Arch Linux

Akaeru

Member

Registered: 2018-10-13

Posts: 3

Bluetooth headset, is there any way to use microphone and have stereo?

Hi. I recently bought a bluetooth headset and a dongle (Asus BT400), I first tried it on windows to test the dongle and I could use the microphone while having a high quality sound with the earphones. On Archlinux, it got more problematic - the dongle worked perfectly fine - the headset seemed to work fine but the microphone wasn't recognized, so I did some research - I had no clue about bluetooth before - and installed pulseaudio and pavucontrol. So now I could get the microphone to work. The problem is that you can not have the microphone with A2DP, but the sound is terrible with HSP/HFP, which is completly normal.
So I read on some places that having stereo and microphone both working using bluetooth is technically impossible, but it does work on W10. So if anyone has any idea about how I could use both my microphone and a stereo profile, any help would be really appreciated!

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 21,738

Re: Bluetooth headset, is there any way to use microphone and have stereo?

There are some newer (proprietary) audio protocols that might allow for something like this, but they aren't implemented in any shape on linux yet, so as far as I know this situation is the best you'll get. Which headset are we talking specifically, did you install any additional software on Windows, would it be possible to find out the protocol in use on Windows?

Shalak

Member

Registered: 2020-03-28

Posts: 1

Re: Bluetooth headset, is there any way to use microphone and have stereo?

There are some newer (proprietary) audio protocols that might allow for something like this, but they aren't implemented in any shape on linux yet, so as far as I know this situation is the best you'll get. Which headset are we talking specifically, did you install any additional software on Windows, would it be possible to find out the protocol in use on Windows?

I would want to look whether or not they were implemented already. What are the names of those proprietary protocols?

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 21,738

Re: Bluetooth headset, is there any way to use microphone and have stereo?

Please don't necrobump 2 year old threads.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_codecs#Bluetooth

To preempt the next question, yes there do exist implementations for a lot these now, there's https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/puls … es-bt-git/ which extends pulse's bluetooth support relevantly

Last edited by V1del (2020-03-28 22:44:20)

Seooo

Member

Registered: 2020-04-01

Posts: 9

Re: Bluetooth headset, is there any way to use microphone and have stereo?

I had the same problem, the mic and the audio didn't work at the same time with bluetooth headset. After reading this thread I then discovered the why. Indeed by activating the microphone I can see the codec switching to HSP/HFP. Now I only have two issues related to this thing:

1. When I connect my bluetooth header the coded is by default set on A2DP, so the microphone does not work. After switching to HSP/HFP the microphone continues to be not available. The only way to get Arch to see the mic is by using the "Echo / Sound Test Service" of Skype... after this the microphone is active and I can use it. It is very strange, I cannot depend on Skype application to turn on my microphone. Do you know any way to fix this issue?

2. When I come back to A2DP (turn off the mic and activate good quality audio) my bluetooth headphones disconnect. This is not a huge problem since I can simply reconnect them, but it is better to understand the why.

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 21,738

Re: Bluetooth headset, is there any way to use microphone and have stereo?

1. You can switch this yourself via pavucontrol or other pulseaudio based audio mixers.

2. Sounds like a bug with your headset/bluetooth adapter combination specifically. anything in the kernel log? If you want to pursue this further please open up a new thread.