How to adjust the bass response for your iPhone or iPad

Music is certainly a huge focus of owning Apple devices. People use all kinds of audio accessories with their mobile devices, whether they’re AirPods, Powerbeats, speakers, headphones, or even built-in speakers.

Everything has its own unique sound quality, but in this tutorial, we’ll show you how you can adjust the bass response on your iPhone or iPad to maximize the amount of bass you hear in your music, no matter what kind of audio device you’re using with your handset.

Listening to music on iPhone

Why adjust the bass response

The stock music settings on your iOS device are set up for sound balance and music clarity, and most people just leave it that way because there’s absolutely nothing wrong with it.

On the other hand, some audiophiles want more out of what they’re hearing when using external headphones or speakers, and for this reason, Apple includes equalizer (EQ) settings on your iOS device that let you fine-tune what you hear when listening to music or watching videos.

There are a ton of sound settings you can choose from, but if more bass is what you’re looking for, then you’ll focus on the bass-related EQ settings so you can hear more boom and less treble.

How to increase bass for music on iPhone and iPad

Note: Before you get started, I suggest playing some music in the background so you can hear the sound changes in real-time.

Once you’re ready to add more bass to your Apple Music or songs played in the iOS Music app, follow these steps to change the EQ settings to be more bass-friendly:

  1. Open the Settings app and tap Music.
  2. Tap EQ to open the equalizer settings.
  3. Lastly, tap the Increase Bass option in the list of EQ settings.
Increase Bass on iPhone from music settings

And that’s all there is to it.

Now what?

If you had music playing in the background, you should have heard the sound difference immediately.

This setting puts more emphasis on the bass in your music, so you get more of the boom and less of the treble. It doesn’t make the bass louder; it just makes it more noticeable by isolating it from the higher tones better. With that being said, don’t expect your headphones or speakers to magically sound like your high-end car audio system, as most of the sound comes from the headphones or speakers themselves.

You can feel free to experiment with your other EQ settings to hear the differences they make. Depending on the different headphones and speakers you have, which may or may not have their own EQ settings built into them, tweaking iOS’ EQ settings could complement their settings to give you the richer sound you’re looking for.

Keep in mind that some apps like Spotify actually have their own EQ settings built into their apps, so adjusting the sound from those apps is going to be a separate process.

Bass Booster settings in Spotify on iPhone

On Mac, you can use Increase Bass by opening the Music app and pressing Option + Command + E to access the equalizer. From here, check the On box and choose Increase Bass.

Increase Bass in Mac's Music app

More bass in music on iPhone

Now that you’ve changed the bass settings in your iOS device’s EQ settings, you should hear more of the bass in your music and less of the treble. There are a lot of people who enjoy more boom in their music, so it’s great to know that iOS harbors this kind of setting out of the box.

This process works not only for Apple’s AirPods and EarPods, but also for third-party headphones and speakers.

Do you like having more bass in your music?

Related posts: