I thought my Sony earbuds were broken – until I fixed the problem
I ended up doing it. After eyeing the Sony WF-C710N for months, I decided a few weeks ago that it was time to have my own award-winning earbuds. Of course it helped that the price dropped to less than £75 at the time (although it did drop to £69, not that I’m bitter).
And I’ve been getting along better with them, now because I know they’re not broken. See, I had a little problem – the earbuds seem to adjust their listening mode without me telling them to.
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A worthy problem
As you probably know, the C710N has three listening modes – noise cancellation, ambient sound (which allows some external sound to keep you aware of your surroundings), and off (which plays music without processing or methods used).
The problem I had was that the earbuds seemed to switch between these modes without me telling them to.
At first, I thought this was a fit issue – my colleague Andy Madden has written extensively about how Sony’s earbuds don’t fit as well as competitors like the Bose QC Ultra Earbuds (2nd Gen), and my left ear seems to sit somewhere between the small and mid-sized C710N earbuds.
I thought the tip worked loose as I walked or ran, causing that sudden injection of natural noise (a double-decker bus going by sounded like a large plane). But when I twisted my ear deep into my shell, and the problem continued, I knew it wasn’t right.
That’s when I thought the earbuds were faulty and were changing modes it seemed like they weren’t needed anymore. Turns out it’s actually a feature, and quite a useful one at that.
Practice to survive
The feature is Ambient Sound Control, and here’s how it works. It detects what activity you are doing – sitting still, walking, running or riding in a car – and chooses the ideal sound mode.
By default, noise cancellation is on when you are stationary or in a vehicle. But once you start going on your own, the Ambient sound mode kicks in. Most importantly, this is set to level 12 by default when walking, but once you start running, it goes up to 20. And therein lies my confusion.
Because it turns out that there is a big difference between level 12 and level 20. Although I wouldn’t normally run with active noise cancellation (it helps to know your surroundings), I was in the early days of using my Sony buds and I was trying all sorts of different usage times.
So, a double decker that goes by feels like a big plane.
Once you know how it works and expect changes in sound modes, it’s a useful feature, as it means you can block out the outside world while waiting and boarding the bus, and be more aware of your surroundings when you’re out for a walk or run, without having to talk to the settings.
Of course, you can adjust the feature if you want, or turn it off completely.
To adjust it, open the Sound Connect mobile app, tap Adaptive Sound Control, then tap the settings cog next to Get Actions. This will allow you to adjust which mode kicks in during the action, and adjust the level of ambient noise the earbuds allow in between different activities.
Want to turn off the mode completely? In Sound Connect, tap Adaptive Sound Control and adjust the toggle at the top of the screen from On to Off. It’s easy.
But if you’ve turned the mod off, I’d urge you to give it another whirl. Either way, stay safe while running – you don’t want to get run over by any passing jumbo jets.
MORE:
Read our full Sony WF-C710N review
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