Arch Linux

Tännhauser

Member

Registered: 2025-02-01

Posts: 2

[Solved] Bluetooth headphones output tinny audio when mic is on

So my headphones, urbanista los angeles, are outputting low quality audio after the mic was turned on for the first time, in the past I had the same problem with Ubuntu, but since I switched to arch I haven't needed a mic.

It started when I ran Fears to Fathom episode 4 from steam, which needed a mic, since then my audio has been cutting out and seemingly loosing bass, this issue persisted across a reboot and really I just want to deactivate the mic functionality in pipewire.

Any help would be appreciated

Last edited by Tännhauser (2025-02-21 08:12:14)

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 24,443

Re: [Solved] Bluetooth headphones output tinny audio when mic is on

yes that's normal and a BT protocol limitation, you should be able to force the available profiles to just a2dp variants with some wireplumber config, e.g. set bluez5.roles to just [ a2dp_sink bap_sink ] https://pipewire.pages.freedesktop.org/ … properties you can e.g. do that by creating /etc/wireplumber/wireplumber.conf.d/noMicBT.conf with

monitor.bluez.properties = {
  bluez5.roles = [ a2dp_sink bap_sink  ]
  bluez5.hfphsp-backend = "none"
}

Last edited by V1del (2025-02-20 21:06:59)