The Sony SRS XB41 Bluetooth Bluetooth speaker has several buttons on its top panel, including the Volume, Phone, Live, and Power-Pairing buttons. We also find the Reset, Light-Batt, WPC, and Add buttons in the back of the unit inside the port compartment. These buttons let you operate the many features of this portable but big sounding speaker. So here we offer our Sony SRS XB41 buttons explained cheat sheet. E.g. We show you where to find each control on the speaker, explain its meaning and function, what any button code combination presses do, when to press them, and how to use the buttons to work the speaker in general.
There is one row of buttons on the top of the speaker. They each have unique shapes. Moreover, there are two lamps on the top, and three more in the rear port compartment. The lights tell you what the speaker is doing at any given time. E.g. The Power lamp lights up white when the speaker is ON. The Pairing Status lamp lights or blinks blue to show the current speaker connection state Plus, there’s a CHARGE lamp on the back of the unit that flashes when the battery is getting low, and glows steadily as you charge the speaker. Also back there, there are the ADD and WPC lamps that glow when either of these modes is active. And finally, there’s the micro USB charging, and Audio In (AUX) ports.
One function of the Pairing / Power button is to turn the 41 ON and OFF. Another is to begin Bluetooth pairing mode. And finally, this button is a part of a button chord to factory reset the speaker (described below) Find it near the right end of the control panel, as we point out with the cyan arrow in the next picture. Note its power symbol shape.
Press and release the button when the speaker is OFF, to power it on. Depress and release it again, to turn the 41 back OFF.
The Power Status lamp lights up when the speaker boots, as we see next.
Note that the speaker might make no sound at all as it boots. But if it connects with a source device at that time, you will hear two beeps.
When the speaker is OFF, no lights on it should glow, except when you’re charging it. When OFF in that case, the CHARGE lamp still glows solid orange.
Finally, the Bluetooth Status lamp illuminates in one of three possible ways.
With the speaker powered ON, you press and hold the Power-Pairing button until you hear a series of rising beeps, and the speaker announces in a lady’s voice, “Bluetooth pairing.” At that point then, release the button. The speaker is now in pairing mode, and the Bluetooth Status lamp pictured above begins fast flashing.
You need to do this anytime you want to pair the 41 with a never-before-paired Bluetooth source device. When in this (a.k.a. Discovery) mode, the speaker sends out its name and other connection info over the Bluetooth air channels. Then, this allows nearby BT devices to find and sync to it. Don’t release this button too quickly though, lest you turn the speaker OFF, without it ever going into pairing mode.
The 41 also has volume controls. The Volume UP and Volume DOWN buttons that Sony positions in the left portion of the buttons panel, between the Play-Pause and Power buttons. Further, you can feel their minus and plus symbol shapes. E.g. Find these controls pointed out in the next picture.
When pressed, these lower and raise the loudness respectively, by reducing or increasing the volume setting of the connected source device.
The Power lamp blinks once for each time you press either the Volume UP or Volume DOWN buttons. That is, except when you hit the lower or upper ends of the volume range. Then that light fast flashes a few times. Also, no beeps or other accessibility sounds play when you adjust the volume.
Note that you can also change XB41 volume by adjusting the controls on your source BT device.
With the speaker paired and playing, press the minus shaped Volume Down button to decrease its sound output level. Press the plus shaped Volume Up button to increase audio output.
Note that these loudness controls have no effect when the speaker is not paired. Also, the volume setting may change from paired device to paired device. I.e. each paired device remembers its own volume setting. So you might need to re set the volume when you unpair the speaker from one source device and pair it to another.
The Live button changes the output sound, giving it a more “live” sounding, expansive stereo quality.
Normally, the Live mode is OFF, and the Extra Bass mode is the default, and the LIVE lamp is dark, as we see next.
The sound appears to emulate a flat response but with a bit of bass boost.
The LIVE mode on the other hand, adds a “presence” and larger stereo image that you do not have to directly face the speaker to sense. When LIVE mode is active, the LIVE lamp glows, as we show next.
The Phone / Voice Assistant button has an icon of an old fashioned telephone receiver just above it, and the button itself is the ever familiar right facing triangle and two vertical lines shape. We find it at the left edge of the top buttons panel. See it in the next picture.
Press and release this button quickly to pick up on an arriving call when you have this unit paired with a smart phone. Depress it again to hang up the call. When the call comes in, the item you were listening to pauses when you pick up the call. But note that once you disconnect from the call, you may not be able to resume music playback with this button, depending on the app you were listening in. In such cases, you have to go into the app and un-pause it on the phone itself.
When paired with an Apple phone, you may press and hold the Play / Pause / Phone / Voice Assistant button to wake up Siri. Note that you must first enable Siri on the source device (phone, tablet) to use Siri for this to work. Siri then hears you on the built-in microphone on the XB41. So be sure to talk at the speaker, and not at your phone, when paired with the 31. The mic is on speaker front grill, near the right edge.
Finally, after Siri responds, the system resumes playing what you were listening to before.
This is the Play-Pause function of this button. To use it while the 41 is playing, simply press and release this button. Play stops and the source device goes into pause mode. To resume play, then again, press and release the Play-Pause button.
Finally, you can skip forward to the next song, or back to the previous song in a playlist with the Play-Pause button on the XB41. As the song plays, do the following…
This button switches the party lamps on the front and ends of the speaker ON and OFF. E.g. See it in the next photo. It’s at the left of the horizontal row of three buttons in the port compartment.
The multi-color light bars pulsate, fade, flash, and change colors along with the music on the XB41, and are ON by default. I.e. Either when fresh out of the box, or after a factory reset. But you can turn them off by pressing and holding for three seconds the LIGHT-BATT button. Doing so may save a bit of power, especially when you don’t really need to waste any battery on running these lamps and need to get maximum playing time. You might also deactivate them when playing the speaker in daylight or in a bright room where the lights would be harder to see anyhow.
Then to turn them back on again, simply repeat what you did before. I.e. Press and hold in the LIGHT-BATT button for three seconds. At that point, the party lamps resume their color light show.
Quickly press and release the same button (the LIGHT-BATT button) any time the speaker is ON. Then the unit speaks that percentage number of battery power left to you in a female voice.
This WPC function lets you join from two to a hundred compatible speakers such that both play the same program. Why do this? Because, as with the Connect Plus and Party Boost feature on JBL Bluetooth speakers, you get a wider coverage area when you have more than one speaker in sync, than when just one is playing. So you get more volume to spread around bigger party areas.
Now to create a party group, you can use any combination of XB20, XB21, XB22, XB30, XB31, XB32, XB40, and XB41, models. Furthermore, the GTK-XB60, GTK-XB90 Sony models work here as well. Now In WPC mode, unlike with stereo pairing, you can indeed mix and match different speaker models, so long as you do it with only the models listed here.
To form a WPC group of speakers, do as follows.
When you’re ready to break the WPC link, simply press and hold the WPC button on Speaker One for three seconds. A tone then sounds and the WPC light goes out, meaning that the link is now broken.
Then simply turn off the speakers that you’ll no longer be using.
You use the Add button to join two Sony XB41 speakers together for stereo sound (Stereo Mode), or as two mono speakers for extra volume (Double Mode). To use two speakers together like this, you first create a Bluetooth connection between the speakers. Then, you set up a Bluetooth connection between this pair, and the source Bluetooth device you’ll be playing music from. Plugging a cord into the Audio Input port ends the Add function.
You need two Sony SRS XB41 speakers to use the Add feature for either Stereo or Double modes.
To end this speaker linkage, simply turn off both speakers.
Find this recessed button on the speaker back, just to the right of the Audio In port. To work it, insert a paper clip end and gently press.
Now unlike reset buttons on many other speakers, this button does NOT restore the unit to its factory default state. Instead, you press this only when the speaker becomes unresponsive or acts strangely. E.g. It won’t power ON or OFF, or the other buttons do nothing when you press them. Thus, pressing Reset does not clear the stored Bluetooth pairings from memory.
It does appear though, to disconnect the speaker from its battery by brute force. Thus pressing it causes a hard shutdown to occur. Further, releasing it applies battery power again. You can then turn the speaker on with the Power button.
The hope with this design is that the unit will again respond to other button presses when cold started after a Reset button press.
Should the 41 lock up or become non responsive to button presses, press and release this button. If the Power lamp is ON, it should shut OFF right away. Note that the speaker does not come back on when you release this button. So to turn it on again, press the Power button.
Note that this is different from the Reset button described in the last section. This method is how to actually hard reset the XB41 to put it back to factory default settings. The Reset button described earlier does not do this however. But it is possible to run a true factory reset on the 41, as follows.
With the XB41 running, press and hold the Power and Volume DOWN buttons at the same time until the speaker goes OFF and all the top panel lamps go dark. E.g. See these buttons pointed at by the green arrows in the next picture.
You may wish to reset the speaker to fix any unusual behaviors you notice from it such as failing to pair, sound distortion, failure to power off when you press the Power button, pressing the Reset button does not solve your issue, and so on. Note that resetting invalidates any saved connection info about this speaker on your source Bluetooth devices. So you’ll have to forget those connections on these devices, and re pair the speaker after a reset to play your audio content through it once again.
For more details, check out our post that describes How to Reset Sony SRS XB41 Speaker.
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