Tone or Vocal Range (they’re both similar). I slightly preferred the Vocal Range setting.
  3. Scroll down a little further and select ‘Slight’ on the slider that shows Slight/Moderate/Strong.

That’s it! With those changes made, I found that the muddiness in the midrange was cleaned up, and the highs were clear and more lively. You can toggle the change on and off to easily hear the difference these settings make by going back out to Headphone Accommodations in Settings and turning it on and off while you’re listening to some of your favorite music.

I found that the approach of using this “hidden” equalization feature is a much more subtle and effective way to bring the AirPods 4 sound to life than the more heavy-handed Apple EQ settings for the Music app.

Note: Although the easy change above worked great for me, within the Headphone Accommodations settings there’s also a link at the top of that screen that you can follow for ‘Custom Audio Setup’. With your AirPods 4 connected to your iPhone, you can try this setup option to see if you arrive at an even better sound for yourself. Just click the ‘Custom Audio Setup’ link and follow the on-screen instructions.

Conclusion

If you purchased a new set of AirPods 4 recently and found the sound to be lacking clarity and life, I hope this article offered the fix for you.

Once you have their sound balanced to your taste, you might ask “What about using Active Noise Cancellation with Noise Control, Spatial Audio, and Conversation Awareness?” I say go for it! The AirPods 4 noise cancellation is quite impressive for an open-air earbud, and it does wonders with tasks like cutting out the loud music that my gym is always playing so I can listen to my music of choice instead.

A safety tip: Always turn off noise cancellation when you need to hear your surroundings. For instance, when you’re walking or cycling, you should be able to hear traffic sounds, other people, and other environmental sounds.

Happy listening!

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