[ClassyJacket]

Why is Bluetooth so bad? This, plus the literal second of latency to my car's speakers.

All these problems are solved by headphones with proprietary wireless dongles and they work great, so why can't Bluetooth incorporate those improvements so we can get them on other devices than desktop PCs?

[shiroiushi]

Also, wireless subwoofers (that come on many consumer TV speaker systems these days) don't have this latency problem either. You just plug them in and they sync to the system and work transparently. They can't have any noticeable latency, or else the bass would be out-of-sync with either the rest of the audio, or if they slowed down the audio to account for latency, then all the sound would be out-of-sync with the video you're probably watching with it.

[bzzzt]

There are more ways than using bluetooth to transfer digital audio wireless. Probably they are using a custom protocol.

[shiroiushi]

Yes, that's what I mean: they're basically doing the same thing as Bluetooth, but their proprietary implementation isn't saddled with the huge latency problems that Bluetooth has. So Bluetooth seems to be a poorly designed protocol.

[Miraste]

Those generally uses a custom 2.4GHz RF protocol, like gaming headsets and mice with dongles.

[rightbyte]

The bass can be sent with a lower bitrate since the output signal is low frequency anyways.

[ivanjermakov]

> Why is Bluetooth so bad?

From what I read online, Bluetooth standart is bloated with outdated profiles and not free for manufacturers to implement. Because of that, manufacturers strap own proprietary extensions on it that only their devices support (e.g. AirPods audio qulity with mic is only good on Apple devices)[1].

Others mention that bluetooth was initially designed for less capble devices, thus suffering from low bitrate and signal strength.

Adjacent discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40180133

[1]: https://medium.marco.zone/apple-implemented-the-biggest-impr...

[presentation]

Given how much Apple and other manufacturers depend on Bluetooth for their wireless earphones I wonder why no alternative to Bluetooth ever seems to show up.

[ivanjermakov]

I think because all the hard work put into open-source bt ecosystem (bluez, pulse, pipewire) makes it "good enough" for average users.

[presentation]

One would think that if some company could credibly exorcise the demons of crappy Bluetooth connectivity, that would be a huge selling point though. I don’t think anyone hasn’t experienced the finnickiness of Bluetooth.

[therein]

We currently have Bluetooth headphones in the market that are not even using the current spec/API properly. For some of them, the hardware is perfectly fine, if they did use the API correctly, the experience could be almost as good as AirPods are on OSX.

[lloeki]

The irony is that even among the same brand they differ vastly:

Beyerdynamic MMX 200 does it wrong: pair up to, uh, I don't know (undocumented!), n>2 devices (I have 4), connects to the last one on power up, but if you want to switch devices, you have to disconnect on the device it has just connected and hope it doesn't connect to yet another you have paired and happens to be in range but is not the one you want to pair with, or you have to disconnect from there too. Confused yet? Yup, it's that bad.

Worse, upon that second disconnect the headset itself initiates a reconnect by going through the MRU list again, so if you disconnect from the second (incorrect) one it might try the first (incorrect) one again since it's now the next in the MRU list, so you actually have to DISABLE BLUETOOTH on each device except the one you want to connect to.

Too bad if one of these devices is in the next room, even more annoying if it's your iPad borrowed by your SO who is now annoyed at losing sound from their movie.

At that point, it's easier to forget the headset in the device you have in hand and re-pair, which is absolutely ridiculous.

Beyerdynamic Free BYRD does it correctly: pair up to 5 devices, connects to the last one on power up, any device in the pair history can force-connect to the headset, yanking out the virtual cord from the undesired device. No interaction required on any other device.

Even better, when pulled out of the charging case they actually wait a bit (a few seconds? or detecting when they're put in ear?) so you can actually invoke some quick setting pane and connect without the connection ever going to an unsuspected device.

Dishonourable mention for Bose QC-35 II, who operates like the MMX 200, only it has two BT radios as an attempt to work around that it's doing it wrong. So, it connects to the last two devices. Unfortunately if I'm walking around the house listening to music and the second-to-last device goes out of range the headset goes "<device name> disconnected" then a few moments later "<device name> connected", which is horrible when <device name> is made out of a serial number (work laptop) and it goes on to spell it out "C. O. M. P. H. 4. 7. X. 3. 9. 9. 7. P. K. Q. L. disconnected".

The only way to prevent that is to go through the Bose app and remove devices from the history, essentially pairing it with one-device-at-a-time only. Oh, it's also great for jump scares when your SO is aping the iPad again and it turns out the headset is connected to it. All of which could be avoided if it behaved like the Free BYRD.