You have a load of banging music on your Android tab, but the speakers are weedy as Hell. There is no fun to be had in playing out quiet tunes through a squeeky speaker. Or maybe you want to watch a movie with a friend, and you just can’t hear the dialogue over ambient noise, because the audio is so low. Fear not. In this article we look at ways to boost audio volume on an Android tablet. All of these tips will also help to increase the volume on an Android smartphone. (See also: How to speed up Android browsing.)
How to increase volume on Android tablet: the basics
Because there are no silly questions, and these things are easy only if you know how, I should first point out that there is one very simple way of increasing the audio volume of your Android. It works both through the headphones and via the speakers. Yes, you simply press the ‘up’ volume rocker, which is likely found on the side of your tablet, or around the back.
You can find more audio settings in Android’s Settings app. Go to Settings > Audio > Volumes and you can set the volume for a variety of things, including alerts, and music- and video playback. If you have a problem with too-quiet playback, the solution may be this simple. Now lets really pump up the volume. (See also: How to remove a virus from Android phone or tablet.)
How to increase volume on Android tablet: use an app such as Volume+
As someone once said, there’s an app for that. The point is that many people have found their Android devices to be too quiet, either through headphones or – more often – through the poorly positioned speakers slotted into the back of your tablet. Often, particularly at the cheaper end of the market, the speakers on Android tablets are cheap and underpowered. As a consequence a range of apps has been developed to help – literally hundreds of them. None is the perfect solution: there is simply no way around poor-quality hardware. But a good audio app will help you to boost up the bass to make music sound more meaty, or simply add volume so that things are louder, if less defined.
One of the best such apps is Volume+ Free which is, as the name suggests, a way of boosting audio volume that is also free. Install the app and you will find lots of options for tweaking audio playback, including boosting up the volume of the sound. Be aware that your speakers may not be able to cope with the fullest volume increase, so increase the noise in increments. Find a decent balance between ear-bleeding and speaker saving. (See also: How to get more storage in Android: Not enough storage? Here’s a fix.)
How to increase volume on Android tablet: hardware and ambient tricks
There are another couple of simple ways to boost your tablet volume. You could simply buy an external speaker. Even a cheap travel speaker such as those found on eBay for less than a fiver may give you the boost you need. Although there aren’t all that many Android tablet-specific speaker sets, you can buy any external speaker with a 3.5mm cable input and run it from the headphone socket. Often tablets are set to give greater volume through the headphones rather than the speakers, in order to protect the speaker hardware. So even a less powerful external speaker should boost the volume. One other thing to try is to replicate the pint glass trick. The what now? Let me explain. If you put your smartphone into a (dry) pint glass, you will find that the volume increases because the glass acts like a speaker, amplifying the noise coming our of the phone speakers. Your Android tablet won’t fit into a pint glass, but the same principles apply. Leaning your tablet up against a tiled wall so that the speakers are at the bottom pointing into the wall may help to boost the volume just a little. Or any other way you can get a hard, non-absorbent surface into position to bounce back the volume being emmitted from the speakers. This won’t be a panacea, but it will offer a marginal boost. (See also: How to stop pop-up ads on Android.) Matt Egan is Global Editorial Director of IDG, publisher of Tech Advisor, and a passionate technology fan who writes on subjects as diverse as smartphones, internet security, social media and Windows.
