[RESPONDED] Popping/crackling Bluetooth headphones

Framework Laptop 13 Linux
1

I am getting popping and crackling with bluetooth headphones whenever the audio starts or stops but not through the speakers. Forwarding through a youtube video sounds like shit.

Have you been able to find a solution yourself? I might try another bluetooth adapter before I contact support, I havent had an audio issue like since since the AMD Duron days.

2

Making sure I am following here:

  • Bluetooth headphones.
  • With Pulseaudio Volume Control, Double check the headset playpack type - HSP vs A2DP? If it sounds like a phone in a tunnel it’s set to HSP which is wrong.

Can you install pavucontrol and take a screenshot of the Configuration tab with the headset paired and connected?

3

I don’t get this from any other games, Steam or Heroic, native or Wine, so putting down to that one game.

Skylines for instance is probably just as demanding graphically, and runs smooth as you like.

1 Like
5

Bluetooth is terrible for media playback and I detest it became the standard for it. That said, I have the same popping with my Anker Soundcore mini flares, sometimes, you can get the issue to go away be turning Bluetooth off completely and reconnecting, or even forgetting the paired devices and re-adding them.

(Reposted as initial reply was to a specific comment which wasn’t my intention.)

6

I’m getting this problem too. Couple of observations:

  1. Sometimes I get a brief crackle and then sound goes off entirely. To fix I have to turn bluetooth off and on again. Then I go to step 2
  2. Sometimes everything looks like it’s working but I get no sound. When I look in pavucontrol for example, the output device is showing the flickery line beneath it as though there is audio but I just don’t get any actual sound. To fix this I have to go to “Configuration” change the codec (say from AAC to SBC) then the audio comes back. If I change it back from SBC to AAC it continues to work fine.

On NixOs for what it’s worth but I don’t think this is distro-specific.

1 Like
7

Sometimes a device has buggy codec support. For example one pair of headphones can receive SBC fine, but with AAC it sometimes getting artifacts and/or switches to mono.

Try experimenting with different codec settings. It could be distro specific because distros might ship with different SBC bitrate profiles. I remember having to fiddle with pulseaudio, because it was setting my headphones to LQ and not allowing me to select the SBC XQ preset, but I don’t remember where the info was and sadly can’t find the fix on my local system… a problem that nixOS was created to fix from what I heard…