How to turn off Headphone Safety on iPhone

The most current version of the EN 50332-3 standard encodes the requirements, but it is only available for purchase; perhaps someone with access to an applicable engineering library can look up the applicable spec.

However, a slide set from a WHO talk given on March 6, 2017 states:

Mandate:

Commission Decision of June 23, 2009

Exposure to sound levels shall be time limited to avoid hearing damage.

At 80 db(A) exposure time shall be limited to 40 hours/week.

At 85 db(A) exposure time shall be limited to 5 hours/week.

Requirements (draft)

Mandatory warning for 80 dBA sound exposure level per week,

i.e. 40 hours normalized.

Gain drop until warning acknowledged

Short-term Exposure Level

Limited to 100 dB A integrated over 30s

Note the words: Gain drop until warning acknowledged.

That means the device will turn down the volume when the warning is issued, though it is left unclear whether acknowledging the warning would turn the volume back up or if the user must take action to do so.

MikeBzz wrote:

[I'm not being critical of William's post, just the absurdity of a 'phone, iPod or whatever attempting to limiting the dB produced by the whole audio system at the other end of the ether].

Quite frankly it's also fuzzy in the case of wired headphones as different headphones like speakers have different efficiency ratings, so a voltage level that produces 85 dB on headphone "A" may only produce 80 dB on headphone "B" - but the EU specs take care of that by mandating the allowed voltage a wired headphone jack can produce. 🙄

William, with all respect, law that was set in 2013 is in place already for 7 years and all devices sold in EU after that date warn users about exceeding that level. We must distinguish 2013 regulation from current one(if there is any).

Law from 2013 - is in place. Warning to prevent accidental volume increase. There was a switch on Apple to turn it on and off back in previous iOS versions. I don't remember exact name but it was there to set a safe level of volume to prevent volume increase by mistake ex. in pocket. You had to acknowledge notification and then you would be able to exceed that. I saw this on many Samsung smartphones since long time. Nothing else then notification. I'm rarely listening to music for 20h straight so newer so it appearing again after i removed previous one.

Current law - Not sure I have not heard anything new in this matter. It seems that Apple decided on it's own to implement function like this. There is nothing that would explain some gov forced them to do so.

-edit

In regards to CENELEC EN50332-3 it describes a standard. It's not a law. If you want to have that standardization on your device you must be compliant and pay for it, but nothing says its mandatory to sell devices with that standard applied. So if in some countries we see that there is a button to turn off that headphone notification option and not in US and EU that shows that it was clearly a decision from manufacturer. If they would keep standardization it would be consistent everywhere.

Last thing if Apple would be much into standardizing their devices to EU standards why we are still using Lightning over USB-C standard and previously microUSB.

The issue is intrusion. The second issue is the product’s inability to differentiate between headphones and other Bluetooth connections. I’ve been talking to Apple Support today and they agree. They’ve referred it to the Engineers. Let’s see.

Yes this. The issue is intrusion. When i bought my device, it did not do this. I consider this a reduction in function and a change in expectation.

Incidentally my car is now confirmed as not contributing to the issue, so far only my aftershokz. So there must be logic that excludes devices that look like a car when they connect over blutetooth. When I have the phone on 100% volume in the car there is no data being accumulated in apple health.

I will test with a bluetooth speaker, but this doesn't detract from the extremely unwelcome intrusion, which I will be discussing with an escalation call to Apple thats scheduled later this week.

// further update - my bluetooth speaker, a denon envaya mini, also does not generate health data and so is also not contributing to the issue. Again the phone must know its a speaker.

It's not about "EU standards" and even if it were, that doesn't cover USB-C vs. Lightning.

For anyone curious, you can read about WHO investigating progress on multiple vendors' devices here:

https://www.itu.int/en/ITU-T/Workshops-and-Seminars/safelistening/Documents/Standards_for_safe_listening_devices_situation_analysis_report.pdf

Scream106gti wrote:

1. Two things in that report:

it refers to headphones. Most of the items complained about are NOT headphones.

2. it states regarding differentiation for adults/children - which there isn’t.

The safety standards consider BT to be "headphones."

Yes, it's weird/silly.

The applicable safety standards don't differentiate by age.

czito1 wrote:

In regards to CENELEC EN50332-3 it describes a standard. It's not a law. If you want to have that standardization on your device you must be compliant and pay for it, but nothing says its mandatory to sell devices with that standard applied. So if in some countries we see that there is a button to turn off that headphone notification option and not in US and EU that shows that it was clearly a decision from manufacturer. If they would keep standardization it would be consistent everywhere.

The French law states products sold have to meet the EU safety specs which incorporate the CENELEC standards.

Audio volume ‘control’ restriction..,

Good bye Apple!

the volume consumed by the user depends on the resistance of the audio output system. My headphones are high impedance.

leave the volume alone!

My other usage is via an external speaker system that’s in my shed and that’s NOT clamped to my head, nir buried within my inner ear canal.

Keep out of what ADULTS should control for themselves.

So you’re saying that in France *all* devices must force the volume down after 3 minutes? Because I don’t believe you. I’m in the UK. Up until the end of the year we are subject to EU law and there’s no such law here. Other devices don’t do this. Androids don’t do this. My television (which also has a headphone socket) doesn’t do this. My hifi doesn’t do this. None of the hifis on sale in shops do this. My friends phones don’t do this. No one else other than Apple forces their product’s volume down no matter the output (external speakers, headphones, Bluetooth stereos, car speakers, everything).

Good report.

unfortunately although there might be some logic this isn’t applied consistently, for example, I use a Layen iDock to connect to an old Roberts 32 pin dock, the iDock is assumed to be headphones which it can never be.

I agree with your statement that their should be some ‘parental’ control of sorts and have left feedback on this.

Yes that doesn't sound very clever at all. Through a dock connector to an external amp you are going to want the phone turned up so that the gain on your external amp can stay low and you get better sound quality as a result.

Tbh I think the "restrict loud sounds" feature is already there to be used through parental controls.

We all need to be requesting that this is resolved. If anyone spots a workaround let us know.

I have also written to headphone manufacturers. I have to wonder if there is a firmware update or something to the headset that bypasses this, given that it doesn't affect my car or my portable speaker. I also wonder whether there are headsets out there that aren't affected.

For users of the dock I guess you could switch to using an airplay device, what is sad of course is the airport express is no longer available, but it is possible to keep repairing them when they die at least.

I’m still on 14.2. I don’t want to upgrade unless there’s a fix for this problem, and I’ve lost faith in Apple now, I don’t trust them not to sneak something else in. I never in a million years thought an update would stop me being able to listen to music so what else is next? Mandatory screen-time limits? Each update reduces my battery anyway. It’s as healthy as it always was (85%) but now requires 2 charges a day, which means I have to walk home to charge it during the day.

Don’t upgrade. I spent a long time on the phone with customer support and we tried everything listed in this post—-which did not resolve the issue. She then located an article that said if your phone was shipped with 14.2, then you will no longer be able to disable “headphone safety” when you update to 14.3. This is diabolical and I fear just the beginning of how Apple plans to improve our lives by dictating what we can and can’t do with our own bodies. After all, sheep need guidance and who is smarter than Apple “geniuses “?