I got a really expensive pair of headphones for my birthday a couple of months ago. I was pretty ecstatic about the purchase, but the moment I connected them to my Windows PC, the joy on my face — or ears, in this case — faded.
My $200 Sony headphones sounded like a cheap earpiece from a roadside vendor. At first, I thought something was wrong with the headphones. Maybe I bought a fake. Maybe the Bluetooth connection was acting up. Or maybe I’d damaged them somehow.
Turns out, the headphones were perfectly fine, and Windows was the problem. Apparently, a couple of Windows settings can affect the audio quality coming out of my headphones.
Handsfree Telephony
Windows can switch Bluetooth headphones into a lower-quality call mode without your consent
If you’re using Bluetooth headphones with a microphone, Windows supports two different audio modes. There’s a normal, high-quality stereo mode for listening to music, videos, and games, and a Handsfree Telephony mode for calls.
The Handsfree Telephony mode is designed around two-way communication. It needs to send microphone audio back to the PC while also receiving sound, so it uses much lower-quality audio.
That’s totally fine when I’m on a call. But the problem is that Windows can trigger the mode even when I’m not on a call, and the difference in sound quality can be quite alarming. My expensive headphones suddenly sound compressed, tinny, and almost like they’re coming through a cheap telephone speaker.
To disable it, I open Settings -> Bluetooth & devices -> View more devices -> More devices and printer settings. This opens up Control Panel, so I right-click my headphones, select Properties, then switch to the Services tab. From there, I can uncheck Handsfree Telephony and click Apply. The downside is that the headphone’s built-in microphone will no longer work through a Bluetooth connection.
Audio enhancements
Windows can apply software effects that make good headphones sound worse
Most headphones nowadays come with companion software that lets you tweak how they sound. Not to feel left out, Windows also has a feature called audio enhancements that applies various software processing effects to audio, supposedly to improve your listening experience.
But unlike headphone companion software, which lets you tweak things as you like, Windows does it automatically. Depending on the hardware and drivers, the audio enhancements can include things like equalization, virtual surround effects, loudness adjustments, and other processing.
Unfortunately, “enhancements” don’t always mean better quality. In my case, it made my audio sound unnatural, muddy, or overly processed. It was very noticeable when I was listening to music where I wanted to hear the sound exactly as it was recorded. So, of course, I disabled them – I went to Settings -> System -> Sound, selected my headphones under Output, and turned off the Audio enhancements option. Sometimes the best audio enhancement is no enhancement at all.
Bit depth and sample rate
The wrong audio format can make music sound noticeably worse
The default bit depth and sample rate for my headphones on Windows is 24-bit, 48,000 Hz. Yours may differ; it all depends on your audio device and its drivers. Bit depth determines how much detail can be captured in each audio sample, while sample rate determines how many times per second the audio signal is sampled.
In simple terms, higher bit depth provides more room to represent volume differences, while a higher sample rate lets the system capture audio more often. But Windows’ default configuration may not be best suited for your headphones, causing music to sound flat and compressed. Thankfully, Windows allows us to change the bit depth and sample rate.
The configuration options available depend on your headphones and driver, so you may see different bit-depth and sample-rate combinations than I do. To check yours, go to Settings -> System -> Sound, and select your headphones. Under the Output settings section, you will see the Format dropdown. From there, you can try a different combination of bit depth and sample rate and see which sounds good to you. There’s even a Test button right beside the dropdown that allows you to test the sound without leaving the page.
My headphones weren’t the problem after all
I spent a pretty long time thinking my headphones were somehow broken. But Windows was simply using audio settings that weren’t ideal for them. The Handsfree Telephony mode was the biggest offender, but turning off unnecessary audio enhancements and checking the default audio format also helped me get the audio quality I expected.
And that’s the frustrating thing about Windows. So many settings are scattered across the modern Settings app, the old Control Panel, device properties, and driver software that it’s easy to miss something important.