Nice explanation of the mess that Bluetooth audio is, as I'm reliving my frustrations currently (my wife bought her first headset, for her Windows laptop, and discovered that “plug and play” is sadly “buy and pray” in Bluetooth land :( )
https://habr.com/en/post/456182/ * generally all OS (Android, Linux, Windows, AFAIK, but probably also the Apple offerings) are secretive about what they negotiate with the headset. (I mean, capturing the traffic and analysing it to know which codec is used. OK, on Android & Linux that sounds like part of the heritage, but I discovered yesterday that this state-of-the-art in 2020 in the Windows world) * headset manufacturers tend to be secretive about the features and protocols/profiles their devices support. Now some of that is “understandable” manufacturers not wanting to show that their devices don't support the cool stuff, but in many cases manufacturers don't give the details even if they would show their products in a positive light. Guess they don't want a 2 KB of small print of abbreviations in their spec sheets. * Furthermore BT Audio is complicated by the fact, that historically the standard supports only “high quality" playback & but mono playback with a groovy frequency bandwidth (GSM style sound) when recording audio. There are ways around that, but not all devices implement them, and not always in the same way.” * patented codecs, pure joy (that makes the xkcd comic in the above link even "funnier" for open source systems). * Thus you have a situation that standards that out for decades are still only implemented partially by the market, and where they are implemented, they are not necessary implemented 100% by the book, shudder. Ah, sorry for the rant, but “buying BT headsets” raises my blood pressure, and I'm one of the happy owners of a flagship mobile without a 3.5 mm connector (which is fine, I'm too clumsy to use tethered headphone on the move anyway, shrug). Andreas Am Mi., 14. Okt. 2020 um 11:41 Uhr schrieb Daniel van Vugt < 1838...@bugs.launchpad.net>: > Actually most laptops (or desktops) can't compete with USB sound cards. > Because the audio chips that come on your motherboard: > > * are usually cheaper and lower quality; > * often have limited kernel/ALSA driver support (which is why the > alsa-driver bug backlog is always out of control); > * often suffer from noise on the headset jack from the digital-to-analog > stage being too close to the rest of the computer. > > So I strongly recommend USB audio in general. Especially for wired > headsets where you can also avoid the lossy nature of Bluetooth audio > encoding. > > And for Bluetooth audio, such a USB dongle sounds like a great > workaround for this bug. But we all wish it wasn't necessary. > > -- > You received this bug notification because you are subscribed to the bug > report. > https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1838151 > > Title: > Poor quality audio with modern Bluetooth headsets in HSP/HFP. Missing > wide band speech support (Bluetooth A2DP codecs). > > To manage notifications about this bug go to: > https://bugs.launchpad.net/pulseaudio/+bug/1838151/+subscriptions > -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Kernel Packages, which is subscribed to bluez in Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1838151 Title: Poor quality audio with modern Bluetooth headsets in HSP/HFP. Missing wide band speech support (Bluetooth A2DP codecs). Status in PulseAudio: New Status in bluez package in Ubuntu: Fix Released Status in linux package in Ubuntu: Fix Released Status in pulseaudio package in Ubuntu: In Progress Status in Arch Linux: New Bug description: Bluetooth HSP/HFP audio quality is poor on Ubuntu comparative to all other major platforms (Windows, MacOS, ChromeOS, Android, iOS). Modern Bluetooth headsets (such as the Bose QC series headphones, many others) are capable of using HFP 1.6 with mSBC 16kHz audio encoding. As it currently stands, Ubuntu defaults to only supporting HSP headsets using 8kHz CVSD, and is incapable of supporting HFP 1.6 at this time. The ChromiumOS team recently tackled this issue - https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=843048 Their efforts may assist in bringing this to Ubuntu, however it appears that there are quite a lot of differences considering they have developed their own audio server solution etc. The Bluetooth Telephony Working Group published the HFP 1.6 spec in May 2011 - https://www.bluetooth.org/docman/handlers/downloaddoc.ashx?doc_id=238193 Patches have been proposed in the past for this issue to the kernel and PulseAudio: PulseAudio: https://patchwork.freedesktop.org/patch/245272/ Kernel: https://www.spinics.net/lists/linux-bluetooth/msg76982.html It appears that the Chromium OS team applied the same kernel patch: https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromiumos/third_party/kernel/+/77dd0cb94c1713a8a12f6e392955dfa64c430e54 ProblemType: Bug DistroRelease: Ubuntu 19.04 Package: pulseaudio 1:12.2-2ubuntu3 ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 5.0.0-20.21-generic 5.0.8 Uname: Linux 5.0.0-20-generic x86_64 ApportVersion: 2.20.10-0ubuntu27.1 Architecture: amd64 AudioDevicesInUse: USER PID ACCESS COMMAND /dev/snd/controlC0: jnappi 2777 F.... pulseaudio CurrentDesktop: ubuntu:GNOME Date: Sat Jul 27 11:08:29 2019 EcryptfsInUse: Yes InstallationDate: Installed on 2017-11-04 (629 days ago) InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 17.10 "Artful Aardvark" - Release amd64 (20171018) ProcEnviron: PATH=(custom, no user) XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=<set> LANG=en_US.UTF-8 SHELL=/bin/bash SourcePackage: pulseaudio UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to disco on 2019-07-18 (9 days ago) dmi.bios.date: 06/07/2016 dmi.bios.vendor: LENOVO dmi.bios.version: R07ET67W (2.07 ) dmi.board.asset.tag: Not Available dmi.board.name: 20FW000TUS dmi.board.vendor: LENOVO dmi.board.version: SDK0J40705 WIN dmi.chassis.asset.tag: No Asset Information dmi.chassis.type: 10 dmi.chassis.vendor: LENOVO dmi.chassis.version: None dmi.modalias: dmi:bvnLENOVO:bvrR07ET67W(2.07):bd06/07/2016:svnLENOVO:pn20FW000TUS:pvrThinkPadT460p:rvnLENOVO:rn20FW000TUS:rvrSDK0J40705WIN:cvnLENOVO:ct10:cvrNone: dmi.product.family: ThinkPad T460p dmi.product.name: 20FW000TUS dmi.product.sku: LENOVO_MT_20FW_BU_Think_FM_ThinkPad T460p dmi.product.version: ThinkPad T460p dmi.sys.vendor: LENOVO To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/pulseaudio/+bug/1838151/+subscriptions -- Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~kernel-packages Post to : kernel-packages@lists.launchpad.net Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~kernel-packages More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
