Surface Earbuds with Teams = Problem

Question

Surface Earbuds with Teams = Problem

Anonymous

Hello! I have a lovely shiny mew pair of Surface Earbuds and for the most part they're great. They're comfortable, sound great (most of the time - more on that in a moment) and the touch control is a nice feature.

I have them paired with an iPhone 8 running iOS 13.5.1, a generic Android phone running Android 9, and Lenovo Yoga 900 wining Win10 20H2, and a Lenovo X390 Yoga running Win10 1809. All devices have the Surface Audio App installed and the earbuds themselves are on the latest firmware. Both laptops have up to date drivers although, I'm aware that the X390 has an outdated feature release of W10. I have done a factory reset of the earbuds.

All is good on the Apple and Android devices. On both the W10 laptops, the pairing creates both the Headphones (Surface Earbuds Stereo) and the Headset (Surface Earbuds Hands-Free) audio devices. No problem there either. Using the Headphones device for music results in an excellent experience with good quality sound and volume adjustment. VOIP apps however need to use the Headset device (which to my ear sounds like a lower resolution bi-mono device as opposed to the true stereo device of the Headphones). The issue I'm having is that when I'm in a Teams meeting (using the headset audio device) the sound quality is good, but man is it loud. There's a little bit of distortion, but it's manageable and livable, but it's so loud that even with the volume set to 1 after about half an hour or so I have to stop wearing them because my ears are ringing. It just sounds like the gain on an old fender guitar amp is up too high. This issue occurs on BOTH laptops.

I've been through the settings of the Headset device to see if there's an option to attenuate the volume by xdB, but I can't see anything. So my question is is there a setting somewhere I'm missing, or any other configuration available to provide a better control of the volume on the headset device, otherwise I fear I'll be returning them, which I'm gutted about because they suit me need perfectly otherwise.

Thanks for your help!

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4 answers

Answer 1

Hi, Pete Bradshaw 67!

Thanks for reaching out to Microsoft Community and posting your concerns regarding the Surface Earbuds when in a Teams call. We understand your concern about the loudness of the audio when in a call using your Windows 10 devices. I haven't experienced the issue on the Surface device I have here which acts as the host device. One thing I noticed is that it says using Headset when in the Teams app, however, when I checked the audio profile, I had to manually choose Headset since it was on Headphones. Can you check if that's the same thing you're experiencing? I also set it to Volume Level 1 and I can still hear in a call though.

I am afraid there's no settings to adjust in the Surface Audio app for this. Since you already did a reset on the earbuds, you may post this as a suggestion to help out. Please visit this page to be guided on how to Send feedback to Microsoft with the Feedback Hub app.

We hope this helps you out.

Kind regards,

Janette_Z

Answer 2

Hi Janette_Z

Teams will allow me to select the Headphones as the speaker, and the headset as the microphone, but if I do this others can hear me fine, but I get no audio at all, so it seems that Teams can't use the stereo bluetooth device, so this isn't an option.

I think I get the same as you with the Teams audio v system audio profile. I can set Teams to headset but the system audio device is set to headphones. To turn the volume down on the headset I either have to spin the system device to headset, or when in a Teams meeting, go to the device settings from the ellipses on the meeting control bar. Curiously when I do the latter I can set the volume to 0 (zero), but can still hear the meeting at quite a loud volume.

I was able to create greater control over the volume on the Headphones device by disabling Bluetooth absolute volume in the registry. HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Bluetooth\Audio\AVRCP\CT\disable absolutevolume=0. This allows control of the volume on the earbuds and on W10 separately, and combined give much more granular control of the volume. Is there a corresponding reg key for the headset device?

Thanks!

Answer 3

Just an update on this that might help others. I have found a work around that has hugely improved the situation for me. After some research I installed an app called EqualizerAPO. It intercepts the audio stream and applies audio equalisation to it. You can set it to work with specific sound devices so in my case I've only installed it on the headset device. The app has enabled me to apply -30db of attenuation to the audio and clean the sound up with some equalisation. I still occasionally get a bit of overdrive type distortion but it's now mostly removed and ignorable, so in the end I have a good result. It is a shame that I have had to resort to using a third party app to provide the result that should come as 'default' with a £200 pair of earbuds, so not a high score on that one MS. That said this might give your developers something to look in to as a future feature of the Surface Audio app!

Answer 4

Hello, Pete Bradshaw 67.

We appreciate the input and the knowledge you shared regarding the workaround. I hope you were able to visit this page on how to Send feedback to Microsoft with the Feedback Hub app to help improve the Surface Audio app.

Regards,

Janette_Z

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Surface Earbuds with Teams = Problem

4 answers