Clicking sound from headphones
Clicking in headphones is annoying. There you are listening to your favorite song, and then the right earcup starts making a little crackle like someone clicking a pen next to your ear. Don’t worry — this is usually easy to fix, and your headphones aren’t necessarily broken.
What causes the clicking?
The most common causes are surprisingly mundane:
- The volume buttons are being pressed. If the headphones are pressed against a pillow, collar, or your hand, a button may register repeated presses. This sounds like clicking.
- The Bluetooth connection is cutting out. The phone is in the wrong pocket, or another device is interfering. Bluetooth is radio technology, and radio tech can be as temperamental as a toddler who slept badly.
- The headphones are trying to connect to another device. If you’ve previously paired the headphones with, say, your work laptop, they may try to switch the connection back and forth. That can cause clicking.
- A software bug. Sometimes the headphone firmware just gets tied in knots. Electronics are electronics.
How to fix it
Try these in order. Most of the time the problem is solved by the first or second step.
- Check the buttons. Make sure nothing is pressing the volume or function buttons. Take the headphones off, hold them in your hand, and listen. If the clicking stops, the culprit was probably a collar or the edge of an earring.
- Reset the headphones. Over-ear headphones (VMK series): plug in the AUX cable and unplug it. This resets the headphones. In-ear headphones (NL series): place the earbuds in the case, close the lid, and wait 10 seconds.
- Restart your phone. Sounds silly, but it works surprisingly often. The Bluetooth stack accumulates junk like a sauna floor collects sand at the summer cottage.
- Remove the pairing and pair again. Go to your phone’s Bluetooth settings, forget the headphones, and pair from scratch. You’ll also see whether the headphones are connected to another device.
- Test with an AUX cable. If your headphones have an AUX port, try a wired connection. If the clicking disappears, the issue is with Bluetooth. If it continues even with the cable, there may be a hardware fault.
- Update the firmware. Check in the Valco app whether an update is available for your headphones. Sometimes the fix is literally one tap away.
If that doesn’t help
If the clicking continues after all of the above, contact us at info@valco.fi. Please include:
- Order number or purchase receipt
- Headphone model
- A brief description of when the clicking started and in what situations it occurs
- A photo or a short video, if possible
We have our own service center in Kajaani, where Jasse and the team repair the devices. At Valco, headphones aren’t thrown away — they’re repaired. During the warranty period (24 months), it’s taken care of free of charge if it’s a manufacturing defect.
And if the clicking was caused by the dog getting at the headphones — well, there’s a solution for that too. A repair kit costs less than new headphones, and the dog can continue living as a free man.
