You bought brand-new headphones and love everything about them except for one fatal flaw – they just aren’t loud enough.
No matter how hard you try, you can’t seem to adjust the volume to a respectable level.
You can’t get the volume high enough for your liking and you’re upset because you spent your hard earned money on headphones that didn’t deliver the goods, so you feel upset, angry, and cheated.
Guess what?
It’s possible to make adjustments that will boost the volume of your headphones and make them louder.
I’m not talking about making them so loud that they’ll split your ears in two. But the recommendations that I’m about to share will make it possible to get enough extra volume that you’ll feel less cheated, less angry, and a lot more satisfied.
Sound good?
Keep reading to discover how to make headphones louder using my best tips.
Quick List: How to Make Headphones Louder with 6 Effective Tips
- Adjust Your Playback Settings
- Use a Headphone Amplifier
- Add a Volume Increase App
- Adjust the EQ Settings
- Clean Out Dust & Dirt
- Buy Noise Isolating Headphones
Tip #1: Adjust Your Playback Settings
This tip might not work for every audio device, but it’s a good place to start nonetheless to see if you’ll be able to get additional higher volumes from your headphones.
How does it work?
It’s possible that your Apple or Android phone has the volume configured in a way that prevents you from getting the maximum capacity to your headphones. This is a relatively easy fix, and it should definitely help you get some extra loud audio pumping through your headphone speakers by increasing your overall limit.
For Apple phones with or without a lightning connector, check your main settings and select the Music category. At this point, you should scroll down and search for a section titled Playback. After you select it, you’ll then find a category titled Volume Limit. Right here is where the magic happens.
From the Volume Limit, you can raise or lower the maximum volume on your headphones right on the screen. If your headphone volume is too low, you can raise it up to the maximum, three quarters of the way, halfway, or however high you’d like it to go.
For Android, this is a similar process. In settings, you’ll want to select Sounds, and then select Volume. At this point, there will be a number of different volume levels available to choose. To raise the volume on the headphones, you’ll need to adjust the Media levels to your liking.
Tip #2: Make Your Headphones Louder with a Headphone Amplifier
With the exception of bone conduction headphones, the overall design means that you have small speakers covering each one of your ears, whether inside of your ears, on top of your ears, or right next to your ears.
And just like any other speaker, if you want them to pump out louder audio, you’ll need to use an amplifier to boost the volume. If the amplifier is small, the volume will remain low. If the amplifier is bigger, the volume will get louder. It’s pretty simple to understand, right?
Do your headphones appear under powered with low volume and low sound quality? And if you turn them up to the maximum, do you hear distortion coming out of your headphones? You wouldn’t even want to increase the volume if the sound is that terrible.
Or would you? If you had a standalone headphone amp you can solve your problems lickity split. This tip with solve volume problems most of the time, because headphone amps aren’t perfect and they do not necessarily work in every situation.
Are you using over-ear headphones? If you’re looking to boost the volume, you’ll need to discover the headphone impedance level. If your level is at 300 ohms, an amplifier will definitely help by pushing the drivers to the max and making the headphones louder. If your headphones are relatively efficient at 20 to 25 ohms, or somewhere in that range, then an amplifier isn’t going to help much so don’t even bother buying one.
Tip #3: Add a Volume Increase App to Your Phone
If nothing I’ve recommended has worked so far, it may benefit you to add a Volume Increase App to your phone. These apps are pretty self-explanatory because they help you get the most out of your phone by increasing the volume.
Depending on your operating system, you can either find an app in the Apple store or the Google Play store. Android and Apple developers created these applications for this very problem, because they also had difficulty getting their headphones to produce volumes that were high enough to listen to their favorite music at respectable levels.
While you’re in the app store, make sure to spend some time looking around at the different Volume Increase Apps. Don’t pick the first one to show up in the search results because it might not be the best.
Read the reviews, check their star ratings, and find an app that other people seem to like. By approaching the selection process this way, you’ll have an easier time finding the best app to improve the volume production coming out of your headphones.
Tip #4: Adjust the EQ Settings on Your Phone
You’d be surprised how many people accidentally overlook this simple fix, but it seems to happen all the time anyway. On occasion, your phone will already have “optimized” settings in place that were put there by the manufacturer. Although these settings may seem optimized for them, they definitely do not meet your requirements by any stretch of the imagination.
So, go into your phone and locate the EQ settings. If they seem out of whack when you compare them to your personal preferences, make the necessary adjustments to get your headphones to sound a lot louder than they currently do right now.
Plug the headphones in and make the adjustments while you’re listening to music. By making the adjustments this way, you’ll know exactly when to stop fiddling with the settings because you’ll have adjusted them exactly the way you prefer and they’ll be no need to make any further changes.
Tip #5: Thoroughly Clean Dirt and Dust from Your Headphones
No one ever remembers to clean their headphones. It’s just one of those things that easily slips our minds or doesn’t enter into our thought process. But you’d be surprised how much louder clean headphones sound when they’re back to a pristine and more perfect state.
Using headphones or earbuds on a regular basis means you’re heating up your ear canal because the headphones themselves generate heat. This might seem like it isn’t a big deal, but this heating process actually creates more oil or wax coming out of your ears.
Guess what? This additional wax and oil can cover up your open back earphones or closed back headphones and you may not realize it due to foam padding and velour ear cup covers that block you from noticing the earwax and oil build up.
Do you know what else? This buildup can prevent your speakers from playing music and other audio as loudly as possible. Even dust can build up inside the speakers and prevent them from working at their full capacity.
If you feel this could be a problem, it’s time to take off your ear cup covers and begin to clean out your headphone speakers. Get a toothbrush and some hydrogen peroxide and proceed to scrub the speakers to make sure they are squeaky clean.
Try not to put too much hydrogen peroxide solution on the brush because you could accidentally end up damaging the headphone speakers. And that would clearly be counterproductive to say the least.
Tip #6: Buy a Pair of Noise Isolating Headphones
Have you tried everything recommended and none of it seems to work? It’s time to finally give up on your dream of getting your headphones to produce greater volume because nothing has helped thus far and it doesn’t seem like anything will. In this case, it’s time to consider buying a pair of high quality noise isolating or noise cancelling headphones.
I’m not trying to push you toward this decision. I don’t want to convince you to spend money. But it seems like the obvious answer. So take this advice or ignore it. It’s your choice.
Why noise isolating headphones? Some people (like me) want to shut out the whole world and get lost in the music, or talk radio show or audiobook whenever we put on headphones. We don’t want to know anything about what’s going on around us. We’re content to spend time in our safe and secure world in our head!
Noise cancelling headphones make this dream a reality. You can secure these headphones over or within your ears and block out the noise around you.
And the best ones have adjustable features that allow you to choose how much noise you’ll let into your awareness. By limiting the background noise, you’ll be able to hear the volume coming out of your speakers and nothing more, which will lead to much louder volume and the best listening experience possible.
Make Low Volume Listening a Thing of the Past with These Volume Increasing Tips and Techniques
You’ve just learned about my best tips and techniques to raise your headphone volume.
Are you going to use them?
I hope so because they’ll make a difference and improve your overall listening experience which is all I want for you anyway.
If all else fails you may need to buy another pair of headphones that have the capability of really pumping the sounds out.
Thanks for reading this far.
Good luck on your volume boosting journey!
Trent is a music lover, musical instrument player and passionate audio afficionado.