When Bluetooth mode is switched from Headphones to Headset (with mic), only much lower quality audio codes are used.
Does anyone know if Bluetooth 6 adds support for higher quality codes for Headset?
It's a big issue, in my opinion.
Using the same headset on both Windows and Linux leads to a very different experience. Windows works fine. Linux has the issue macOS has mentioned here.
I had high hopes for BLE Audio but that seems to be stalled
Isn't this a Mac-specific issue? I have some recollection in my head that Mac OS uses a terrible codec for bidirectional bluetooth audio, but iOS uses a good one.
It still is, mSBC is really not that good, plus all things considered reasons go beyond just the codec, see my nearby comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41705258
Switching to "2x half-duplex" on both ends is really the best thing. I hate it that you can't separately select audio input and output in iOS.
I don't understand why all desktop OS can't have something better while when I pair my Bose headset on my smartphone it seems to be using a better quality codec profile.
Its a licensing issue. The borderlands between the headset and headphone profiles are rife with licensing land-mines - developers have flipped the table and rage-quit the issue, and this technical debt has been shipped.
(Disclaimer: I make headset/headphone firmware for a major competitor and deal with this issue every single week...)
My sympathies, and I appreciate your willingness to wade through neck deep licensing excrement to produce something that still works.
But I guess it isn’t solved by that. Why isn’t it?
MacBooks newer than 2023 SHOULD have better call quality. They have Bluetooth 5.3¹. Can anybody confirm this? I have been meaning to try pairing my earbuds with a floor model at a store and testing audio quality but's only to satisfy a curiosity for me.
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Is this specifically a Bluetooth headphone thing, or an "any headphones with a mic on any OS" thing?
All these problems are solved by headphones with proprietary wireless dongles and they work great, so why can't Bluetooth incorporate those improvements so we can get them on other devices than desktop PCs?
Beyerdynamic MMX 200 does it wrong: pair up to, uh, I don't know (undocumented!), n>2 devices (I have 4), connects to the last one on power up, but if you want to switch devices, you have to disconnect on the device it has just connected and hope it doesn't connect to yet another you have paired and happens to be in range but is not the one you want to pair with, or you have to disconnect from there too. Confused yet? Yup, it's that bad.
Worse, upon that second disconnect the headset itself initiates a reconnect by going through the MRU list again, so if you disconnect from the second (incorrect) one it might try the first (incorrect) one again since it's now the next in the MRU list, so you actually have to DISABLE BLUETOOTH on each device except the one you want to connect to.
Too bad if one of these devices is in the next room, even more annoying if it's your iPad borrowed by your SO who is now annoyed at losing sound from their movie.
At that point, it's easier to forget the headset in the device you have in hand and re-pair, which is absolutely ridiculous.
Beyerdynamic Free BYRD does it correctly: pair up to 5 devices, connects to the last one on power up, any device in the pair history can force-connect to the headset, yanking out the virtual cord from the undesired device. No interaction required on any other device.
Even better, when pulled out of the charging case they actually wait a bit (a few seconds? or detecting when they're put in ear?) so you can actually invoke some quick setting pane and connect without the connection ever going to an unsuspected device.
Dishonourable mention for Bose QC-35 II, who operates like the MMX 200, only it has two BT radios as an attempt to work around that it's doing it wrong. So, it connects to the last two devices. Unfortunately if I'm walking around the house listening to music and the second-to-last device goes out of range the headset goes "<device name> disconnected" then a few moments later "<device name> connected", which is horrible when <device name> is made out of a serial number (work laptop) and it goes on to spell it out "C. O. M. P. H. 4. 7. X. 3. 9. 9. 7. P. K. Q. L. disconnected".
The only way to prevent that is to go through the Bose app and remove devices from the history, essentially pairing it with one-device-at-a-time only. Oh, it's also great for jump scares when your SO is aping the iPad again and it turns out the headset is connected to it. All of which could be avoided if it behaved like the Free BYRD.
From what I read online, Bluetooth standart is bloated with outdated profiles and not free for manufacturers to implement. Because of that, manufacturers strap own proprietary extensions on it that only their devices support (e.g. AirPods audio qulity with mic is only good on Apple devices)[1].
Others mention that bluetooth was initially designed for less capble devices, thus suffering from low bitrate and signal strength.
Adjacent discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40180133
[1]: https://medium.marco.zone/apple-implemented-the-biggest-impr...
Isn't that obvious, or is there some aspect to this I'm not aware of (I care about sound quality, so I don't use AirPods)?
It's a very annoying problem because the Airpods actually sound fantastic, but as soon as the mic kicks in, it sounds like crap. Same thing happens with my Sony XM3s or any other Bluetooth headset. The protocol drops to a shitty bitrate to support full duplex.
I do that for all my calls and games already, but I just have to manually set it in the OS (and sometimes on a per-app basis). It only takes a second and usually remembers.
If the app were a one-time purchase I'd probably buy it just to avoid the hassle, but definitely not paying a subscription for something that's so easy to do on my own. As a compromise, I'd also be OK with a OS-version tied upgrade pricing, like you pay $x for the macOS 15 version, but when the next breaking OS update comes that requires an update, you can pay $y after the upgrade discount to get the newest version that works with the new OS.
Yes and no. Part of it is also how the OS is used.
Sure if you want to use the mic on your headset you are forced to use a lower quality codec, but on my Fedora I select which profile I want to use on my bluetooth headset[1]. If I set it to AAC or APTX it will not activate the microphone.
And I can easily select which device is the primary device for inputs, outputs or individual apps.
[1] Typically using pulseaudio volume control which is compatible with pipewire (or rather the opposite).
What we need is a new profile that uses A2DP in once direction and in the other for the microphone. I suspect the reason it has never happened is that there's a good chance of causing issues with existing devices that do at least work with HFP.