Q: iPhone 6s Distorted Sound

Very poor customer service from Apple. The price for this phone deserves an official statement. What do we have to do go on a tv station

and demonstrate the problem.

HI IGS T1

Sorry to hear about your experience and it clearly mirrors what I went through.

The 48khz "excuse" was clearly a complete fob off - as we suspected.

I reckon that Apple are embarrassed about the speaker issue and are trying to play it down. After all, not everyone plays certain music and will be totally unaware ..... best to keep quiet, me thinks!

For those of us who are more savvy and clearly recognise that there is a problem, Apple try to keep us happy with repeated replacements ...... which annoying as it is, I shall continue to accept in the hope of one day getting one which does not have the fault.

What Apple often try to do, is offer a repair - when in fact you can simply swap out within the 14 day period offered by Apple .... which is what I keep doing. Also, consumer legislation offers protection against manufacturing defects.

At some point, with all the returns, Apple will actually sort the issue.

Ive been dealing with the same issues with the speakers.  I have only replaced the 6s once with no change.  I'm still up in the air on whether or not it would be hardware or software. 

For me, The sound problem only happens when I restore the iPhone from an iTunes backup.  (I've been doing this with all my phones since 2011.  So I everytime I change or upgrade phones I simply back it up on iTunes and Restore on the new device)

But when I clear the iPhone and setup it up as new, there is no issues at all.  The sound it great and sound just like all previous devices.  (Problem with that is i don't have years and years of message, anymore)

As soon as I restore the phone.....Sound is distorted and loud again, I usually keep my volume around 50%-75% because its annoyingly loud and crackly

I also have a camera issues that i've had every since i got the first 6s.  My camera freezes 90% of the time upon opening.  It usually freezes and is rather dark for around 10-15 seconds before it loads. 

Apple told me its something in my Back up thats being carried over.  They told me BOTH the speaker issues (which is exactly as all have described on this topic) and my camera issues are because of my back up on iTunes. 

Unfortunately I can't bring myself to setup my phone as new and loose my messages, So at this point I'm just living with it.  But I have been thinking of going back to my iPhone 6 soon to resolve the issues for now.  (Restoring same back up on iPhone 6 works perfectly)

Robber80 - you must be lucky if the 6s only has a speaker issue from back up. All my speaker issues have been from set up as new device.

Suggest you try piano content to be absolutely sure you arent being robbed off with the back up excuse from Apple .... They tried that one too!

I Have the Same problem. Clipping and distortion at full volume for the swoosh text sound and music such as piano. Just got the phone 2 weeks ago. I'm going to try to exchange tomorrow but I'm doubtful that will help. I cant belive this post has 46,000 views with not one comment from an apple rep that is productive. I will save you some time and say that all tricks in this post like 100% battery, EQ settings, etc, will not fix your problem as I have tried them all and nothing solved the problem. End of the day I have an iPhone with an external speaker that sounds like one of those $10 Bluetooth speakers you can buy at 7/11...  actually wait, that's not fair. The 7/11 speaker sounds better. I will post my results of the new phone (if they approve one) tomorrow.

Hello everyone

I have the same problem here. Already replaced the phone (iPhone 6S 64GB) and it still happens on the new one. I read some and some say that it didin't happen on earlier versions of iOS on same devices - it appears to be both software and hardware issue.

Try this song (max volume) to see if you experience the issue (APPLE GUYS: use this song during testing!): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbU31JLtlug
(Agnes Obel - Chord Left)

This true, i also hear noise, buzz when iphone 6s play " a time for us- Nemanja Bogunovic ", really bad sound. I dont know Apple has a fix for this error isnt ?

any news about our problem guys? someone have been followed by an apple Engineer?

Hello fabiocrummy,

Today i go to distribute iphone's shop, i heard some iphone 6;6s; and plus- all them running ios 9.2 and i discovered thier sound was so. I thought this error cause is low quality speaker , i havent been try when them running bellow ios 9.2, so i belive if all iphone running bellow ios 9.1 issure clear sound , this error cause is ios

Jucob - sorry but a bit confused by your post.

I have tried all versions of iOS 9 and there is absolutely no difference at all - which is why we strongly suspect that this is a hardware issue (speaker fault) and NOT software.

I'm currently using iOS 9.3 Public Beta (released today!) and it is no better than the original iOS 9 release.

If it were software, then Apple would clearly have addressed this by now - with all the many version releases.

This is definitely a speaker fault, otherwise Apple would not swap 'faulty' units so readily etc.

If it does transpire to be software (which I very much doubt, considering all the available evidence), then it is amazing that it has not been fixed to date. Also, this does not explain why some users report perfectly working iPhones

Conclusion: Faulty speaker components in most iPhones

beta 9.3 fixed sound issues to an acceptable level.  issues with playing netflix audio no longer distorted. cbc news videos, almost all music iTunes video and youtube along with imdb.. cheers.  i did not reformat btw. just upgrade in place.

Goofy69 - piano content (e.g. Agnes Obel - Chord Left) is still distorted (as with all other previous versions of iOS) on the latest iOS 9.3 Beta public release.

Have you tried this type of content?

Im back ! I'm going to my 4th iPhone 6s 16gb with the same distortion problem !!!! Agnes Obel - chord left , is the best test you can do to the speakers to see if they are faulty ! We have to make apple do something ! This is a shame to the community , those are premium smartphones, we can't allow this bad quality equipments !!!! We have to do something !!

Thanks, this worked. My distortion applied only to Messages, Ring tones and Viber messages but oddly not to WhatsApp messages.

Good news mgp1910 - but have you tested piano content? Agnes Obel etc