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Awful music quality on Forerruner 255 Music

Hi,

I was struggling to understand why I hear lots of high frequency artefacts in the music played through earbuds on the watch. Googling the issue, I found out on this forum that on Fenix 7 models there have been similar problems some months ago, and it is unclear for me if they were solved. The music on my FR 255 sounds like a very low bitrate mp3, even though all mp3's that I use are 320 kbps. The same file played on the same earbuds from my phone or pc sounds perfect, so the problem is with the watch. I tried pairing the same earbuds to a Samsung watch and the sound was good, as expected. I also noted that if I change from stereo to mono on the FR 255, a large portion of the artefacts disappear, but I would prefer to listen to my music in stereo. The same pattern with the change to mono was reported with the Fenix 7 problem.

Is anyone else having this issue?

Can anyone confirm that the update fixed this on Fenix 7 or is it a hardware issue?

I can still return the watch, and I have a couple of weeks to do so. I would really like to have decent quality music, and unfortunately I'm very disappointed so far.

Thanks

Top Replies

1770833 over 1 year ago +1

I got FR 255 yesterday and was struck by crackling on all mp3s I tried. The problem is specific to the watch because same files sound perfect on all other devices with the same headphones (I also tried…

All Replies

0 5135968 over 2 years ago

With decent quality TWS with a Qualcomm chipset (Edifier X6) with mp3 files transcoded from FLAC to mp3 via my NAS and copied to the file system, everything sounds fine to me and no different to my Fenix 6.

0 ivanV over 2 years ago

Thanks for the feedback.

I was referring to this thread on Fenix 7:

https://forums.garmin.com/outdoor-recreation/outdoor-recreation/f/fenix-7-series/283656/fenix-7x-music-quality-really-awful/1379305#1379305

Not all the watches of the same model had this problem, and apparently it was fixed. It seems that the problem with my FR 255 is identical.

0 5135968 over 2 years ago in reply to ivanV

Is it possible for you to share a file with the problem and I will put in on my watch and see if I can hear the problem.

It doesn't sound like a hardware issue, unless somehow there is a fault in the stereo codec, which I suppose is possible.

0 4474605 over 2 years ago

I have same issue too. FR255 produces very low quality sound via bluetooth. No matter from spotify or uploaded mp3. Has anyone found a solution to this problem?

0 ivanV over 2 years ago

I spoke with support about this issue and sent them audio files. After about a month of emailing, they asked me to join the beta program and I did, but there's still no fix. They kinda acknowledged that there is a problem, but didn't offer any promises or any other specific info.

0 Garmin-Kevin over 2 years ago in reply to ivanV

Hello ivanV. Thank you for the update. I encourage you to reach back out to the agent who was assisting you by replying to their last email to you on August 26th.

4474605 for further assistance, you may reach out to your local Garmin Product Support team:

Garmin Product Support

0 1770833 over 1 year ago

I got FR 255 yesterday and was struck by crackling on all mp3s I tried. The problem is specific to the watch because same files sound perfect on all other devices with the same headphones (I also tried different headphones to be sure). After experimenting with re-encoding the files different ways I found out that encoding them into mp3 using LAME at 112 kbps CBR and quality level 3 gets rid of the crackling completely. Neither lower nor higher bitrates or other codecs I tried so far removed the crackling so well.