If you have ever used any pair of consumer grade wireless earbuds or headphones, you likely have ones with different ambient sound control modes. What you may have not noticed is that the sound profile can vary dramatically between these modes.
I first noticed this on my Sony WH-1000XM3s from quite a few years ago. When ANC or Ambient Sound mode is enabled, the sound produced is as expected and matches my EQ settings. The story changes once all sound control is disabled. I noticed dramatically different tuning from my preferences, most noticeably the bass. It sounded hollow, and was not what I was expecting at all. In fact, even trying to compensate with another EQ profile does not enable the headphones to produce the same quality of audio as before.
Fast forward a few years later, I moved over to the LinkBuds S. After using them for a few years, I had only just realised that the same phenomenon occurs here too, though to a lesser degree. The sound was more hollow and lacked depth. I’m not talking about just the bass, I also mean the brilliance. Over the past few years I thought I was going insane and needed my ears checked. I regularly switch between the modes as I move between different environments and thought that my hearing was off whenever this occurred. Turns out, there was nothing wrong with my hearing at all, it was the earphones! There is a slightly noticeable degradation in audio quality similar to the XM3s.
This is a well known issue across other manufacturers. Many users seem to speculate that it is to compensate for the potential sound intrusion from the outside, so they purposefully increase the bass and adjust the tuning to maintain the same sound profile. At least with my LinkBuds S, I don’t think this is the case. The sound profile is the same for ANC on and Ambient Sound on, which makes no logical sense as they affect sound in opposing ways. Why would the tuning not differ between these modes? Unfortunately for me who regularly uses earphones with ambient sound control disabled to save battery life, it has caused much confusion.
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