iPhone music distorted after upgrading to iOS5

@manuelmdm

I understand what you mean and, as you said, you weren't observing the distortion for the same tracks at 100% volume increase before you upgraded to iOS 5.0. I'm not sure why this is in your case. In reality, if the tracks were actually just being "overdriven" to produce distortion you should have seen it before you udated as well.

So just to check - do you currently still have the levels set to +100% in the music options? You might want to check the files that are actually on the phone as well (through iTunes) because just syncing again will not update the music files on the phone to drop the levels back down again. I know this sounds like a really stupid suggestion and I'm not trying to be patronizing or anything! 😝 Alternatively, you could try wiping the music off the phone and the transferring it again through iTunes (making sure that the levels on the files are set to neutral 0%).

If that still isn't helping - I have found that reseting the phone (home button + sleep/wake button) will return the levels back to normal for me (until the same thing as I described above happens).

The only other thing I can think of (that is always the same thing everybody says) is to do a restore of the phone. I know this is a HUGE pain in the neck (particularly since you have to copy all your media back again)...

I'm sorry I can't be more help, as I have only observed this happening when switching between +100% and 0% songs... 😟

@manuelmdm

I'm glad to hear that it got a little bit better, but it is clearly not a fix.

I hope they fix that in 5.0.1 too...it really would hobble the iPhone without the music player working well.

(This problem and the fact that the cover-flow view is simply awfully laggy now...).

Fingers crossed!

I have same problems as you all, but I already tried to restore, to delete all my music and put just 1 song with iphone 4 ios5 clean, and distortion is there. My mp3 are all set to 80%, with ios4 my iphone's volume was never higher in the slider than 70-80%, music was loud enough even in the metro.

now, with my iphone volume slider at 100% I still have low distorted music.

it's horrible, my iphone 4 with ios4 had crystaline music. It's one month I don't listen at all to music, i dont bear more than 1 song, i switch it off.

I am deeply dissapointed we need to find a fix, instead of a super quick ios 5.0.1.... or maybe the problem is in Itunes 10.5 ... who knows....

Unfortunately this is a bug in iOS 5. As far as we found out, the Sound Check volume level is not updated when the iPhone begins a new song (when playing song by song). Stopping and resuming the playback usually fixes that and the volume is updated to the correct level.

So apparently Sound Check is somewhat broken in iOS 5. Apple has to fix that as soon as possible. Please file a bug to Apple to speed this up.

i upgraded to ios5 5.0.1 and i think there is less distortion but sound level low

Still present in iOS 5.0.1 on iPhone 4. Reduced to lesser extent after changing bit rate of music to 128 kbps.

Regards,

Bratislav

I HAVE FOUND A FIX!!

I've been having exact same problem as other folk on here in that the sound on my iPhone 4S has been distorted when playing music. I thought iOS5.0.1 would have fixed problem but it didn't.

So by complete fluke it has to be said, I have found a fix - and it's simple!

Go to Settings > Music > EQ on your iPhone or iPad and select Bass Booster.

Now play a song and notice the difference! (You'd think by increasing the bass it would make the distortion worse, but it has completely the opposite affect!)

Hope this works for everyone! :)

Regards

John

The iOS 5.0.1 still have the problem.😟

Does Apple want us to listen the music by iPod classic only?

5.0.1. same crap here 😟

i want to downgrade to ios4 NOW, this is a deal breaker, and the update was my hope 😟

This IOS is ridiculous. I spent 500 quid on this effin phoneim seriously ****** off!

well.. all my song convert from CD to AAC.. it is end up to be a crap.. i can't even listen to it since upgraded to ios5.. it sound like crap.. it is not a music. it a noise!! maybe i should just copy all song to my galaxy S2 instead using my iphone 4 w/ios5.0.1 for music! thanks apple..

All songs sound horrible, even those purchased from itunes - so not a burned format issue. I am not experiencing the "bass" issue others describe, but more that certain layers sound distant and garbled. This layer is typically the voice layer on most tracks. I have tried many settings adjustments suggested by others, but nothing corrects the layer distortion.

This issue renders iOS useless for iPod functionality. Please fix ASAP.

Update: Sound distortion appears to only be an issue when playing through the audio jack. Playing through the iPhone's built-in speaker does not reproduce the layer issue.

rjchicago wrote:

All songs sound horrible, even those purchased from itunes - so not a burned format issue. I am not experiencing the "bass" issue others describe, but more that certain layers sound distant and garbled. This layer is typically the voice layer on most tracks. I have tried many settings adjustments suggested by others, but nothing corrects the layer distortion.

This issue renders iOS useless for iPod functionality. Please fix ASAP.

Update: Sound distortion appears to only be an issue when playing through the audio jack. Playing through the iPhone's built-in speaker does not reproduce the layer issue.

Did you try re-setting the volume level for your music files in iTunes, and then synching again? If you currently have it set to zero, move it up or down, allow the change to process, then move it back to zero, let it process, and then synch your music. Someone suggested this earlier in this thread, and I did it, and it fixed the worst of the distortion (in my case, the upper midrange, including many vocals, sounded terrible). I still had to set the equalizer to "rock" in order to entirely get rid of the distortion on all tracks, but at least my iPhone music sounds good again. It was almost unlistenable before the fix.

Before you try this fix for all your music, you may want to experiment with a single playlist and see if the fix works for you. Also, if you have a large music library, turn off Time Machine before you do this fix, because TM will do a new backup of all your music files, since they have been altered. This seemed to slow down the process in iTunes. Turn it on again once all the changes are done.

This problem needs to be addressed in an iOS update, and I can't believe it was allowed to slip through in the first place. My iPhone sounded so terrible that I assumed it was my earbuds, so I bought a new pair, only to discover that the buds were not the culprit. My fault for not doing some trouble-shooting first; luckily I prefer the new earbuds, so no harm done.