Adjust the Left/Right Audio Balance

1. Android

Android provides the native option to balance the stereo sound, however, it’s hidden deep in the Accessibility menu.

  1. To do that, head over to the System Settings. Navigate to the bottom and tap on “Accessibility“. Under Accessibility settings, tap on “Hearing enhancements“.

  2. Under hearing enhancements, you will have an option called “Left/right sound balance”. Below the option, you will have a slider to either move the sound more towards left or right. In case you move the slider more towards left, you will hear more sounds at a slightly raised volume on the left side of your headphones/earphones. The more you move the slider towards left, the intensity of sound and volume increases. The changes take place in real-time on wired earphones or any Bluetooth-connected devices.

2. iOS

Similar to Android, iOS provides a native option under Accessibility settings.

  1. Head over to the system settings, navigate to the bottom and tap on “Accessibility“. Under Accessibility settings, tap on “Audio/Visual” within the HEARING section.

  2. Under the Accessibility settings, you have the option to adjust the left-right audio balance under the “BALANCE” option. Moving the slider more towards “L” will cause the volume and sound to be more on the left-side and vice-versa.

Read: How to Stream Audio From PC to Android

3. Windows 10/ 7

Windows 10 also provides the option to adjust balance and volume on the left/right side of the earphones. However, Windows being Windows, the option is well hidden under the old Windows Control Panel and you need to do it separately for every audio device. Here’s how.

  1. Right-click on the Speaker icon at the bottom right side of the taskbar. On the right-click menu, click on “Sounds“.

  2. On the Sound menu, select “Speaker” on the Playback tab. Next, click on the “Properties” button at the bottom right. In case you are dealing with Bluetooth headphones or speakers, make sure it is connected to your Windows laptop and active.

  3. On the Speaker Properties pop-up, switch over to the “Levels” tab.

  4. On the Levels tab, click on the “Balance” beside Audio output.

  5. Once you click on the Balance button, you will have a small pop-up showing L and R volume levels. L stands for the left speaker and R stands for the right speaker. You can manually move the slider around to increase or decrease the volume on the left-right earbuds. When you are done, click on the “OK” button.

I saw multiple posts on the Windows forum about users not able to modify left-right stereo balance on Bluetooth headphones or earbuds. In case you have the same issue, this might be a Windows bug or driver issue. The workaround is to use a third-party party equalizer app like Equalizer EPO.

4. macOS

Similar to Windows, you have the option to adjust the left-right balance in macOS as well.

  1. To do that, click on the Apple icon at the top-left corner and click on “System Preferences…” from the drop-down menu.

  2. On the System Preferences tab, click on “Sound“.

  3. On the Sound properties page, switch to the “Output” tab. On the Output tab, select your audio output device. In my case, it’s Internal Speakers. Once you have the audio output device selected, you will get the Balance slider at the bottom. You can move it towards left to increase the volume and audio on the left side or vice-versa.

Closing Words

So this was a quick way to fix stereo issues on any audio device. For more issues or queries, let me know in the comments below. Also Read: How to Improve Bluetooth Audio Quality on Android and Mac With aptX