4 phone settings that make my music sound bassier

If the sound profile you’re getting from your phone just isn’t cutting it, you might want to make some changes to make it work for you. It can be especially irritating if you’re not getting the bass response you want, either because the music you’re listening to is mixed badly, or your headphones don’t emphasize bass enough or just don’t sound right at all, or anything in between.

So if you want to boost your bass from your phone, there are a few options you can explore. It mostly depends on what kind of phone you have, but there are options here for everyone.

1 Choose from presets in Apple Music’s equalizer

You can find this in the Settings app on your iPhone

If you’re an iOS user and you use Apple Music, you can adjust the sound settings for just Apple Music in the Settings app. It doesn’t let you adjust your sound very specifically, but you are provided with a list of EQ presets to choose from, all of which will sound a little different. Remember, this only affects Apple Music, so if you listen to music on another app, it won’t be affected by these EQ settings.

To choose equalizer presets, go to Settings > Music, then under audio, tap EQ, and you’ll find a list of EQ presets. There are a lot of presets that’ll boost bass for you, just in varying amounts, and with different adjustments to other frequencies as well. Some of the presets to try if you want to boost bass specifically are Dance, Deep, Electronic, Hip Hop, and Increase Bass.

2 Adjust the equalizer in your headphones app

Bluetooth headphones often have an equalizer for getting your ideal sound profile

Lots of Bluetooth headphones come with accompanying apps, and a lot of those accompanying apps also feature an equalizer, either a multi-band equalizer you can adjust yourself, presets to choose from, or both. This is especially helpful if the headphones already don’t have much of a bass emphasis, so you can always adjust them as needed when you’re using a phone with the app installed.

To find the equalizer in your headphones app, it will be different between different apps, but you will normally find the equalizer or presets in a tab to do with sound, or somewhere in the settings. It’s not usually one of the first things you see when you open one of these apps, so you may have to search for it. You can find a more detailed explanation of how to find the equalizer in the user manual for your headphones, most likely.

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3 Use an equalizer app

Android users have the benefit of being able to adjust sound system-wide

If you’re using an Android device, you can use a third party equalizer to adjust your phone’s sound profile across all apps. Using one of these apps is especially useful if your headphones don’t have an accompanying app with an equalizer, so you can simply adjust the sound for your entire device. Some of these apps are free, and some are paid, but the free ones normally contain a lot of ads, so you’ve been warned.

Some of my favorite equalizer apps are Poweramp equalizer, which is free and has a 10-band equalizer to play around with, along with a lot of additional controls to hone in on your ideal sound profile. Another solid one is Wavelet, which also has a pro version with a bass tuner and other features.

It’s also possible that an app you’re using for listen to music or any other audio has an equalizer built in. One notable example is Spotify, which allows you to choose from a bunch of presets, or customize your sound with a 6-band equalizer. You can find the equalizer in Spotify by going to Settings > Playback, and scrolling down and tapping Equalizer. You can manually adjust the bass as you want using the 6-band equalizer, or choose from one of the bassier presets, like Bass Booster, Dance, Deep, Electronic, or Hip-Hop. The nice thing about this method is that it works on both iOS and Android devices.

4 Auto EQ features on select Android devices

If your phone has this kind of feature, it can automatically boost bass when you need it

Depending on the phone you have, you might have access to a feature called Auto EQ on your Android device. This feature uses your microphones to sense the acoustics and noise levels around you, and adjust your EQ and volume according to the information it takes in. This likely means making bass louder if you’re in an environment where bass might be less audible, so this feature will make that call for you.

If you have a supported Pixel phone and Pixel Buds, you can find this feature, called Adaptive Sound, under Sound and vibration in your phone settings, under Connected Devices > Pixel Buds settings, or in the Pixel Buds app.

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