I've bought a Philips SHB4000 headset (phone+mic) wireless (bluetooth) and It has a good quality when I pair it with my phone or PC Windows but when I pair it with the same PC on Ubuntu (14.10 64 bits) the sound quality goes down.
I've been googling about but I haven't found any convincing answer.
Tks in advance! ....
Go into sound settings, then see what the SHB4000 is using. If it uses HSP/HFP change to A2DP.
Here is the solution that worked for me on Debian 9 (menu impossible to apply)
Important: you will have to restart bluetooth before each reconnection !
Source: https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/415928/325467
I am using a SoundBuds Curve headset in Debian 9, and have had the same problem, I was unable to switch from the HSP/HFP profile to the A2DP profile.
What fixed the issue for me, was editing /etc/bluetooth/main.conf
sudo nano /etc/bluetooth/main.conf
First add the following lines under the [General] tag (copied from audio.conf, I found searching for a solution):
# Automatically connect both A2DP and HFP/HSP profiles for incoming
# connections. Some headsets that support both profiles will only connect the
# other one automatically so the default setting of true is usually a good
# idea.
AutoConnect=true
Next you must enable support for multiple profiles (a few lines below) just uncomment and set value to multiple
MultiProfile = multiple
Then restart bluetooth service
sudo systemctl restart bluetooth
Important: you will have to restart bluetooth before each reconnection !
For those experiencing this with Ubuntu 16.04, and switching to A2DP only worked once, I had to disconnect, forget the device, reconnect, switch to A2DP, for it to start working again.
(Wanted to post this as a comment, but n00b-ness prevents this)
I had the same issue, using Ubuntu 22.04.1 LTS
Whenever I connected my wireless earbuds I got static distorted sound
so I installed PulseAudio
sudo apt install pavucontrol
opened it and changed the Codec of my connected device
that seemed to do the trick!
For Ubuntu 20.04 only (seems to be fixed in 21.04)
For anyone, that uses the Microphone of their Headset with Ubuntu and complain about bad sound and speech quality:
There is a new update in Mai 2021:
With this commit, HFP can be enabled which supports wideband audio-speech via bluetooth. I was able to improve my microphone quality alot and my colleagues actually can understand me now and I dont sound like talking with an old phone.
Tested on Ubuntu 20.04 with Sony 1000-mx3
For this to work you need to clone the latest pulseaudio master from their git repository by:
git clone https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/pulseaudio/pulseaudio.git
Compile and install via
meson build
sudo ninja -C build install
sudo ldconfig
Taken from the docs of pulseaudio
You might have to install source-dependencies for the compilation to work. For this goto open Software-Settings with software-properties-gtk and enable source. Then install the build-dependencies with sudo apt-get build-dep pulseaudio
Restart. Then, when you open your Sound-Settings you are able to choose the HFP-Profile, which enables much better sound-quality for VOIP. For best music-quality, still better switch to A2DP again, however, this one does not support microphone usage.
The solution which worked for me is here
basically it says to do:
$sudo apt install pulseaudio pulseaudio-utils pavucontrol pulseaudio-module-bluetooth
then add:
[General]
Enable=Source,Sink,Media,Socket
to /etc/bluetooth/audio.conf and run:
sudo service bluetooth restart
Then reconnect your headphones and it should work. It did for me!
I had to do both setting the main.conf to multiple profiles then remove the headphones and add them back and then they defaulted to High Fidelity.
May be someone will find this helpful: Don't try to switch to A2DP while some app is playing sound. You need to disable all sound outputs first, then disconnect, connect, switch to A2DP, then select A2DP device as target.
So, I recently bought the JBL 700BT Headphones. I was getting muffled voice upon connecting with Ubuntu 20.04. Here's what I did to fix it:
1> sudo apt install pulseaudio pulseaudio-utils pavucontrol pulseaudio-module-bluetooth
It turns out I didn't have all of them.
2>Then edit the /etc/bluetooth/main.conf
Change MultiProfile to multiple then,
MultiProfile = multiple
3> sudo systemctl restart bluetooth
This fixed it for me. Hoping someone finds this helpful.
Something to check, I had Over-Amplification enabled in the sound settings which drastically affected the sound quality.
I am running Ubuntu 16.04 and experienced the same problem with my JBL E65BTNC headphones where changing to A2DP didn't stick. I used most of @56ka's answer but I didn't need the part where you need to set:
MultiProfile = multiple
In fact, when I did this, neither A2DP nor HSP/HFP was available. The device was listed as an output device but the sound did not come through (i.e. when I tried to test the device in Sound Settings, nothing happened). When I commented the MultiProfile option out and restarted the bluetooth service, everything worked.
It should works without messing with the system configuration.
Your device is likely taken as a headset unit for some reasons.
To switch to High Fidelity, install pavucontrol if not done already.
sudo apt install pavucontrol
Connect your bluetooth device.
Go to pavucontrol, «configuration» tab, where you can select a profile for your output device, choose AD2P
I can't comment on answers because of reputation but I wanted to expand on @MichaelJanz's answer since it pointed me in the right direction but I had to do some extra steps and it might save someone a bit of time, here's what I did:
git clone https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/pulseaudio/pulseaudio.git
cd pulseaudio
sudo apt-get install python3 python3-pip python3-setuptools python3-wheel ninja-build doxygen
sudo pip3 install meson
software-properties-gtk # <when window opens, tick the checkbox next to 'Source code'>
sudo apt-get build-dep pulseaudio
meson build
ninja -C build
sudo ninja -C build install
sudo ldconfig
Restart your PC and you should be able to select a new mode for you headset in sound settings, the mode is called 'HPF'.
Again, you don't need the new pulseaudio if you're already on Ubuntu 21 but this should help people who are still on 20 (not sure about older versions).
If you want to listen to some music, you can always switch to A2DP in the settings (where mic is disabled but sound is better still) and switch back to HFP when you want to use the mic.
