04. February 2021 5 min read

When Jabra Elite Active 75t goes silent but remains connected

It is almost a year now, as I have been using the Jabra Elite Active 75t Bluetooth headphones. Even though there were few minor glitches with low volume in the right earbud in summer, they were and still are performing admirably. But lately, they started to go silent during the activity outside. Even though my podcast or even the music player was still playing, there was no sound on the headphones. The nice lady would still tell you about hear-through, ANC, and off. The buttons would still pause the music player or podcast and forward to the next song, but there would be no sound what so ever in your headphones. I tried re-pairing, but nothing helped. I tried to re-connect them with the phone, but putting the right earbud in the charging case and back helped. Well, for a short while. So here is a story, but scroll to the last paragraph if you just want a solution.

As mentioned, the Jabra Elite Active 75t Bluetooth earbuds have a really nagging problem when the weather turns cold. I love to cycle, and even when the temperature is around freezing, I dress up and go on bike rides for more than an hour. My preparation starts in the garage, where I wrap up myself and then go out. After 15 minutes, the sound in headphones just went silent. It was bizarre, as looking at my phone, everything seemed normal, the music player was playing, the headphones were able to control it, but the My Sound+ app could not identify the headphones. Strange symptoms, so as usual, I take the headphones out from my thin headband and put them in charging case and back in-ear. Surprise, the sound is back. They are working for few minutes and then silent again. Hearthrough was off, the new Active Noise Control (ANC) was off, so the headphones were not really under any stress. Well, I put the right earbud in the charging case, and back and sound are playing. Very cool, but each couple of minutes, I would have to do that. As you can imagine, it was not really much of a fun exercise while trying to debug your headphones instead of cycling.
When I was indoors, at home, there were no problems. Uh, not really Active headphones, right?
After a whole day of online meetings, everything went without a glitch. Even a run outside, when I wore my cap, was not a problem. But when I sat on the bike, the problem was back. Not immediately, but around the same spot on my route as the previous time. It got me thinking, and with some help from JABRA Support, I managed to pinpoint the problem to TEMPERATURE.

Jabra Elite Active 75t Bluetooth headphones have an operating temperature between -5 and +45 degrees Celsius. But there is a glitch which I discovered. If you start hot and then go to cold, the headphones do not recalibrate. And that causes the sound to drop. If you go from colder back to a warmer environment, the recalibration happens. So the solution to trigger recalibration is to break the MI link between the earbuds, i.e., move the L earbud out of the R right earbud range and then back in range. This way, the headset will recalibrate and have constant connectivity.
Keep in mind that wind chill easily drops the temperature of earbuds. They are exposed in ears and catch most of the wind. This you can easily confirm just by turning on hear-through. The wind sound is enhanced, and you realize the amount of wind they catch. I also used an Infra-Red Thermometer to measure the device. When I started at home, they were around 15 degrees Celsius, but outside, the temperature falls to 0 degrees Celsius in around 15 minutes. And that was the point in my route when headphones started to go silent. So the solution for preventing this is to have headphones at lower temperatures when they connect and then COVER your ears along with earbuds to avoid them getting cold.

Let me know in comments if the above advice helped get your constant sound in your Jabra Elite Active 75t headphones.

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