Bluetooth woes finally solved, once and for all gone!

I had originally bought a pair of Creatives WP-350 Bluetooth enabled headphones.

I’ll be clear, the sound quality on these headsets is certainly top notch, and considering the price well I’m more than happy with my purchase.

Indeed via my Android tablet, I’ve had absolutely no problem pairing these headphones and listening to music or watching videos.

The problems crept in the moment I paired the set with a laptop. Sound quality reduced and hindered by stuttering or just loss of sound altogether.

This frustration lasted for about 2 months. I did more research, I installed Linux Mint, and even went as far as downloading the source code for Bluez and Bluez tools and started looking for how I could fix the implementation. I wrote bash scripts and yet still the BT experience was nothing short of terrible.

Windows was even worse, I purchased a copy of BlueSolaris which did absolutely nothing to help the problem. NOTHING HELPED!

Then I came across the final solution: Creative Bluetooth Audio BT-D1. In my previous blog I wrote about this dongle, but that was theory while I was waiting for it to arrive.

Been using it now for 2 days, and during that time it’s worked without any issues, absolutely flawless!

So yeah I’m recommending this dongle to anyone who is about to throw away their BT headphones, before you do that buy this dongle!

BlueTooth A2DP Headsets, why they suck and what you can do about it?

Recently I bought a pair of Creative WP-350’s. I mainly (only) wanted these to listen to Music on.

I’ve had them for a while now, and to be completely frank, they’ve been the cause of most of my day to day computing headaches. They’ve been frustrating as hell to work with, but can we really blame the headset?

There is nothing wrong with the headset

We cannot blame the headset, it implements the BT protocol perfectly, Creative have done a good job creating these headsets, read the whole post, and you’ll see why the headset is not at fault.

The receiver hardware too isn’t the problem

You might think because most laptops and phones sport a wide range of BT hardware receivers, that surely we can start blaming the receiver hardware, some are good and some are bad? Right? Well yes and no. But usually if your BT device is giving problems, stuttering sound, sound cut offs, disconnects etc, it too isn’t the receiver hardware that is the problem

So why does bluetooth audio suck so badly?

The key to all your woes, and the number 1 cause is a) the drivers for your operating system and b) the BT stack installed in your operating system.

This can be proven with my current setup.

I’ve installed Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows 7, Linux Mint (Bluez4), Linux Arch (Bluez5), at the same time I have an Android Google Nexus 10, a Samsung Galaxy Tab, and a ZTE Blade (all running Android).

Amazingly on the same laptop with a different OS my BT experience is like night and day. I will tell you up front that regardless of OS – No implementation gets it just right, except Android.

Windows 8.1 : Sound quality was terrible, skipping, stuttering, etc.

Windows 8.0 : Sound quality was ok, skipping and stuttering.

Windows 7 : Unable to detect, updated to latest driver, could pair, sound was cutting off, no skipping. Sound disconnects while audio sink remains connected – unusable for the most part.

Android : Easy to detect, easy to pair, easy to repair, sound quality awesome, no stuttering or skipping.

You’re not shit out of luck.

When it comes to A2DP, the last thing you want to rely on is the operating systems bluetooth implementation or the manufacturers drivers. The very people who are creating the experience very seldom get it right.

Luckily there is hope, in the form of a special type of BT dongle for Creative Products. The Creative Bluetooth Audio BT-D1, could mean the difference between throwing away those BT headsets, or actually enjoying the experience.

Why it’s better?

When you plug in the creative Bluetooth Audio BT-D1 dongle, essentially what you’re connecting is a USB audio device, the OS is not away of the BT implementation, this is all encapsulated in the dongle. For this reason regardless of OS, the BT stack and drivers always reside on the USB device. This dongle is specifically designed for Audio too. And it’s the best hope in hell BT wireless has got at being OS agnostic, and work out of the box nearly perfectly every time.

Even the pairing no longer happens on the laptop, You pair directly with the dongle, not through software.

Another most excellent piece of news is that it does not support hands free telephony, for this reason it can only connect to the High Fidelity Audio profile. Say goodbye to that low resolution radio sound.

Distro Hopping : Antergos

I would love to tell you all about this spiffy distribution, but alas the installer did not even work.

After checking the official forums, it seems that this is a common problem depending on what display adapter you have.

Apparently it used to work, but since Antergos is based on Arch, and since Arch is a rolling distro, this no longer works? Excuse me are you kidding me?

So I liked the idea of being able to install Arch using a graphical installer with a DE selector, since I was thinking if pairing the install with Cinnamon.

Please also note: I tried 4 times. And the live CD takes a considerable amount of time to even boot.

Fed up finally I threw the install media in the bin. Conclusion: Antergos is far from ready.

Next : Opensuse 13.