iPhone 6s Distorted Sound

iOS 9.3 beta 3 is out and will try that to see if they have adjusted distortion. not hopeful and think it is bad batch of speakers. will post if any change.

Goofy69 - I installed 9.3 public beta 3 a few days ago and there is absolutely no change with the sound issue 😟

I upgraded from my 5c to a 6s two weeks ago. After about four days of use, I noticed that when the volume was at or near the highest point, the speakers would crackle as if they had blown out. I took it straight to Verizon, who luckily swapped it out with a brand new phone. EXCEPT that when I got it home, and tested it out, THE SAME THING HAPPENED. Verizon suggested I try the Apple store, which I did. They tested it and sure enough, it failed the diagnostic test. It was brand new out of the box for one hour. The Apple tech got me a "new" phone and tested that, and that one DID THE SAME THING. That makes THREE phones from all different locations that have the SAME issue with the speakers. He tested it up against another employees 6s, and hers did not have the crackle. I wound up returning everything and re-activating my 5c. I called Apple, and they gave me a case manager who is very nice, but still can not offer an explanation, or solution, and can not guarantee it won't happen again. I suggest everyone here CALL Apple, because they are required to submit our feedback, and if enough people complain (which I feel is warranted considering the hefty price we all pay for these phones) maybe they will eventually acknowledge this issue. VERY FRUSTRATING.

Apple replaced my pair of two week old 6S’s due to horrible distorting ringtones, alerts and Siri and no sound or just a nasty buzz from YouTube or Music.

One of the replacements is working just fine while the other did the same thing after a week of use.

I just had that unit replaced Monday only to have it start acting up yesterday!

The people at support and the store are awesome and do not hesitate to replace but that’s 4 junk units and counting… totally unacceptable apple. WHAT IS YOUR PROBLEM? The people want to know.

I always take a video of the phone when goes it bonkers including the full “About” screen so I can simply show the apple store associate the problem and not waste my breath.

I'm still of the opinion that this is a software or firmware issue.

I had this distorted sound problem on my iPhone 6s plus until over two months ago. Whenever I used an app which produced piano notes (Notion), the sound was completely distorted and unusable. Several iOS updates came and went and the problem persisted, however after one iOS update about two months ago, and probably a few app updates, the distortion problem disappeared and hasn't returned. If it was a hardware issue, it couldn't be fixed with a software upgrade.

My suggestion is to perform a backup to iTunes or iCloud, and then restore the phone back to factory defaults as a new phone, without restoring from a previous backup. If the distortion is fixed, then great, just re-download previous apps. If not, then reset phone again and restore from the backup.

Hi Crumpehead - nice suggestion, BUT we have tried all these backups and factory resets before ... to no avail.

Yes, it may well have worked in your case and you may have had an issue with software at the time - BUT your speaker was clearly working fine throughout.

In my case and many others, the speaker is faulty (regardless pf software etc) - so no amount of factory resets will make any difference I'm afraid.

iOS 9.3 Beta 4 (public release) - just installed and same problem persists ......... which I expected, because this clearly isn't a software issue.

FAULTY SPEAKER in some units

I have something similar, bad distortion when playing any sounds at all, I reboot the boot and it's back to normal. I need to wait for it to happen again before I take it in, but I will call them tomorrow.

Hello, I’ve an iPhone 6s (64GB, Samsung CPU)

I have the same problem with the speaker.
In addition, I have the following problem with the ear speaker.
The ear speaker is pretty quiet and has a disturbing sound/vibration.
Yesterday I was at the Apple store in Munich.
The guy from the genius bar made the Diagnostic. All tests were positive.
Even his own acoustic test (in the noisy environment of the Apple shops) was positive. He could not hear any problems with the sound. No
wonder at the loudness in an apple store…

Anyhow he was able to hear, that my ear speaker is too quiet. His suggestion was to reset the iPhone.

I’ll reset my iPhone next week, but after reading all the posting in this thread, I don’t think, that this will help…..

I took delivery of my brand new 6S yesterday and have this issue. I've tried to read back but can't find a solution. I may opt for one replacement unit but then go for a refund if that doesn't resolve it as I don't want to get into the game of trying multiple replacements..

iOS 9.3 Public Beta 5 - just released today and installed on my 6S ..... very nice BUT unfortunately, no sound improvement - so clearly faulty speaker issue (NOT software)

Reset has been done last week. But, no sound improvement.

Got to make new genius bar appointment.

After 4 months of communicating with apple support, including "high level management", on this issue I was finally told today that there is NO software or hardware issue with the 6S and that its audio quality is within specification and there is nothing more they can do on my case, except that their official response is, and I quote "make sure you listen to audio on less than 70% volume when using the internal speaker or use an external speaker of earphones..."!! They also confirmed that there is no point in changing the device as all current 6S's will experience the same audio distortion.

In other word, they are well aware of the issue, but have no intention of doing anything about it!

With respect to their position that the audio quality of the 6S is within specification, I challenged them on defining what the specifications are and where they are stated from a customer perspective. The audio specification appears on their website, but as expected there is no mention of high volume causing distortion, just a cryptic sentence stating that the maximum volume is user configurable.

Unfortunately it is quite clear that Apple will do nothing to resolve this issue unless it starts to cause them a major PR nightmare due to large scale media attention which I doubt will ever happen in this case.

IGS T1 - very disappointing news but pretty much confirms my suspicions.

I guess the only strange aspect is the fact that some people do report perfectly working replacements - unless they are mistaken and haven't fully tested their device. Also seems strange that Apple so readily issued replacements - particularly if they didn't acknowledge the existence of a fault.

Perhaps we will never know and it will be interesting to see if the iPhone 7 (September????) is any better ........ in which case Apple should replace the faulty 6S under warranty with a new fault free 7

Thanks for posting.

I'm still within my 14 days but came to the conclusion after reading online and trying a friends' 6S and 6S Plus that if I went for an exchange I'd get the same problem back and potentially end up with other issues with the phone.

So long as it isn't an issue that is unique to a small number of users, which doesn't appear to be the case, I'm going to forget about it and start enjoying using the phone fully.

Admittedly it hasn't been a great experience with such an expensive phone.