[pulseaudio-discuss] Audio output on Bluetooth headset is choppy - PulseAudio at fault?

[Luiz Augusto von Dentz]

Hi Alexander,

On Mon, Sep 12, 2011 at 12:30 PM, Alexander Skwar
<alexanders.mailinglists+nospam at gmail.com> wrote:
> Am 12.09.2011 10:51, schrieb Colin Guthrie:
>>
>> 'Twas brillig, and Alexander Skwar at 12/09/11 07:44 did gyre and gimble:
>
>
>>> Result: It's just as clippy, as it is with PulseAudio.
>>
>> Keep in mind that the alsa-bluetooth stuff has not has as much focus as
>> PA bluetooth stuff in recent years, but yes, this seems like a valid test.
>
> Understood. But if I take out one component (PulseAudio) and replace it
> with another one (ALSA) and get the same results, then I think that this
> is a quite strong indication, that this component wasn't involved, or
> better: causing, in the error/problem at hand.

Yet you did say your Android phone does work properly and that afaik
is using Linux+BlueZ, now Android does not uses PA and perhaps the SBC
parameters are different (iirc bitpool is 32 while PA uses 64 or the
max the headset support) but more recent version of PA can adapt the
bitpool (you would see in the logs) to try to avoid skipping due to
low bandwidth. Btw, do you have anything else connected/using
Bluetooth like a mouse?

>>> Or do you guys think, that my judgement regardign PulseAudio is a bit
>>> premature?
>>
>> As I said previously, I suspect it's simply due to the receiver built
>> into your machine not being supported by bluez as best it could.
>
> It doesn't matter, but I'm not using a builtin receiver, but a USB
> connected dongle. And sadly I don't have another BT receiver available.

Well it matter for us, different controller may have different
behavior and we would be happy to make them work.

>>> I think I'm gonna ditch Bluetooth. Too complicated to setup on Linux. :(
>>
>> Oh it's quite simple to setup, just pair the device and provide you're
>> using PA it just works....
>
> Well… For interesting values of "it just works" ;)

It works in Android and N900, which uses PA btw, so it should work for
SUSE+KDE as well.

>> the problem is that that it doesn't always
>> work well due to h/w support.
>
> Yep.
>
>> This requires users to give feedback and
>> run tests such that upstream folks can make it better for everyone!
>
> Who's upstream now? Bluez? Sent a mail to linux-bluetooth mailing list
> a few days ago, but haven't received any response so far.

I probably missed that, but you got be patient sometimes we are just
busy and cannot reply right away, as a matter of fact I have been busy
implementing prioritization support (SO_PRIORITY) for Bluetooth
sockets.

> → http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.bluez.kernel/16334
>
>> Please don't give up, just have patience and try and get involved :)
>
> I'm not a coder. Just a user :) Can't do much more than report bugs
> or issues and supply details as I see them.

Ok you can start by given us the name/model of the headset and
Bluetooth dongle, if we find out it is hw related I would try to get
it for testing.

-- 
Luiz Augusto von Dentz