What's your experience with bluetooth audio?

Bluetooth audio is my least favorite part of using Linux and it seems like my coworkers agree. I hear a lot of praise for pipewire, but it doesn’t match what I experience. Does any system work well for anyone?

To clarify, it can work. But it’s a harsh experience compared to say Android. I’ve used Ubuntu, Fedora, and PopOS. I’ve tried a few different headphones, using Galaxy Buds 2 current. Pulseaudio tends to “do as it’s told” but doesn’t automatically switch to the right (confusingly named) profile. With Ubuntu 23.10, using pipewire, it does automatic switch profiles. Sometimes this works great. But very often, it gets stuck on on a profile or just stops working. I have to reconnect bluetooth to fix it.

Is there some magic combination of things that works or is this just how it is for everyone?

jlow,

Now that I know what to do (switch audio codecs on sound icon in menu bar depending on being in a call or listening to music) it works better for me on Linux Feroda than on Windoge.

sic_semper_tyrannis,

Using the latest Mint I sometimes connect my Bluetooth ear buds (ISOTunes) and have had no issues.

LainOfTheWired,
@LainOfTheWired@lemy.lol avatar

For me on Arch and also, but a lot less frequent fedora I find that it works fine then every few months there’s an update that breaks it for a few days till it gets patched. But besides that it works fine for me. I use blueman in DWM BTW

herrvogel,

Built-in Bluetooth modules tend to “just work” for the most part, but external adapters are a whole other story. They are a pain and it’s best to buy them from somewhere that won’t ask questions if you try to return it.

Rustmilian,
@Rustmilian@lemmy.world avatar

I haven’t had any issues.
But it’s not uncommon to a problem somewhere in the Bluetooth stack. It’s important you report any bugs you come across to the respective projects, because of how diverse Bluetooth devices are it’s hard to get perfect support for everything.

Hominine,
@Hominine@lemmy.world avatar

So I’ve recently moved over to using my Pixel buds pro almost full time and am hoping you stoke a convo here to revisit.

KDE Connect affords us the ability to fire off commands from a phone to do any number of things. One use case of mine is to disconnect/reconnect Bluetooth devices from the desktop since it is greedy and tends to bogart my earbuds when playback stops on other connections. This has worked pretty well so far but with that in mind, I have only just started playing around with things and so I look forward to refining the experience with other utilities.

That said, I find Bluetooth is buggy on almost every OS out there (Android is constantly in what feels like a state of repair…)
Best of luck!

UntouchedWagons,
@UntouchedWagons@lemmy.ca avatar

I installed fedora 38 on my lenovo thinkpad t14 (now running fedora 39) and aside from one easily fixed issue bluetooth works perfectly. My gaming pc running windows can use my laptop as an audio device via bluetooth which is pretty cool.

ProgrammingSocks, (edited )

No issues to report here. Audio sucked when I had an old shitty laptop with a BT4.0 chip but after I upgraded to a Thinkpad X280 Bluetooth just worked out of the box. Been using pipewire but before that I used pulseaudio with bluetooth audio extensions that you can find on the AUR. Pulseaudio was far less stable, pipewire just werks.

jcarax,

I had a lot of problems back when I lived in civilization. But now that I live out of range of cell signals, and can’t even see neighbors’ wifi networks, it works a whole hell of a lot better. I still use a traditional DECT (Logitech H820e), and also a dongled 2.4ghz (Audeze Maxwell) headsets for work, but I also use the Maxwell with my phone over bluetooth without a problem. My Sennheiser Momentum 4 work fine with both my phone running Graphene, and my Thinkpad running Fedora.

I won’t even try with Windows. The bluetooth stack is such trash.

sim642, (edited )

Sometime HSP just stopped working so now I have to do calls with my laptop built-in mic.

Also, some programs like Zoom just fail to use the right output device no matter what I choose in settings. I just have to make headphones the fallback device for anything to work.

But the most annoying thing is Linux somehow stealing the playback when my headphones are connected to multiple devices. Even when nothing plays on the computer but does play on the phone, there’s no audio. I have to disable/disconnect my computer to use headphones with phone when my computer is in range.

Verat, (edited )

I remember under pulse I would have issues of programs like discord and my headset breaking the connection over the switch between A2DP and HFP or HSP or whatever the mic mode was. Havent had any issues since pipewire came along and supposedly took over handling that, but I havent used a Bluetooth device with a mic to test with since, so I’m just quoting hearsay that pipewire fixed that.

MangoKangaroo, (edited )

It’s okay. On my desktop with an Intel card my headphones occasionally have an issue where they’ll stop actually playing sounds until I swap the codec in GNOME Settings. I’m pretty sure it’s an issue with the headphones proper, because I don’t think I’ve had the issue with my earbuds or when using them on my laptop.

Speaking of my laptop, if I have WiFi turned on, the Bluetooth goes to shit. It sounds fine, but the audio will randomly cut out. I blame Realtek.

hardcoreufo,

I don’t recall ever having spent a lot of time messing with Bluetooth so I think it’s worked just fine for me for a while. I’ve used Debian, Fedora and Solus on a few different laptops and desktops. I’ll give a few headphones and speakers a go tonight and see what happens.

baseless_discourse, (edited )

My need for bluetooth headphone is very simple, if I can understand youtube videos, I am happy. And I am using WF-1000MX4, which works wonderfully just using the gnome gui.

I never need to worry about pipwire or pulse audio etc.

rotopenguin,
@rotopenguin@infosec.pub avatar

Fun fact to keep in mind about your MX4 - if you use the “pair with two devices simultaneously” feature, the headphones shut off their LDAC support. All you get is the baseline audio codec. Nice, huh?

garrett,

That scenario would definitely be the time to use SBC-XQ.

soundexpert.org/…/audio-quality-of-sbc-xq-bluetoo…

(I have the over the ear XM3 that don’t support multiple devices, but also have a Bose 700 that does. The Bose 700 does AAC, but I find SBC-XQ better. On the Sony it’s a toss-up, so I stick to LDAC. I’m using Fedora Silverblue 39 with PipeWire for reference.)

rotopenguin,
@rotopenguin@infosec.pub avatar

I haven’t had much luck with XQ. I don’t believe that Bluetooth can reliably find enough bandwidth for it, unless you’re willing to blow up a few neighbor’s WiFi points/baby monitors/microwaves/weather radar stations.

baseless_discourse,

I actually never know it can be paired to more than one device. LOL

rotopenguin,
@rotopenguin@infosec.pub avatar

You have to use a phone app to do it, never found it to be worth the bother.

amanneedsamaid,

I need a bash script to restart all my bluetooth modules, bluez, bluetoothctl, eyc. because my laptop likes to make bluetooth unavailable, usually after a few hours of suspend. The script always works, and other than that I use another bash script to toggle connection to my airpods / toggle them as the default default audio output. I find it always works great besides the restartint caveat.

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