New Delhi, Dec. 23 -- Most people blame their headphones when music sounds flat. They swap ear tips, change playlists, or start browsing for upgrades. What's often missed is that the phone sitting in your hand has already made several decisions about how that music will sound before it ever reaches your ears. Every phone processes audio, and the choices it makes can be influenced. Compression, frequency emphasis, and Bluetooth behaviour all change depending on the settings you allow the phone to use. Once you understand that, improving sound quality stops being about tricks and starts being about alignment.

Take AirPods as an example. On paper, they don't offer the kind of granular control audio enthusiasts like. There's no visible equal...