After two years of waiting on this, and seeing how disappointing the progress has been both in Ubuntu and PulseAudio, I am happy to say that I believe PipeWire is the future and I would hope that Ubuntu moves forward with switching to PipeWire (while keeping PulseAudio as an alternative).
I was able to follow these directions to switch to PipeWire and have found it to be acceptable with Bose NC700s and mSBC/HFP: From: https://www.reddit.com/r/pop_os/comments/ofdalv/replaced_pulseaudio_with_pipewire_on_popos_2104_i/h4c5p6u/ # Add ppa for latest build sudo add-apt-repository ppa:pipewire-debian/pipewire-upstream && sudo apt update # Install components sudo apt install gstreamer1.0-pipewire pipewire-media-session libspa-0.2-bluetooth libspa-0.2-jack pipewire pipewire-audio-client-libraries # If you get unmet dependencies, you can run: sudo apt --fix-broken install # Reload new services systemctl --user daemon-reload # Disable PulseAudio service systemctl --user --now disable pulseaudio.service pulseaudio.socket # If you update from previous version of PopOS systemctl --user mask pulseaudio # Enable Pipewire services systemctl --user --now enable pipewire pipewire-pulse # Enable Pipewire media session systemctl --user --now enable pipewire-media-session.service # I ran into an issue with a couple dependencies and needed to do the following before everything worked: sudo apt install libspa-0.2-bluetooth libfdk-aac2 systemctl --user restart pipewire.service pipewire-pulse.service Hope this helps. -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Touch seeded 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: Fix Released Status in bluez package in Ubuntu: Fix Released Status in linux package in Ubuntu: Fix Released Status in pulseaudio package in Ubuntu: Fix Committed 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/~touch-packages Post to : touch-packages@lists.launchpad.net Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~touch-packages More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
