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Re:Bluetooth remains an 'unusually painful' technology after... by google234123 on Wednesday July 20, 2022 @03:27AM (#32162603)
I'm still annoyed that most bluetooth headphones haven't figured out how to provide stereo sound at the same time as using the microphone. There is definitely enough bandwidth in bluetooth 5
Re:Bluetooth remains an 'unusually painful' technology after... by zwirbl on Wednesday July 20, 2022 @03:48AM (#32162745)
That's because there is no profile for that, as per the spec the hands free profile only supports Mono

This changes with LE Audio (spec released in March iirc) which is much more channel oriented (e.g. 2 channels stereo playback + 2 more stereo microphone), has a new codec (LC3) and has support in the upcoming android release

Re:Bluetooth remains an 'unusually painful' technology after... by znpy on Wednesday July 20, 2022 @04:49AM (#32163084)
Nice, maybe in 15 years I’ll be able to use that in debian.
Re:Bluetooth remains an 'unusually painful' technology after... by dogma1138 on Wednesday July 20, 2022 @03:44AM (#32162723)
Most do but many can also go into a “headset” mode in which they use encoding that is more suitable for speech. That said this is mainly an issue for Windows these days that does that automatically for some reason nothing stops you from switching to headphones and still using the mic.

In fact for voice and streaming apps that aren’t classified as telco apps it doesn’t even switch.

Re:Bluetooth remains an 'unusually painful' technology after... by LinAGKar on Wednesday July 20, 2022 @03:38AM (#32162678)
I hope LE audio will fix that
Re:Bluetooth remains an 'unusually painful' technology after... by izacus on Wednesday July 20, 2022 @04:30AM (#32162975)
I tried really hard but I couldn't find any new spec for two way audio. It seems that the specification authority is completely ignoring that problem.
Re:Bluetooth remains an 'unusually painful' technology after... by zwirbl on Wednesday July 20, 2022 @06:13AM (#32163623)
I don't think you looked all that hard, as this is central in the book "Introducing Bluetooth LE Audio" available for free here https://www.bluetooth.com/bluetooth-resources/le-audio-book/...

LE Audio is built around a channel concept, where a channel is unidirectional and a connection can have multiple, e.g. listening on 2 stereo channels and when a call arrives enabling 2 mic channels in the other direction for stereo microphones

Don't go around throwing shade at the spec authority if you haven't read the spec

Re:Bluetooth remains an 'unusually painful' technology after... by out_of_protocol on Wednesday July 20, 2022 @04:12AM (#32162874)
By the way, what LE stands for? Legendary Edition?
Re:Bluetooth remains an 'unusually painful' technology after... by kuschku on Wednesday July 20, 2022 @06:04AM (#32163552)
Originally, Low Energy. Bluetooth LE removes all the different communication modes and introduces a single, packet network based approach for everything.

You may remember the switch from bluetooth connections being something you had to manually enable every time you wanted it, to devices just being connected all the time (without causing your battery to drop). That’s what LE enabled.

The switch to the single packet network approach obviously also simplified everything else you might want to transmit.

The audio specs are still from the pre-LE era with different modes for everything you might do (modem, fax, headset, headphones, HID, etc), and LE Audio introduces a new and clean way for that.

Re:Bluetooth remains an 'unusually painful' technology after... by zwirbl on Wednesday July 20, 2022 @06:14AM (#32163632)
To expand on that, there is a pretty accessible free book covering LE Audio available here https://www.bluetooth.com/bluetooth-resources/le-audio-book/...
Re:Bluetooth remains an 'unusually painful' technology after... by shakna on Wednesday July 20, 2022 @05:51AM (#32163468)
"Lite".

The Bluetooth 5 spec is over a thousand pages long.

The Lite Edition spec is "only" a few hundred, IIRC.

Re:Bluetooth remains an 'unusually painful' technology after... by kmarc on Wednesday July 20, 2022 @03:46AM (#32162730)
worksforme on Linux, MacOS and Android. I have a Bose QC35 and it just works, now for years, reliably.

On Linux, it used to work quite okayish with pulseaudio, even automatic switching between profiles, when an application requested microphone. Since pipewire came around, much higher quality.

Re:Bluetooth remains an 'unusually painful' technology after... by hjanssen on Wednesday July 20, 2022 @04:14AM (#32162886)
It works, but the quality is noticeably reduced. Gaming (and using VoIP in e.g. CSGO) on this profile is practically unusable, the quality of sound is so diminished that it is very annoying.
Re:Bluetooth remains an 'unusually painful' technology after... by kmarc on Thursday July 21, 2022 @01:03AM (#32175955)
With pipewire you have all the AptX/LDAC/mSBC codecs. Same quality as under MacOS

As for "reduced", as in, worse than simply monoplex stereo headphones (no headset/microphone support), true, but it's a bandwidth-related limitation, not software impmentation limit, AFAIK