Poor sound in Bluetooth headphones

Symptom

Music in Bluetooth headphones sounds muffled, “like over the phone”: no bass, a narrow band, sometimes with crackling. Quality often degrades during calls or voice chats and does not recover afterwards. The connection itself is stable, and volume has nothing to do with it.

Typical causes

• Windows switches the headphones into headset mode — the Hands-Free profile (HFP/HSP): it is needed for the microphone to work, but it sharply limits playback quality. The switch is triggered by apps that have captured the microphone — calls, voice chats, games — or by selecting the “Hands-Free” option as the output device.
• Less often, quality is degraded by the Bluetooth driver or by the headphones’ own codec.

Fix in BoosterX

Open BoosterX, in the left menu select the “Fixes” section, type “Bad sound in Bluetooth headphones” into the search, open the card and click “Fix”. Then reconnect the headphones — turn them off and on again — and check the sound; if necessary, restart Windows. The fix disables the Hands-Free profile (HFP/HSP) for the Bluetooth devices currently connected, so music plays in full quality. The trade-off is honest: the headphones’ microphone will stop working — for calls, choose another microphone. After pairing new headphones, check them separately and, if necessary, apply the fix again. BoosterX can be downloaded from the official website boosterx.org.

How to verify

Turn on music: immediately or after reconnecting the headphones, the sound should become clear and full. Then open a call — the headphones’ microphone will be unavailable, which is the expected consequence of the fix.

Manual alternative without BoosterX

Open “Settings” → “System” → “Sound”. The same headphones usually appear twice in the list of output devices — labeled “Stereo” and “Hands-Free”: select “Stereo”. Then music will play in full quality, while the headphones’ microphone will remain available only through the “Hands-Free” option.

If it did not help

If the sound remains bad even on the “Stereo” device, a Bluetooth driver or the headphones’ codec is likely at fault; errors matching in time can be viewed in EventX. If Bluetooth does not work at all, start with the article “Bluetooth not working in Windows”. Still no luck — write to support.

Last checked: 2026-09-20. Full catalog of fixes.