Why Do My Beats Solo 4 Sound Muffled? (Quick Fix!)
If you’re wondering, “Why do my Beats Solo 4 sound muffled?” relax–this is a common issue!
Typically, the muffled audio either comes from a setting on your smartphone or due to wireless connection issues that can be solved in under 5 minutes.
At Zontsound, we will walk you through the troubleshooting process and bring back the crystal clear audio expected from high-end headphones such as Beats.
Let’s get started…
Why Do My Beats Solo 4 Sound Muffled – 8 Quick Solutions!
Note: Make sure to adjust the Beats Solo 4 headband to perfectly fit your head!
1. Enable your Phone’s Mono Audio
If your Beats Solo 4 sounds too quiet or muffled, like the audio is coming from far away, a quick thing that fixes the problem for most users is enabling Mono Audio.
The Mono mode will simply combine the music audio channels and make the left and right speakers play the same content.
The problem with the muffled sound arises because many tracks online have 2 different audio channels, one for the left and one for the right side.
When separated across the left and right sides, this creates a spatial audio experience, which, to be honest, is not a big deal.
Whether you use an Android or an iOS smartphone, here’s how to enable Mono Audio:
This should resolve the muffled audio playback on your Best Solo 4, and if not, keep reading!
2. Boost Volume Across All Sources
When the audio of your Beats Solo 4 sounds too quiet or muffled, one of the first things to do is to check whether the volume is sufficiently increased across all sources.
For instance, when you are listening to music from your phone, there are 3 sources where the volume can be increased.
Those would be:
- The volume of your smartphone
- The volume of your Beast Solo 4
- The volume from your music app
2.1 Increase Volume from Phone
Increasing the volume of your smartphone, or perhaps computer, is straightforward. If you are using a phone, press the Volume (+) button several times to boost the volume effectively.
2.2 Increase Volume from Beats
To increase the volume of your Beats Solo 4, press the Volume Up button above the Beats logo on your headphones. The buttons are on the left ear cup, below and above the “b” button.
2.3 Increase Volume from App
At last, we have the volume from the source application. Many music apps, let’s take YouTube for example, have a built-in Volume Controller.
Verify the volume is increased from there, too.
3. Test Through Wired Connection
Another quick thing to try before moving on to more complex solutions would be switching to a 3.5mm jack connection, just to narrow down the circle of possibilities.
Switching to a wired link will instantly help you determine whether the problem is coming from the wireless connection.
To do so, you’ll need a phone that supports AUX (3.5mm jack).
If your phone does not have an AUX output, you can test with a PC, laptop, or even a TV, as many smart models support AUX.
The idea is to connect your Beats Solo 4 to a device that supports AUX, play some music, and check whether the audio is muffled.
If not, then the issue is 100% related to the Bluetooth link.
4. Forget and Re-Add Beast Solo 4
When using a wireless connection, the Beats Solo 4 muffled sound could be coming from many factors, so an all-in-one solution would be to Forget them and Re-Add them.
This means removing the Beats Solo 4 Bluetooth profile from the smartphone entirely and then pairing them again from scratch.
Here’s how this works on Androids and iPhones:
To pair your Beats Solo 4, hold the “Power” button on the right ear cup for about ~3–4 seconds, and wait until the headphones appear in the Bluetooth menu of your phone.
Then, you need to select them to pair them wirelessly, and you’re ready to test.
⚠️Important: If the audio is still muffled over a wireless connection, make sure to keep the headphones and sources (your phone) close to each other.
5. Change your Music Source App
Another thing you should try against the muffled sound on your Beats Solo 4 is to switch to a different music source.
For example, if you’re only testing the audio from your headphones on YouTube, go to Spotify or Apple Music to test if the same issue appears across all platforms.
If yes, then the music source has nothing to do with the issue!
6. Try Audio from a Different Device
It’s not excluded that the audio of your Beats Solo 4 is muffled because of your source device, whether it’s a smartphone, computer, or whatever.
A quick and easy way to exclude this possibility would be to test with a different audio device, regardless of whether you use a wireless or wired link.
You can use a computer, laptop, another smartphone, or even a smart TV to try the audio output of your Beats Solo 4.
In case your output is muffled across all sources, then continue reading…
7. Factory Reset your Beats Solo 4
If nothing helps and your Beats Solo 4 audio is still muffled, despite all your efforts, the ultimate method is to factory reset them completely.
This will unpair your Beats Solo 4 from the source device and erase any in-app settings, so be cautious and back up anything you want to retrieve.
Here’s how to factory reset the Beats Solo 4 in easy steps:
This will trigger the factory reset of your Beats Solo 4.
When the headphones are reset, pair them to your source device or connect them through a 3.5mm jack and test the audio output.
If this is not working either, there is one last thing to try!
8. Try to Burn-In your Beats Solo 4
If you’re still wondering why my Beats Solo 4 sound is muffled, you might need to burn-in or also known as “break-in”, your headphones.
Whether headphones burn-in is real or not is still a debate, but according to many users, this will resolve the muffled audio problem if done right.
To burn in the Beats headphones, ideally, you should find a playlist with audio tracks that have different frequencies, but to be honest, any playlist should do.
Set the volume of the Beats Solo 4 to about ~70% and let them play for around ~4–6 hours.
This is best done overnight!
In theory, this should burn in your Beats Solo 4 headphones, and the muffled audio will go away, especially if the problem is on a factory level.
In case that doesn’t help, contact Beats Support.
Finn Wheatley, a Master’s graduate in Computer Science from UCL, London, honed his skills at small data science consultancies. There, he helped large corporations enhance their data capabilities by deploying cutting-edge machine learning analytics and resolving technical hurdles.
