If you don’t hear any sound coming out of one, or both, ear phones of the Sony LinkBuds S, then you can take a look at this troubleshooting article from Seeking Tech to see what steps you can take to fix this issue.
1. To start off, make sure that the ear phones are actually powered on.
If you have having issues trying to turn on the LinkBuds S, then you can take a look at this guide.
2. You can also try disconnecting and then reconnecting the Bluetooth connection.
3. Furthermore, you can try forgetting the Bluetooth pairing and then pair the ear phones back to the same device again.
4. On the other device, make sure that you didn’t accidentally stop, pause or mute the audio or video.
5. If you are using an audio or video playing app, then you can try restarting it.
6. You can also try restarting the other device.
7. If you are using a laptop or desktop computer with multiple audio output options, then make sure that you set the sound output to the LinkBuds S.
8. Keep in mind that the audio will be paused when you set the ear phones to Speak-to-Chat mode. This mode can accidentally be turned on.
In order to disable Speak-to-Chat, you need to do so by using the official “Sony | Headphones Connect” mobile application.
9. If you are using the Service Link feature, then only the right ear bud of the LinkBuds S will be working.
You can use the “Sony | Headphones Connect” app to disable Service Link.
10. If you are using Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant, then only the right ear bud can be used by default.
You can change this setting in the Playback Control section in the “Sony | Headphones Connect” app.
11. If you are using HFP (Hands-Free Profile) or HSP (Headset Profile) when connecting to the other device, then only one of the ear phones may end up outputting sound.
In this case, try to look in the settings of the smartphone app or computer program you are using to see if you can make both ear phones output sound.
12. There is a possibility that the ear buds are clogged up.
To see how you can safely clean the Sony LinkBuds S, you can check out this guide.
13. Resetting the ear phones may be able to get them to output sound again.
If a standard reset does not work, then you can try restoring the factory default settings.