[HN Gopher] Bluetooth 6.2 - more responsive, improves security, ...
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Bluetooth 6.2 - more responsive, improves security, USB comms, and
testing
Author : zdw
Score : 234 points
Date : 2025-11-06 00:09 UTC (6 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cnx-software.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cnx-software.com)
| hsbauauvhabzb wrote:
| What's the status of audio on modern Bluetooth? The only decent
| mic+audio configuration I've ever experienced is AirPods on apple
| devices, anything else sounds terrible when the microphone is
| activated.
| mrcsharp wrote:
| I found it to be a headache trying to get LE Audio to work on
| my Windows machine. It should provide good audio quality when
| the microphone is in use but:
|
| - I have to have BLE v5.2 at least on my Windows device - It
| must have isosynchronous audio support (which I believe is an
| optional feature in the spec)
|
| - The headset must have the same features too.
|
| Then it is a question of which audio codecs are supported on
| those 2 devices. It's quite messy to be honest.
| summm wrote:
| On Linux it is even worse: there is apparently no USB dongle
| that would support isochronous audio and recent enough BLE
| versions. Only some very limited selection of newer PCIe Wi-
| Fi cards.
| dogma1138 wrote:
| https://www.sennheiser-hearing.com/en-UK/p/btd-700
|
| Works on SteamOS out of the box and with all the features
| as far as I can tell.
| summm wrote:
| That dongle has its own Bluetooth stack and is exposing a
| standard audio device via USB. Indeed that currently
| seems to be the only way, but then the stack need config
| input somehow, which in case of this one requires a
| proprietary Win/Mac Software.
| gkhartman wrote:
| I've had a similar experience. I avoid most Bluetooth devices
| as a result. I can vouch for the CMF Buds Pro 2. They're the
| first bt buds I've had with good noise cancelling on mic that
| weren't made by Apple.
| Spunkie wrote:
| Every apple user I've seen on meetings using airpods for their
| mic sounded terrible as well.
|
| I don't think any ear pod style mic exists that isn't
| completely outclassed by a mic I could pickup 2 decades ago at
| Walmart for $10-$20.
| culopatin wrote:
| But for many the audio you hear also gets degraded. Like when
| Windows sets it as communication device instead of headphones
| and it sounds like a 64kbps mp3s
| clort wrote:
| My information may be a little out of date, but in
| Bluetooth there was two types of audio. There is
| isochronous streaming (Headset profile) and audio streaming
| (Audio Profile). The Headset profile is bidirectional and
| time-sensitive (packets will be dropped if they take too
| long), it was designed for headsets as per its name
| ("communication device") rather than the Audio profile
| which, although it can be a source or a sink is basically
| for streaming, where the audio is not time-sensitive as
| such.
|
| So yeah, the isochronous streaming mode is much lower bit
| rate but thats probably why Windows sets it as a
| communications device, because it needs that mode.
|
| Its difficult to know exactly, but I use a Logitech Zone
| Vibe 125 headphones with microphone and find it works fine
| for phone calls and listening to audio. However, I am not
| an audio nerd and neither are the people I speak to using
| it. I never had any luck with in-ear devices.
| viraptor wrote:
| The best you can do these days while keeping to the
| standard is to use mSBC codec which at least does
| bidirectional 16bit. It's not too common unfortunately.
| At least on Linux you can force the codec you want with
| pipewire. On Mac you just get whatever Apple decides
| you're allowed.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| mSBC is kind of a hack, though. It pushes Bluetooth
| beyond its specifications and often works, but in my
| experience it also often causes dropped audio in less
| than ideal situations (i.e. walking with a Bluetooth
| headset on).
|
| mSBC is worth a try if you haven't already tried it, but
| it's not a real solution. Bluetooth LE Audio does provide
| a fix, but real hardware that supports it is hard to come
| by.
| numpad0 wrote:
| I don't understand why Apple doesn't do classic Apple of
| creating and adopting open standards that are slightly better
| but so obscure that nobody else uses. It doesn't make sense
| that they're doing features like hearing aids instead of
| doing an "HSP Plus".
| ehnto wrote:
| I am unsure if it's possible, it's just a really bad location
| for a mic. It is somewhat inevitable to pickup background noise
| so I suspect you would need a lot of signal processing to
| filter and reconstruct a decent signal.
|
| The form factor doesn't help either, the mics are tiny. Phones
| have the benefit of a bit more space and a much more practical
| location.
| cstrahan wrote:
| I think OP is talking about the compression and bit rate, not
| the placement of the mic.
|
| When the mic is turned on, many headsets go from sounding
| good enough to sounding absolutely horrible. Something about
| switching from A2DP to HFP, and sharing the bandwidth between
| the incoming audio and outgoing audio.
|
| AirPods are impacted much, much less, largely I think because
| the AAC-ELD codec is decent, and Apple OSes switch the audio
| from stereo to mono when the mic is on (which seems like a
| no-brainer IMO, but I guess not all operating systems do
| this).
| gbil wrote:
| try to connect more than 2 devices simultaneously on your mac
| and "enjoy" the sound you get then. I had this problem with
| either intel or m* mac and it seems from a search on the
| Internet that it is widespread to the point that is the normal.
| Nowadays I only use dongles for mouse+keyboard+headset to avoid
| such issues, at least the usb-c ones are quite bearable on size
| you just need to be careful how you put your laptop in the bag,
| which way up.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| That's just a Bluetooth capacity problem. Bluetooth isn't
| built for high throughput scenarios and "HD bidirectional
| audio" is considered high throughput in this case.
|
| Same problem happens with a combination of earbuds and a
| smart watch, or headphones and a Bluetooth mouse, depending
| on the interference and chattiness of your devices.
| fransje26 wrote:
| > Same problem happens with a combination of earbuds and a
| smart watch, or headphones and a Bluetooth mouse
|
| Oh! TIL. I will have to keep using that port-hogging mouse
| dongle then..
| jeroenhd wrote:
| It depends on how chatty your mouse is. "Gaming" or
| "high-resolution" mice can spam the BT piconet and cause
| issues, but a basic office mouse will work without
| issues.
| vel0city wrote:
| It definitely varies a good bit with the hardware in
| question, and even how saturated 2.4GHz is in your
| current environment.
|
| I currently have a bluetooth mouse, a bluetooth keyboard,
| and bluetooth headphones all on the same device and
| haven't had any issues. On a different computer with a
| different bluetooth chipset it would have issues with
| audio when I moved my mouse around a lot.
| gbil wrote:
| I'm not talking about anything HD, basic mouse keyboard via
| BT and simple SBC for the headset. Never had any issues
| with that combination on Windows in the past before jumping
| on to Mac 6+ years ago. To add insult on top, I still
| remember many people telling me to "just do" a full system
| reinstall to see if it solves the issue.
| whatevaa wrote:
| Bluetooth doesn't have the bandwith to support anything better.
| Airpods are as far as you can push it with complete vertical
| stack control. The magic is in codecs and dynamic switching of
| them based on whether you are speaking or not.
| chekibreki wrote:
| Is it really that hard to increase the bandwidth in 2025 to
| get mic quality that doesn't sound awful? Opus can be really
| efficient at low bitrates AFAIK.
| Gigachad wrote:
| How does wifi support multiple gigabit now while Bluetooth
| can't support a microphone that isn't horrendous?
| systemz wrote:
| In short - BL uses much less energy than WiFi. It's harder
| to have speed and be battery friendly at same time.
| Philip-J-Fry wrote:
| But we have Bluetooth doing lossless audio. If we can do
| lossless or 700kbps+ audio then we can spare a bit of that
| bandwidth for the microphone.
| u8080 wrote:
| No, bluetooth has enough bandwidth for 990kbps LDAC, so it
| should be possible to do 128kbps stereo + 64kbps OPUS mono
| mic.
| ACCount37 wrote:
| LE Audio fixes it, but almost nothing supports LE Audio as of
| yet.
| beAbU wrote:
| Airpods have dogshit mic quality from the listener's
| perspective, just FYI. Everyone in the call might sound nice to
| your ears, but you sound horrible to everyone else.
|
| You need to use your device's mic on video calls to have a
| remote chance of sounding semi decent.
| m463 wrote:
| I wish we could have really really good microphones.
|
| The built-in iphone microphones are wonderful compared to wired
| and bluetooth microphones. I think there are 3 or 4 and they do
| a spectacular job. Why can't we have multiple microphones and
| do a better job.
| SuperMouse wrote:
| Any interesting changes regarding BLE Meshing?
|
| We evaluated it BT5.x and the performance was not overly
| satisfying.
| edweis wrote:
| It is the first time I see a specification 3881 pages long!
| godelski wrote:
| It's been that way for awhile? 4.0 and 5.0 were ~2.8k pages.
| Even 2.1 is 1420 pages
|
| https://www.bluetooth.com/specifications/specs/?types=adopte...
| userbinator wrote:
| All the wireless standards are like that. IEEE 802.11 from 2012
| is nearly 2800 pages, and I'm sure the latest version has far
| exceeded that.
|
| ...and the GSM/UMTS/LTE/NR standards are at least an order of
| magnitude even bigger.
| miki123211 wrote:
| If I remember correctly, the entirety of the original GSM is
| ~9000 pages, things just got crazier (by orders of magnitude)
| from there.
|
| That's comparing apples to oranges, though. Those standards
| also specify the interaction between network components, not
| just between your phone and the network.
|
| Mobile phone standards are more like the entire RFC
| collection than like the 802.11 specifications.
| childintime wrote:
| Written by AI?
|
| Sizes like that nicely lock out newcomers from the market, as
| it can't be entered without a strong financial backing.
| surajrmal wrote:
| You don't need to implement the full spec. Most devices only
| support the parts relevant to them. Hardware in general is
| very expensive though so I doubt a very long spec that helps
| you achieve comparability with existing devices is the thing
| holding you back.
| 7373737373 wrote:
| Check out the 5252 pages long "Intel(r) 64 and IA-32
| Architectures Software Developer's Manual Combined Volumes: 1,
| 2A, 2B, 2C, 2D, 3A, 3B, 3C, 3D, and 4" :)
|
| https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/developer/articles/t...
|
| Direct link: https://cdrdv2.intel.com/v1/dl/getContent/671200
| miki123211 wrote:
| Or the ~11k pages long ARM specification.
|
| That's actually two specs in one, both ARM64 and ARM32 are
| part of this.
| Barbing wrote:
| Didn't someone try to calculate how many printed pages some
| set of browser specifications would be?
| aitchnyu wrote:
| There is a 5000-page standard for Docx I used for a Word export
| feature. And it was mostly devoid of details and I reverse
| engineered Word's output files countless times to figure out
| the actual format. IIRC there was a single 14000-page pdf.
|
| https://ecma-international.org/publications-and-standards/st...
| chithanh wrote:
| UEFI specification is also over 2300 pages long now. For
| comparison, Open Firmware (IEEE 1275) was 268 pages.
| surajrmal wrote:
| Things are far more complicated these days vs the 90s. These
| specifications still seem to lack important details which you
| notice if you try implementing the spec.
| MrBuddyCasino wrote:
| A lot of it is classic mode, the spec has accumulated a lot of
| cruft over the years.
| fithisux wrote:
| It is crazy. It does not make it easy for devs. Imagine this
| running in a monolithic kernel.
| m463 wrote:
| wait for the AI-generated version.
| eimrine wrote:
| What is the latest Bluetooth version having FOSS realizations?
| dust42 wrote:
| Bluez seems now to have support for 5.4.
|
| But in general there is very little support for 5.4 from the
| hardware side right now. I looked into ESLs (electronic shelf
| labels) which should be directly supported by 5.4 but you find
| almost nothing. Would just be nice if one could take any
| manufacturer's ESLs and they would just work. Right now there
| is a plethora of different standards.
|
| I wont hold my breath for 6.2 support. There are not many devs
| on bluez and on the kernel side.
| rickdeckard wrote:
| On Hardware side the support for 5.x is not bad, Nordic
| Semiconductor for example is quite fast in adding support to
| their stack, and the updated stack is available for most (if
| not all) of their chipsets.
|
| That said, even if a company which already launched its
| product would upgrade their stack to a newer version, it's
| unlikely that they would spend the money and resources to re-
| certify for a newer BT-version unless there's an explicit
| need for it. They rather treat this as a maintenance release
| of the existing certification...
|
| So it might be that there are more devices with 5.4 BT-stack
| out there than it seems...
| maxlin wrote:
| If this doesn't fix the damn "audio quality goes to 10kbps if you
| also want a mic" I'm going to electrocute the devs responsible
| with the voltage common BT devices running this stack require.
| drdaeman wrote:
| LE Audio now has GMAP (Gaming Audio Profile) which supposedly
| solves the problem with HFP/HSP crap. However, almost no
| hardware out there seem to support it - the only one I've read
| about are some Creative earbuds (Aurvana 2, I think) with a
| BT-W6 dongle, and I don't like earbuds (and dongles) so I
| haven't tried those. Haven't found any over-the-ear headset -
| if anyone knows of something, I would greatly appreciate any
| recommendations.
| u8080 wrote:
| WH-1000XM6 should support GMAP according to reddit, however
| Mediatek PCIE Wi-Fi/BT combos seems have crap drivers and I
| was not able to make it working. And Intel ones does not work
| with AMD CPUs(sounds like bullshit, but it requires some
| Intel proprietary DSP driver to supposedly "decode LC3").
| mort96 wrote:
| Why would they fix that in the standard when Qualcomm has a
| proprietary solution which generates royalties revenue for
| them? Qualcomm would probably vote against that when it comes
| up in Bluetooth SIG discussions
|
| Same goes for A2DP with a remotely decent compression algorithm
| which doesn't sound like crap
|
| I'm cynical enough to believe that these obvious huge missing
| parts of standard Bluetooth aren't accidental. They've surely
| noticed.
| rickdeckard wrote:
| Yeah, it's a dilemma. Modern times are no longer suitable for
| industry-wide standards.
|
| Up until the 2000s, industry standardization groups were
| formed by companies which acknowledged that they need to team
| up and cooperate with each other to establish a mutual
| standard across several market-segments.
|
| Nowadays we have companies who participate in those standards
| but don't contribute their work back to it, in hopes to
| secure a competitive advantage with a closed ecosystem.
|
| What happens instead, is that they force other equally-large
| players to develop another proprietary standard to match
| them, and now the standards body is unable to find common
| ground between all members anymore.
|
| Apple is the most egregious example of this, extending the
| Bluetooth spec in proprietary ways and not contributing any
| substantial implementation of it back to the standard
| (proprietary fast-pairing, linking BT-pairing to the Apple-ID
| instead of the device,...)
|
| In today's times, Bluetooth wouldn't even be a standard.
| There would likely be equivalent wireless specs from Apple,
| Google/Qualcomm and Microsoft/Intel, none of them would work
| properly with each other because each team has its own set of
| accessories to sell...
| miki123211 wrote:
| Bluetooth was developed in a different time.
|
| In those days, there was no single dominant phone or
| chipset manufacturer in most countries, much less globally.
| The phone was a device to access your carrier's plan, maybe
| with a few nice goodies on the side. Which plan you had was
| much more important than which phone you had. Phones were
| like cable boxes in many ways, most people don't know who
| makes their cable box, all they care about is whether they
| can watch ESPN and for how much.
|
| Nowadays, you have three OSes that really matter, iOS,
| Android and Windows on the desktop side. Most people will
| only ever use at most two. You don't quite need a standard
| as much in an environment like that.
| rickdeckard wrote:
| > You don't quite need a standard as much in an
| environment like that.
|
| Who is "You" in that context?
|
| [Large developer of a product]: You DON'T need a standard
| because you can strongarm your proprietary implementation
| into "your" standard (which is what is happening, as I
| wrote above), and as long as the user only buys products
| sanctioned by you, all is fine.
|
| [Small developer of a product]: You DO need a standard
| because you are only able to participate and compete if
| you are able to match the experience of the large players
| in your market (which might also be the ones owning the
| platform your product connects to). For this you need
| equal access to those proprietary standards they may have
| created. This is however not in the interest of most of
| the large players, so you are actually not able to
| compete on equal grounds.
|
| [Product consumer]: You actually WANT a standard, because
| a standard ensures interoperability across different
| types of products and vendors, and prevents
| vendor/ecosystem lock-in.
|
| In these "different times", this fair and competitive
| market was a side-effect from this need for vendors to
| align in order to standardize across different areas,
| because they understood that "they cannot do this alone".
|
| In the "nowadays times", there is a handful of companies
| large enough to do it alone, and they have an active
| interest to prevent the creation of an industry standard
| ("I want to enter the watch market, so I create a
| standard to connect my platform to a watch, AND I create
| a watch to control this value-chain end-to-end).
|
| This "side-effect" of a competitive market is now gone
| and is ACTIVELY prevented by this handful of companies
| (see adoption and proprietary expansion/restriction of
| Bluetooth, WiFi-Direct, NFC,...)
| bluGill wrote:
| Industry standards were done back then because customers
| demanded it. When a large customer (big company or
| government) says that you have to support a standard you
| support it, and if you don't like it you make the standard
| better. Even then everyone wanted their own version that
| wasn't standard because nobody wants you to be able to buy
| from competition. In turn, sometimes competition reversed
| engineered you - suddenly you realized you couldn't upgrade
| anymore unless you were compatible with the competition
| because customers were expecting compatibility with someone
| who only partially understands what you did: a few
| standards were written just so they could explain why this
| field that was always zero was going to change to a 1 with
| the next upgrade.
| TheAceOfHearts wrote:
| I haven't tried a bluetooth device in years, is pairing still
| godawful? I wish they would give you the option to pair through
| USB. Just plug in the host and peripheral and press the pair
| button, and it should automatically negotiate pairing. I don't
| care if it requires the hassle of occasionally having to plug
| something in to pair the two devices as long as it works 100%
| reliably.
| MilanTodorovic wrote:
| Pairing mostly sucks with low quality adapters which have all
| sorts of timing issues. Some decent ones are perfectly fine.
| BuildTheRobots wrote:
| I wonder how much of it is low quality adapters vs poor
| drivers. Whatever Bluetooth module they used in my PS20
| Chinesium car stereo connects quicker and works with less
| niggles than any other device I've tested in the last 20
| years.
| bschwindHN wrote:
| The nintendo switch pro controller is nice for this - plug it
| in via USB and it automatically pairs to the console you
| plugged it into.
| Gigachad wrote:
| Apple keyboard, mouse, and trackpad work like this too. I'm
| not sure how you are meant to pair them on non Apple hardware
| though.
| ezfe wrote:
| They enter pairing mode after being turned on
| jasomill wrote:
| And you can repair an already-paired device by either
| holding down the power button for a few seconds or
| flipping the power switch on and off a few times,
| depending on the model.
|
| My biggest annoyance with Apple devices is in software,
| that AFAIK there's no way to _prevent_ macOS from pairing
| to any Apple Bluetooth device connected via USB, even if
| it 's already paired with another device and you only
| intend to use it via USB.
| chithanh wrote:
| Sony supports pairing Bluetooth devices via USB since PS3 and
| Apple supports this since wireless peripherals with Lightning
| port.
|
| However the protocols to do that are all proprietary and
| mutually incompatible. At least the PS3 protocol has been
| sufficiently reverse engineered so you can plug a DualShock 3
| controller into a Steam Deck and have it just work wirelessly
| afterwards.
| gumby271 wrote:
| I think the Joycons do this too. Snap them in once, then
| they'll work wirelessly after that.
| eptcyka wrote:
| That's how game controllers can be paired - just plug them in.
| jeffbee wrote:
| It is also how the Apple keyboards and pointing devices are
| paired.
| SkyPuncher wrote:
| Most devices have realized pairing doesn't need to be so hard.
|
| Most stuff now will happily access the first thing that
| connects to it while in pairing mode. I have many devices that
| a switch my headphone pairing between with ease.
| rusk wrote:
| I love when I'm streaming to the stereo in the living room
| and my phone decides that oh no I'd prefer to listen to that
| on the headphones in my pocket.
| rigrassm wrote:
| I don't understand why my phone's Bluetooth can't just have
| a per-device setting to disable automatic connection for
| specific devices like we have for Wi-Fi access points. I
| will never want to auto connect to my car just because it's
| turned on.
| Elfener wrote:
| The worst bluetooth pairing experience is with devices
| featuring "quick pair" "fast pair" and similar.
|
| The best pairing experience is with devices that have a pair
| button or let you hold down the power button to enter pairing
| mode. Although I've now ended up with headphones (Creative Zen
| Hybrid (Gen 2)) that have this, but also decide to just
| unexpectedly enter pairing mode when you disconnect all devices
| from it...
| Findecanor wrote:
| AFAIK, there isn't any official USB protocol for this, and I
| think there really should be. Pairing has to be out-of-band to
| be properly secure against MITM attacks during pairing, and
| using USB would be such a simple way to achieve that.
|
| Apple has a proprietary USB protocol for pairing its own
| wireless keyboards, trackpad and mouse, and Microsoft and Sony
| have proprietary protocols for their respective gamepads.
| jansper39 wrote:
| I don't think Xbox uses Bluetooth for their gamepads. It's
| some proprietary protocol over 2.4Ghz as far as I'm aware.
| jasomill wrote:
| Recent Xbox controllers support both Bluetooth and a
| proprietary protocol; Microsoft sells an optional dongle to
| use the latter on PC.
|
| AFAIK, PlayStation wireless controllers are Bluetooth-only,
| but the DualSense (PS5) controllers use some proprietary
| extension not supported on Windows for haptic feedback over
| wireless that's sent via standard audio protocols over USB.
| user_7832 wrote:
| Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't NFC at one point considered
| the solution for such out of band pairing? I think NFC
| headphones are still available for sale.
| xattt wrote:
| NFC headphones went out of fashion after users' necks got
| tired quickly during playback from having to keep their heads
| near the source device.
|
| /s
| rickdeckard wrote:
| NFC was one possible solution for the "Out-of-Band" pairing
| defined in the Bluetooth spec.
|
| The spec. allowed to exchange encryption keys with a
| different method than Bluetooth, Sony is using it on the
| Playstation to perform BT-pairing via USB.
|
| Commercially, NFC was mostly used to initiate pairing, by
| having a NFC Tag on the accessory which stored the Bluetooth
| address, and a device scanning the tag would initiate pairing
| with the device directly.
|
| The pairing itself is technically still done over Bluetooth,
| which is nowadays mostly a matter of confirming the
| operation...
| miki123211 wrote:
| Yes, I had an NFC-based speaker once, and that worked
| wonderfully.
|
| You'd go up to the speaker (which you had to do anyway to
| turn it on), and you'd touch the phone to the NFC part. That
| would turn it on and pair it with this specific phone. The
| whole thing took less than a second.
|
| It was great for sharing the speaker among family members,
| when different people used it at different times, each with
| their own phone.
|
| This was in ~2015, I had a Galaxy S4 at the time, no idea
| whether this works with iOS or modern Android.
| robotnikman wrote:
| I have a Bose portable speaker that does this, and it works
| great. I also have a Sony Sound system which supports it,
| which is kinda odd.
| rickdeckard wrote:
| It's not that bad really, I haven't had a bad Bluetooth Pairing
| experience in years now, and I keep switching some devices ALOT
| (phones, headphones, keyboards, mice)
|
| > I wish they would give you the option to pair through USB.
| Just plug in the host and peripheral and press the pair button,
| and it should automatically negotiate pairing.
|
| This is called "Out of band" (OOB) pairing and supported since
| Bluetooth 4 iirc, it's a method which allows key exchange using
| a different bearer than Bluetooth.
|
| It's implemented quite famously on the Sony Playstation 3 and
| 4, where BT-pairing is done by connecting via USB and pressing
| the "Playstation" button.
|
| On other Bluetooth-devices it's mostly not implemented because
| apart from the limited support for OOB pairing over USB on the
| host-device, it would require the peripherial device to also
| have a USB data-interface in control of the Bluetooth chipset.
|
| So more complexity and cost, to solve a problem which barely
| exists anymore.
| jauntywundrkind wrote:
| I really want BT pairing over NFC , which my Lenovo ThinkPad
| II keyboard supports. On Linux. I believe a bunch of my
| headsets may support this too?
|
| I think maybe there's like on one or two people who have
| gotten neard daemon doing Bluetooth OOB with Bluez, but it's
| very obscured in results or their reports have bit rotted off
| the net.
| rickdeckard wrote:
| I don't know your keyboard (and Google didn't help that
| much), but I guess it simply has a NFC Tag which shares the
| BT ID over NFC for a device to initiate pairing directly
| with this ID.
|
| You can try an Android App like NXP TagInfo to read the
| contents of that Tag and show you what's inside of it, my
| expectation is that it's just a basic NFC Tag...
| jcelerier wrote:
| I have some anker headphones which won't stay paired no
| matter what I do
| faxmeyourcode wrote:
| Yes, it's still a terrible UX. Anybody claiming otherwise is
| using Apple only, which still has trouble (albeit a bit less
| than mixed ecosystems), or stockholm syndrome.
| 7373737373 wrote:
| Does this finally fix the shitty audio quality when using a
| wireless headset's microphone?
| carlmr wrote:
| The only important question.
| hanikesn wrote:
| https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/windowsosplatform/c...
|
| This can already be done with LE audio, support is coming
| slowly.
| jofzar wrote:
| I can't believe in that blog they use a simulated video. How
| hard is it Microsoft to have literally someone talking in a
| mic connected to two different laptops seriously.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| It isn't.
|
| It's that when you have legal agreements with guilds and
| unions, even produced promotional material can be
| considered a production requiring minimum staff (I.e.
| makeup, camera technician, etc.) On productions, any person
| wearing multiple hats is tightly controlled.
|
| A cartoon I watched growing up ran into this when they
| needed to insert live action, so they deliberately recorded
| at 1 FPS for that episode to make it ineligible for budget
| reasons (https://phineasandferb.fandom.com/wiki/Tri-
| Stone_Area).
|
| If you're ever wondering why a company can't do something
| simple and obvious, it's probably due to a legal agreement.
| rat9988 wrote:
| Weird tangent here. Nobody expects software engineers to
| participate in a promotional video for their product.
| ashtakeaway wrote:
| Weird response here. Everyone expects at least some level
| of marketing for their software product to perform
| financially.
| zamadatix wrote:
| Can a bluetooth mic connect wideband to one laptop and
| normal to another at the same time? Regardless, the
| simulation is very accurate IME. It is, after all, all
| digital anyways.
| phire wrote:
| I believe this has already been fixed by LE audio.
|
| But support (on both ends) is quite rare, experimental, and
| needs to be explicitly enabled.
| tecleandor wrote:
| It's been difficult for me to find headphones with LE
| support. And also I've seen some of them announced support,
| just to remove it later because the firmware was behaving so
| bad.
|
| Haven't checked in a while, so I don't know if is there
| something reasonable now that doesn't cost like $500 or so.
| izacus wrote:
| Yeah, my experience has been that bunch of features just
| don't work when LE is used.
|
| E.g. on my WF-1000XM5, I can't use multipoint connection,
| lose per-headphone/case battery status, Voice Assistant
| support and some other details.
| tasqa wrote:
| The WF-1000XM5 beta Bluetooth is pretty good in the latest
| firmware update. Even though it is listed as beta I use it
| all the time. And they are pretty decently priced at the
| moment
| OliverWich wrote:
| Yes, very frustrating... I was on the lookout for new
| headphones that "just work" and LE Audio / LC3 support was
| a must for me. One of the more frustrating tech shopping
| experiences I've had so far.
|
| Landed on the JBL Tour One M3, they sound okay and support
| LE Audio. They have some interface problems (Auto-Pause and
| automatic speech detection is way to sensitive for me) but
| you can tweak it so it does "just work" (mostly).
| ac29 wrote:
| > Landed on the JBL Tour One M3, they sound okay and
| support LE Audio.
|
| I recently got the Tour One M2 and was pretty
| disappointed with the audio quality (both normal
| bluetooth and LE audio). Noticeably worse than my
| previous wired headphones, which were also cheaper. The
| touch controls are also terrible, and I dont like that
| noise cancelling is on by default with seemingly no way
| to change the default setting.
| numpad0 wrote:
| Classic and LE are completely different protocols, from
| physical layer and up. It must be that it doesn't make a
| lot of sense for manufacturers to invest substantial effort
| in it.
| magicalhippo wrote:
| > Classic and LE are completely different protocols, from
| physical layer and up.
|
| Which makes sense when you know it started life[1] as a
| separate protocol called Wibree by Nokia, which was
| specifically designed[2] to be usable by Bluetooth RF
| gear:
|
| _A major tenet of their design was that "it can be
| deployed with minor effort into devices already having
| Bluetooth, e.g. cellphones" with the added requirement
| that a "common RF section with Bluetooth must be
| possible"._
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluetooth_Low_Energy#H
| istory
|
| [2]: https://www.ijert.org/research/wireless-
| communication-with-w...
| u8080 wrote:
| For real quality improvement which is 48kHz stereo + mic,
| you'll also need GMAP(Gaming Audio Profile) support both on
| BLE adapter and headset.
|
| I've tried multiple combinations with my WH-1000XM6 and
| WF-1000XM5, but nothing works stable on Windows. Linux
| requires hand-patching bluez and friends which also failed
| for me. Android does not support GMAP and just when using LE,
| a lot of messengers unable to detect it properly(Google Meet
| works, Telegram and Viber does not).
|
| I've finally gave up on that idea. Just thinking about fact
| we cannot use duplex wireless audio in 2025 pisses me off so
| much tbh.
| zamadatix wrote:
| Worse yet, I got a new Bose headset with USB C audio
| support - and the microphone doesn't work at all on either
| the USB or Bluetooth while USB C is playing audio!
| dev1ycan wrote:
| Yeah this is a dealbreaker, same with when I found out my
| sennheiser headphones made me have like 500ms reaction time on
| audio cues, I get it was an older bluetooth protocol but
| yeah... no, I'll stick to wired for my pc.
|
| Oh yeah I also LOVE Teams and Meet completely breaking my mic
| forcing me to use some other mic because it doesn't work with
| the one on my headphones half the time
| miki123211 wrote:
| Old Bluetooth basically uses an equivalent of TCP,
| retransmissions and all, for one-way, high-quality audio..
|
| Any network / audio / telecoms engineer will tell you how bad
| of an idea this is.
| high_na_euv wrote:
| Fix quality?!
|
| It does not work at all!
| ChildOfChaos wrote:
| I just bought a separate mic to attach and it works so much
| better, the modmic or tonor tgp1 are the way to go.
| reegnz wrote:
| The trick I'm using (at least on laptops, cannot do this on
| phones AFAICT) is to change the input device to the laptop's
| own microphone to get my earphones to not use HFP (Hands Free
| Profile) and instead stay in a better quality codec (AAC, LDAC,
| AptX, SBC, whatever your devices agree upon).
|
| Sound quality for my calls on both sides improved dramatically!
| Since I've discovered this, I tell all my colleagues in our
| zoom meetings to switch microphones and it's immediately better
| for everyone on the call (not just the user that was using
| HFP).
|
| This is because if you use the hands free profile, it'll use a
| codec that encodes your voice in a terribly bad bitrate, and
| even worse, the sound you hear in the headphones is also using
| a terribly low bitrate.
|
| They should finally fix HFP (Hands Free Profile) spec as it's
| literally impacting call quality for billions of people.
|
| Edit: apparently LE audio is a thing, but device support is
| still terrible.
| HPsquared wrote:
| HFP has less latency though, doesn't it? And using the
| headset mic is probably better if the room is loud or has
| poor acoustics.
| reegnz wrote:
| To be fair, even with no noise, the HFP has such bad
| encoding that it doesn't mean much if the room is noisy or
| not.
|
| Also the sound isolation tech should be orthogonal to using
| HFP.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| > And using the headset mic is probably better if the room
| is loud or has poor acoustics.
|
| Not to mention the combination of "microphone in the laptop
| body + person who doesn't turn off their microphone when
| they're not speaking + person who seems to never stop
| typing during a call" tends to be distracting at best.
| reegnz wrote:
| Bluetooth codecs/profiles do not enforce social norms.
| And I hope they never will.
|
| EDIT: they also won't get rid of useless meetings where
| people are not mentally present but do other stuff
| instead.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| > Bluetooth codecs/profiles do not enforce social norms
|
| Guess I gotta correct my assumptions then, I clearly
| thought they did.
|
| Regardless, microphones built-in the same body people
| type against will remain a personal pet-peeve for me.
| HPsquared wrote:
| One must follow protocol!
| 0x457 wrote:
| Don't forget "exhaust fan outlet located next to the mic
| and about to take off"
| jasomill wrote:
| Sure, but janky $30 wireless gaming headsets have even
| lower latency, with better audio quality, than Bluetooth
| handsfree, so it's still sad that anything still uses it.
| torginus wrote:
| The problem with this trick is that it's very important for
| your callers to hear you clearly, and laptop mics usually
| suck, and pick up fan noise.
|
| Maybe not a problem with Macs, but call quality on most
| laptops using the built in mic is bad enough that people on
| the other side will have a bad impression of you.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| I have a friend who works in sales and business
| development. He was fighting with his Bluetooth headset and
| his laptop all the time. I told him to just get a simple
| USB podcast microphone. You can get a decent one for next
| to nothing. Problem solved. Those are designed to make you
| sound good. And if you do sales, you should want to sound
| amazing.
|
| I actually told him many salespeople get this completely
| wrong and sound like an absolute Muppet on their expensive
| headsets without even realizing it and explained to him
| that anything Bluetooth is basically never going to sound
| amazing. There's a lot of snake oil in the market. I got
| some nice Sony earbuds recently. Tried it once and I was
| barely audible apparently. That's supposedly a high-end
| option. It's OK, I got them for music and podcasts and
| wasn't expecting much for calls. But it managed to
| underwhelm me on that front. The weakness is Bluetooth and
| the standard codecs supported on Mac/Windows. You are
| basically screwed no matter what BT headset you use. For
| phones, it depends.
|
| Apple fixes this with AirPods by doing a proprietary codec
| and probably quite a bit of non-trivial sound processing.
| None of that is part of the Bluetooth standard, and what
| little is supported in some newer codecs typically does not
| work in Windows/Mac. So it will still fall back to that
| low-bitrate codec that distorts your voice and makes you
| sound like a Muppet.
|
| If you need to use a phone, getting a USB-C headset can be
| an alternative. Not that many wired headsets these days,
| sadly. Even Apple now uses USB-C. And both Android and iOS
| support most USB-based sound equipment.
|
| I take most calls with my Mac. I configured an aggregate
| device with the MIDI tool so that my headset doesn't hijack
| the microphone. Nice little hack if you have some decent BT
| headphones. On a Mac, the microphones in the laptop are
| likely way better than the vast majority of headsets. And
| that's before you consider the latency and heavy
| compression Bluetooth adds to the mix.
| lxgr wrote:
| > Apple fixes this with AirPods by doing a proprietary
| codec and probably quite a bit of non-trivial sound
| processing. None of that is part of the Bluetooth
| standard
|
| Do you have any sources for that claim?
|
| As far as I understand (and based on what I've seen in
| some Bluetooth debugging menus at least a few macOS
| versions back), for HFP they just use regular mSBC.
|
| That's an optional codec for HFP (while SBC is mandated
| for A2DP), and a step above absolute potato quality
| G.711/PCM u-law, but still part of the regular Bluetooth
| HFP specs.
| Kirby64 wrote:
| https://medium.marco.zone/apple-implemented-the-biggest-
| impr...
|
| More modern Airpods use AAC-ELD, which is way way better
| than mSBC. Still not as good as it could be, but pretty
| decent and sounds far less muddy.
|
| Basically no support in Windows et al though.
| Sammi wrote:
| A cheap lapel microphone is even better, as they are
| always close to your mouth.
| kdmtctl wrote:
| I use AirPods with my MacBook all the time and no one is
| ever complained. Does Apple have a secret sauce?
| pseudosavant wrote:
| I do this same technique, but typically with external mic
| mounted to my desk. Another benefit beyond higher fidelity
| audio is that it also reduces the latency for other people to
| hear your audio by about 100-250ms.
| Fokamul wrote:
| BT standard wasn't even that bad, from security stand-point, the
| worst thing is implementation and maybe only SW implementation.
|
| Televisions(eg.: LG) where you're unable to turn BT off. With
| that knowledge, you can buy cheap device which is normally used
| for development and analyzing of BT communication.
|
| And with that device, you can spam any TV around you with fake BT
| connection requests, TV is basically unusable during this time
| and best thing, this cannot be blocked :D
|
| (only way to turn BT off on LG TV is with you getting root and
| downloading homebrew app, which of course degrade the use of your
| TV remote, because it uses BT)
| shelled wrote:
| I worked in BT almost a decade ago for 4-5 years. My first job. I
| had never worked close to the hardware. It was nice. Even though
| the work was not assembly-level close to hardware. Then the rot
| hit. I saw BT had been there more or less for decades and in one
| way or another it was going to remain there. The big bad world of
| backward compatibility and having to support older devices out in
| the wild was so crucial (as per the companies' POV and I am not
| judging it either way) that I realised I do not want to keep
| copying and pasting one line for a driver fix from one code base
| to 373 for different devices. Given it could have been improved
| with CI/CD and better source control (maybe!) but it was just not
| worth it.
|
| Then the rest of the software world hit hard, and I saw, yet
| again, that the grass is green and that at least the world of BT
| had epic job safety, slow but stable growth, and best of all - no
| rush to fix something in the next 37 mins or millions of ad
| revenue will be lost.
|
| But I see, as I had guessed, not much has changed "more or less"
| :)
|
| I blame Apple as well, or both Apple and SIG for not making
| adoptions faster. But then Apple had nothing to worry about when
| it came to backward compatibility. So "Apple-rest" never really
| happened in a meaningful way, and whatever happened happened
| quite late.
|
| (By the way there are more details on SIG portal if one is
| interested. Here are some https://www.bluetooth.com/bluetooth-
| core-6-2-feature-overvie... and
| https://www.bluetooth.com/blog/just-released-bluetooth-core-...
| and maybe follow from there)
| noipv4 wrote:
| How much more innovation can this tiny slice of 2.4GHZ spectrum
| support?
| nixpulvis wrote:
| Why do you assume innovation and new frequencies are all that
| related. There are some things new frequencies can help with.
| Higher bandwidth, lower congestion, but there's also problems
| with penetration and range. Meanwhile, the protocol itself is
| packed with modes and features.
| ezfe wrote:
| It's a joke?
| nixpulvis wrote:
| Excuse me?
| Waterluvian wrote:
| It's wild to me just how much Bluetooth can do. When it was new
| my mental model had it binned as a "basic comms within 10
| feet".
|
| Last week my kid got to the bus stop before "Controller
| Disconnected" revealed the PS5 controller was in his backpack.
| m463 wrote:
| I wonder if "controller disconnected" is a combination of
| distance and time.
|
| Meaning he got 25 feet away when communication stopped, then
| there was a delay while retries/timeout happened, and then
| the message when 100 feet away.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Good thought. I'll test this with a faraday cage maybe?
| Would a microwave work? Does it have to be on?
| m463 wrote:
| you could just walk slow vs walk fast?
| Waterluvian wrote:
| That sounds less electrifying.
| 0_____0 wrote:
| I'm continually astounded at how well it works. I've forgotten
| my phone in the basement and walked all the way up to the third
| floor of a building without having the audio I was listening to
| on my BT earbuds drop out.
| charlie-83 wrote:
| Higher bands are coming. Probably a long time before you will
| see it in a consumer device though.
| russdill wrote:
| Please Bluetooth devices, give me some options on how to interact
| with devices I've previously paired with other than "upon
| spotting, immediately begin playing music"
| NooneAtAll3 wrote:
| I wish bluetooth was more like "air usb"
| hackmiester wrote:
| If this is happening on iOS, then your peripheral is sending a
| Play command upon connection. (I don't know about Android but I
| assume the same.) This is often desirable, but I could see why
| it would piss you off.
| Y-bar wrote:
| I have a pair of such wireless speakers, and experience it,
| and the engineers at the speaker company which the the
| customer support escalated me to is adamant that they do not
| send any such command. It stops if I change the category of
| the device in iOS Settings, leading me to believe the culprit
| is indeed Apple.
| mynameismon wrote:
| Well, a good way to test this is hooking up wireshark
| felixfurtak wrote:
| Bluetooth is such a shit standard. I guess we're stuck with it
| though.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| Why does Bluetooth do that hands free profile and low bitrate on
| my fedora laptop, bit not on my Grapheneos phone? They're both
| open source, no?
| ac29 wrote:
| There's a million ways to change this, I personally use
| pavucontrol
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