[pulseaudio-discuss] Bluetooth - A2DP only? Recommended headsets? Jack?

[Ng Oon-Ee]

Hi Lennart, thanks for your quick reply.

On Fri, 2009-08-14 at 04:47 +0200, Lennart Poettering wrote:
> On Fri, 14.08.09 08:45, Ng Oon-Ee (ngoonee at gmail.com) wrote:
> 
> > Just a few questions on the 'internals' of this, I assume Pulse
> > communicates with BlueZ and uses A2DP to connect to the headsets? Is
> > this pulse-specific or are there other ways of connecting (for
> > example, through alsa, or jack). I'm asking because while I use Pulse
> > almost all the time, sometimes (in recording or other such things) I
> > use JACK, and pulseaudio-module-jack is a bit hit-and-miss
> > currently.
> 
> What's your beef with the jack module? Last time I checked it it
> worked fine. The BTS shows no open bug filed against the jack module,
> so to me looks as if everything's fine.

Not so much a beef with the jack module, I use it and love it, but its
less stable (for me) than the rest of pulse or jack. You probably don't
recall but I specifically brought up a few issues with it, primarily
with crash-outs. Since my distro pushed to 2.6.30 I haven't used it
though (no RT patch, and no on-going projects for JACK to be used on),
so I haven't checked out the latest version in .16 yet, it may be more
stable than I remember from a few months back. So just regard this as
old information, when I get the time to patch up an RT kernel I'll test
with the latest pulse/jack.

> 
> There's an ALSA module for BT. It works for basic stuff, but I'd guess
> the PA plugin for ALSA plus PA's native BT support actually works
> better. It's mostly about the timing. 
Okay, good to hear. I'm thinking of ALSA as just 'the stuff between
Pulse and system' nowadays, but may try that out just for novelty value.
> 
> > Besides that, does anyone here have comments on the models I've shown
> > above? Any recommendations for something within a similar price range?
> > I will mainly be using it for listening to music, while most
> > forums/searches tell me about call-quality instead, which is quite a
> > different beast.
> 
> Motorola S9 is my recommendation. Most others I played around with are
> crap. I wouldn't buy a cheap one. The Logitech one is a technical
> disappointment.
> 
> Lennart

Could I ask what the definition of 'cheap one' is? I'm from Malaysia,
and we find it difficult to check prices when they're in USD, since
items which cost the same can have VERY different prices on our shores.
I'll check the S9 out, but my gut feeling is it may not be easy to find
here, and I have a natural aversion to in-ears, since I prefer plenty of
bass and low-freq definition in my music, especially when Q-testing my
recording sessions.