PulseAudio Plugin Allows For Better Bluetooth Audio Quality On Linux

[phoronix]

Phoronix: PulseAudio Plugin Allows For Better Bluetooth Audio Quality On Linux

Right now on most Linux distributions when using higher-end Bluetooth headphones, the low-end SBC audio codec ends up being utilized by default which is subpar for the potential audio quality of the more expensive headphones. Fortunately, there are PulseAudio modules that allow for the higher-end codecs to be used...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Better-Bluetooth-Linux-Audio

[Tomin]

Awesome news. I've been so underwhelmed by my bluetooth headphones that I'm really looking forward to test this. I was wondering if bluetooth headsets are really that crappy but it's good that that's not the whole truth.

[Veske]

Wake me up when I can finally use my BoseQC35 II headphones without having to edit some fucking configuration files.

[birdie]

Wake me up when PA has this by default in all major distros:



and also working mic echo cancellation out of the box. I often participate in meetings (Hangouts/Jitsi) and most of my co-workers are on Linux. The only way to have a decent conference call is when everyone but the speaker mutes their microphone 'cause otherwise echo from pretty much everyone kills the experience completely. We are now in 2019 and absolutely basic audio features are not available in Linux. Sigh.

[skeevy420]

Wake me up when PA has this by default in all major distros:



and also working mic echo cancellation out of the box. I often participate in meetings (Hangouts/Jitsi) and most of my co-workers are on Linux. The only way to have a decent conference call is when everyone but the speaker mutes their microphone 'cause otherwise echo from pretty much everyone kills the experience completely. We are now in 2019 and absolutely basic audio features are not available in Linux. Sigh.

Have you tried PulseEffects?

[microcode]

Wake me up when PA has this by default in all major distros:



and also working mic echo cancellation out of the box. I often participate in meetings (Hangouts/Jitsi) and most of my co-workers are on Linux. The only way to have a decent conference call is when everyone but the speaker mutes their microphone 'cause otherwise echo from pretty much everyone kills the experience completely. We are now in 2019 and absolutely basic audio features are not available in Linux. Sigh.

This is handled by PulseEffects; I know I was maybe not pleased that it's a separate program, but it does a pretty good job of managing the virtual devices it creates, and is generally pretty convenient for non-exotic audio setups. To play devil's advocate a bit, it's a bit of a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't kind of situation. Lennart Poettering gets a lot of criticism for making systemd too heavily integrated, but is criticized also for making PulseAudio not integrated enough!

Also, regarding "in all major distros", the PulseAudio project doesn't write the control panels and effects systems in desktop environments, and they do not control "major distros". If major distros are to have this, a maintainer from each distro must take the initiative to make that happen.

Not really sure what you mean by "basic audio features" on "Linux". As for echo cancellation, PulseEffects will do that for you too, along with dynamic range compression (which can help with audio too).

[rene]

tried Aptx on Linux some time ago and it worked great for me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTxjfi2DPOA

[dwagner]

and also working mic echo cancellation out of the box. I often participate in meetings (Hangouts/Jitsi) and most of my co-workers are on Linux. The only way to have a decent conference call is when everyone but the speaker mutes their microphone 'cause otherwise echo from pretty much everyone kills the experience completely. We are now in 2019 and absolutely basic audio features are not available in Linux. Sigh.

On every operating system echo cancellation "in software only" is always inferior to solutions where both the speaker and the microphone are controlled by the same chip whose manufacturer knows their characteristics up-front.
You won't regret investing into a https://www.jabra.com/business/speak...abra-speak-410 or alike for each workplace - provides awesome speech quality and practically perfect echo cancellation independent of the operating system or application used.

[andre30correia]

Wake me up when PA has this by default in all major distros:



and also working mic echo cancellation out of the box. I often participate in meetings (Hangouts/Jitsi) and most of my co-workers are on Linux. The only way to have a decent conference call is when everyone but the speaker mutes their microphone 'cause otherwise echo from pretty much everyone kills the experience completely. We are now in 2019 and absolutely basic audio features are not available in Linux. Sigh.

echo cancelation works for me in skype or viber for example, hangouts don't have good options, maybe the problem is hangouts(I stop using it for the same reason) and not pulseaudio or linux distros, but in the end maybe the problem is the only guy who uses windows 10, I notice a lot of problem since october with windows 10 audio drivers

[microcode]

tried Aptx on Linux some time ago and it worked great for me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTxjfi2DPOA

You are exactly like my friend, running Firefox on GNU/Linux on a MS Surface and refusing to use PulseAudio.

I really do wonder why Apple pushed on AAC with Bluetooth, Opus has been around for almost all of their product development cycle and it is at least as efficient and has considerably lower minimum latency. I guess for their product they have the AAC decoder hardware just sitting in some IP library, and they grafted it onto their ASIC.

LDAC is practically lossless, but it has ridiculously excessive bitrates.