So you think the sound on your iPhone is too low? No problem. Just increase the volume by turning up the physical volume buttons on top of your device or double tapping (not pressing) the “home” button and moving your finger over to the “volume” icon and adjusting it upwards. Pretty simple, eh?
That’s because Apple has implemented a volume limit that you can’t get around even if your speaker is capable of going higher than 16-bits @ 44 kHz (44,100 cycles per second) and the maximum volume of your headphones is greater than 100 dB SPL (which is the threshold of pain) OR you’re using an external amplifier to boost the volume beyond what Apple allows.
how to turn off volume limit on iphone
So what’s the problem? If you aren’t aware of it, you will never know that this volume limit exists in your iPhone. All of your songs are encoded at a certain level and when they finally reach your ears, no matter how much louder the song was originally when it was recorded or mastered by the artist/producer/engineer, it is limited to this maximum volume.
So if you’re like me and use your phone as a portable music device, you might want to make sure that no matter what song or genre of songs you’re listening to, they all have the same loudness and dynamic range (the difference between the quietest and loudest sounds in a song) so you don’t have to keep reaching for your volume control every time a new song comes on.
The different voices for Siri,
notifications, and the ringtones are not encoded at a different level thus they don’t have to abide by this maximum volume limit. Also videos do not have a maximum volume limit because there is no standard for encoding video files as far as I know.
Also, if you hear popping or crackling sounds when turning up the volume on your device or when using your headphones, it is because of the limitations on the headphone jack. This happens when you turn it up so high that the audio signal gets distorted which then causes these popping or crackling sounds.
How to change the voice of Siri
So as I said before, this max volume limit is applied to any song that you might ever want to listen to on your iPhone or any Apple device for that matter. You can’t change the encoded level of a song and you probably don’t have access to the original recordings so what’s the point of fixing it?
What each voice sounds like over a certain volume level on an iPhone or iPod touch
Well, if you’re like me and you have high quality headphones that can go higher than 100 dB SPL then this limit is just another thing that’s holding your music back. You’ve got to use your device at safe levels so the speakers don’t blow out but what good does that do if your headphones are doing the same thing?
The solution is to turn this maximum volume limit off. There are two ways to do it. One requires a jailbroken device and the other does not. The one that does not require a jailbroken device is by deleting an unneeded file in iTunes which prevents your device from checking in with Apple’s servers to see if you have permission to go beyond the default volume set point.
Conclusion
The one that does require a jailbroken device is by going into the filesystem and changing a couple of values in a config file. Obviously, I can’t post these files here but if you do a quick Google search for “iPhone maximum volume limit” then you should be able to find them. Also, there are probably other ways to disable this limit, but this is the one that I found worked for me with no problems.
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