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Comment by nitinreddy88 | Hacker News Reader

This one is so annoying thing in Linux. My Sony wireless headset works flawlessly on Windows/Mac/Android mobile without any extra installation or set up. By default the sound quality is awesome and call quality is awesome.

Now all the problems start when I want to use with Linux. By default, it uses HFP mode and you have to edit config file to make sure it faults into A2DP by default. Now headset volume is great but when I use Mic, the quality is horrible and I feel like I am living in 1900s era. There is no solution I have found to work with Linux?!

These are the things Linux will never get to the quality of Mac/Android (both are based out of *nix and they solved the problem)

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I had to ask PulseAudio to use the A2DP sink only once, through the UI (either the Audio applet of Plasma, or pavucontrol, I don't remember). It's one too many, but since PulseAudio 12, A2DP should be the default [1].

As for using the microphone, I haven't tried but using the mic requires using the HSP profile unfortunately (because of the bluetooth specification). Other systems auto switch between the two profile. I think it is possible on Linux [2], but I hope it will come out of the box soon.

[1] https://freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/PulseAudio/Documentati... [2] https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Bluetooth_headset#Switc...

> This one is so annoying thing in Linux. My Sony wireless headset works flawlessly on Windows/Mac/Android mobile without any extra installation or set up. By default the sound quality is awesome and call quality is awesome.

eh, Macs also get their fair share of issues: https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2018/airpods-get-stuck-low...

I know three different people to whom this issue has happened (not only with VMs, but with various audio software running).

Yep! Also an annoying one. If you accidentally click VoiceOver in the settings panel in macOS when your airpods are connected it fecks them into low quality mono mode.

I really love my airpods but they stay tied to the phone now and I use a wired headset on windows for voice conferencing.

Yeah, it's annoying. At least you can switch it, though, mine gets stuck in A2DP and the microphone won't work. Apparently all major distributions switched the Bluetooth stack to a new version even though microphone was explicitly not supported.

From what I read through issues and discussions basically there aren't any people to work on Bluetooth code.

I agree that Bluetooth audio tends to be a pain on Linux by default. However things have been flawless ever since I installed the extended pulseaudio bt codecs found here: https://github.com/EHfive/pulseaudio-modules-bt/ (pulseaudio-modules-bt on arch (AUR)). As an added bonus it now even supports LDAC!

I don't even know what you're talking about. I have a sony BT noise-cancelling headset (in fact two), and they work just fine with my Linux (pop_os) laptop. No noticeable difference with my android phone. The mike works fine, too (it's a tad low but it's not better with Android, it's this headset).

I've just checked with pavucontrol and it uses A2DP automatically by default, no configuration needed. And the microphone works with Skype and other VC programs, no configuration needed either. So well, anecdata vs anecdata.

> you have to edit config file to make sure it faults into A2DP by default

How did you do this? On my system it picks HFP by default, and tells me A2DP is unavailable until I restart PulseAudio/bluetooth - where it then picks A2DP. Happens every boot

second reply (a2dp mentioned) worked for me: https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/437468/bluetooth-he...

sudo nano /lib/systemd/system/bluetooth.service

Change

ExecStart=/usr/lib/bluetooth/bluetoothd

ExecStart=/usr/lib/bluetooth/bluetoothd --plugin=a2dp

https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/437468/bluetooth-he...

I had to pair with bluetoothcl first.

I wrote it up: https://tacosteemers.com/articles/2020-10-03-using-bluetooth...

This is why I switched to Windows and now use Linux on a VM, after more than a decade of using Ubuntu as my host OS. I couldn't have a decent Bluetooth audio experience after years of tweaking.

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