Why Your Wireless Earbuds Sound Bad on Calls (And How to Fix It)

You’ve experienced this. You’re listening to your favorite album on your new wireless earbuds—maybe a pair like the POMUIC W23—and the sound is fantastic. Rich, clear, stereo bass. It’s a great audio experience.

Then, a phone call comes in, or you join a Zoom meeting.

Suddenly, everything changes. The audio quality plummets. Your colleague’s voice sounds like it’s coming through a tin can, and they complain that you “sound like you’re in a tunnel” or “a mile away from the mic.”

What happened? Are your expensive new earbuds broken?

No. Your earbuds are fine. You have just run into Bluetooth’s “dirty little secret,” a fundamental trade-off that affects all true wireless earbuds, from the most basic models to the most premium.

The “Two-Way Street” Problem: A Simple Analogy

Think of your Bluetooth connection as a road system.

1. Listening to Music (One-Way High-Speed Freeway):
When you’re just listening to music or a podcast, Bluetooth uses a profile called A2DP (Advanced Audio Distribution Profile). This is a beautiful, wide, one-way freeway designed to carry a massive amount of high-quality, stereo audio data to your ears. It’s why your music sounds so good.

2. Making a Call (Two-Way Country Road):
The moment you make or receive a call, your earbuds switch to a completely different profile, typically HFP (Hands-Free Profile). This profile has a different job. It must carry audio in two directions at once: your colleague’s voice to your ears (downlink) and your voice to their phone (uplink).

But the Bluetooth “road” (its bandwidth) isn’t wide enough for two freeways. So, it instantly switches both directions to a narrow, “two-way country road.”

The Real Trade-Off: Quality vs. Stability

To make the audio fit on this narrow, two-way road, Bluetooth does two things:
1. It compresses all audio (both incoming and outgoing) down to a much lower quality.
2. It switches from stereo to mono (single-channel audio).

The result? That tinny, 1990s-era “AM radio” sound. The technology is forced to sacrifice audio quality in order to guarantee a stable, real-time, two-way connection. Even if your earbuds (like the W23) advertise a “crystal-clear call microphone,” that mic’s signal is being fed into this highly compressed, low-quality channel.

The Second Problem: Your Mic is On Your Ear

There’s another physical problem: the microphone isn’t in front of your mouth. It’s in the earbud, sitting on your ear.

This means it’s not only far from your voice, but it’s also in a perfect position to pick up every other sound around you: your keyboard clacking, the wind, the person talking at the next table in the coffee shop.

Modern earbuds use multiple mics and “AI noise canceling” to try and filter this background noise out. But this is just damage control—they are using software to clean up an already-poor, distant signal.

How to Actually Fix Your Bad Call Quality

You can’t change the laws of Bluetooth, but you can work around them.

• Tip 1: The Quiet Room (The Obvious Fix)
  The less background noise the earbud’s mic has to fight, the clearer your voice will be. If you must take a call on your earbuds, move to a quiet, indoor space.
• Tip 2: The “Hybrid” Method (The Best Fix)
  This is the best-kept secret. Go into your Zoom, Teams, or Phone settings.
  • Set your Audio Output (Speaker) to your Wireless Earbuds (so you can hear them).
  • Set your Audio Input (Microphone) to your “Internal Microphone” (your laptop’s or phone’s built-in mic).
    Your phone/laptop mic is almost always higher quality and better positioned than the one in your earbud. This gives you the best of both worlds.
• Tip 3: The Dedicated Device (The Pro Fix)
  If you are on calls all day, wireless earbuds are the wrong tool for the job. Invest in a dedicated headset with a “boom mic” (an arm that puts the microphone in front of your mouth) or a separate USB microphone. This is the only way to get truly professional-grade call quality.