[thaumasiotes]

> the wireless headset was the killer app [for Bluetooth] in its early days

But the wireless headset is now a horrifying millstone making Bluetooth look like the world's stupidest trash fire. If you enable your microphone, you lose all audio from anything that doesn't want to use the microphone as the headset switches into "headset" mode and drops anything that wants to use "headphones" mode. There is no reason for there to even be two different modes.

Why is this still happening?

[brudgers]

It is happening because it works the way that is most useful to most people. The number of people who want to use bluetooth earbuds with a different microphone is line noise in the consumer market.

Implementing special requirements is always inconvenient for users because no B2C wants to risk bad the-microphone-didn’t-work reviews, customer returns, and support tickets.

Nevermind coordinating with arbitrary USB microphone latency…I’ve got one with 250ms of it.

[thaumasiotes]

> It is happening because it works the way that is most useful to most people. The number of people who want to use bluetooth earbuds with a different microphone is line noise in the consumer market.

I don't think you have any idea what you're saying. The scenario I'm describing is when you want to use a bluetooth headset that includes a microphone. Using a different microphone is how you solve the problem.

[brudgers]

I have never had a microphone problem with a bluetooth headset. They all always just work until something mechanical breaks through use.

If I had an issue, wired headphones seem a simpler solution than changing the bluetooth standard and more likely to work than wishing manufacturers changed their devices.

[thaumasiotes]

So, the standard defines behavior that is obviously pathological, actively working against the needs of all users. But because it's already codified, it's a bad idea to change it?

[brudgers]

Works for my needs.

If it didn't, I'd use wires.

Or something else.

[redeeman]

it happens because bluetooth profile for audio+microphone uses different codecs and has less bandwidth, due to being used for realtime communication.

the bluetooth audio streaming profile enables more codecs, but only playback, and allows significantly higher latency that you wouldnt accept on a call

[Dylan16807]

> and allows significantly higher latency that you wouldnt accept on a call

That latency is also a millstone. We can do much better, but the standard lags and implementations lag even more.

[thaumasiotes]

My personal bluetooth ear clips do something much worse than adding latency - if they're not currently playing something, and a sound is supposed to come through, they omit the beginning of the sound while they get ready to become active or whatever it is they're doing.

Just delaying the sound and playing all of it would be a big improvement.

(Though that would fail badly for watching videos. That's something that uses 'headphones' mode anyway - why is latency OK there? It isn't.

My ear clips do add some latency, a noticeable amount, when I'm watching a video with mpv, and I adjust that by altering the A/V sync setting. They don't do the same thing when I'm watching something on youtube. I'd like to know what's going on there.)

[redeeman]

well you wont get any argument from me that things could be significantly better.

> why is latency OK there? It isn't.

well.. if you listen to music, you probably dont care too much, but if you're talking to someone, you do.

whats much worse is also that latency is not constant.

[morkalork]

The absolute madness that is Bluetooth pairing between cars and cellphones is wild. If I get into my car and it decides to randomly pair with my wife's phone (who is inside the house) and I drive off, the whole infotainment system is locks up and dies until I get to my destination and turn off the car.

[roywashere]

What car do you drive? Then I make sure to not buy it

[kjkjadksj]

Mine connects and starts playing silently, and you need to press play and pause on the headunit to make it make sound. Every two months or so it fails to connect to the phone and needs a complete forget and repair to happen. Toyota unit and iphone.

[terribleperson]

My partner's hearing aid connects (via some radio protocol) to a device that then connects via bluetooth. Unfortunately, it presents itself as a headset, which causes... problems. For Android, they have to use an app from the play store that presents itself as an audio device and then sends that to the 'headset'.

[marcosdumay]

Except for the "headphone" versus "headset" mode dichotomy that is inherent to Bluetooth, all those other issues are due to stupid product decisions that most OSes do to themselves independently on the same way.

If you use Linux + KDE, you can still use any microphone or headphone, many at the same time, or in whatever mode you want.

[bombela]

Linux + KDE user here.

It used to work on kde/plasma 5 at some point. And after a minor version update it stopped working.

Now the mic of my headset doesn't work because KDE insists that only the high quality sound output without mic is available. The mic + low quality output is gone from the settings.

Lucky for me this update also brought proper handling of the stereo positioned noise cancelling microphones on my thinkpad. So now I can actually enjoy the luxury of built-in microphones that work. Until the day it wont I guess.

[redeeman]

if you use pipewire it works fine both in plasma 5 and 6.

but the audio quality in the sound + mic profile is very poor, the codec is only meant for speech

[bombela]

I am using pipe wire. The option to select the handset mode is gone! I can only select the various output codecs with my increasing quality. But not the mic & output mode. It's gone from the list...

[nurettin]

Wow brings back memories when this used to be a problem on gnome like five years ago.

[thaumasiotes]

> If you use Linux + KDE, you can still use any microphone or headphone, many at the same time, or in whatever mode you want.

This doesn't really seem to respond to the problem. The problem is that I'd like to use a single bluetooth device that includes earpieces and a microphone. That doesn't work, because of the headphone-headset mode dichotomy. As I replied to another comment, using multiple devices would be a solution to the problem. It wouldn't be an example of the problem that I want solved.

Bluetooth is apparently incapable of simply delivering an audio stream to the earpieces while accepting one from the microphone. This is a baffling design. The assumption appears to be that there will never be more than one source of audio for output. But that's crazy.

[jonesjohnson]

obligatory xkcd: https://xkcd.com/2055/

[thaumasiotes]

Except this isn't a problem of trying to manage multiple connections. Bluetooth can't even handle maintaining a single connection between two devices.