Bug 103058

Summary:	Bluetooth speaker used the HSP/HFP profile by default rather than the higher-quality A2DP profile
Product:	PulseAudio	Reporter:	Nate Graham <nate>
Component:	misc	Assignee:	pulseaudio-bugs
Status:	RESOLVED FIXED	QA Contact:	pulseaudio-bugs
Severity:	normal
Priority:	medium	CC:	8, daniel.van.vugt, lennart
Version:	unspecified
Hardware:	Other
OS:	All
Whiteboard:
i915 platform:		i915 features:

Description Nate Graham 2017-10-02 02:39:18 UTC

Kubuntu 17.04
Pulseaudio 1:10.0-1ubuntu2
Bluetooth device: https://smile.amazon.com/VicTsing-Wireless-Waterproof-Hands-Free-Speakerphone/dp/B074DX13T1 (identifies itself as "C6" by default)

The above Bluetooth speaker paired and started streaming audio perfectly on my Kubuntu 17.04 system. But the audio quality was poor, because the default audio profile was the low-quality HSP/HFP one. When I used pavucontrol to switch it to the A2DP profile, it sounded perfect.

I don't know enough about Bluetooth to suggest a solution, but this is definitely an issue. My Mac used the correct profile with no configuration and sound was perfect with no configuration, but my Linux system didn't, and I had to start a reddit thread and read a wiki page to learn how to get the device to produce decent audio. This is a sub-optimal user experience for someone like my wife or my mother, who would would just assume that it doesn't work and blame the speaker or the OS.

Comment 1 Tanu Kaskinen 2017-10-15 10:31:07 UTC

I agree that A2DP is a better default. I don't know why we have higher priority for HSP.

Patch submitted:
https://patchwork.freedesktop.org/patch/182709/

Comment 2 Nate Graham 2017-10-15 19:43:26 UTC

Fantastic, thank you!

Comment 3 Tanu Kaskinen 2017-10-19 20:14:40 UTC

Patch merged to master.

Comment 4 Daniel van Vugt 2017-11-02 07:20:07 UTC

I was just looking at this fix and am not sure it's right...

https://cgit.freedesktop.org/pulseaudio/pulseaudio/commit/src/modules?id=85daab2725c8964d5e3d07089c4056435022d12e

My reading of the PulseAudio source suggests that lower values are higher priority, as is often the convention. In that case, wasn't the code correct before the fix?

Comment 5 Tanu Kaskinen 2017-11-03 09:16:24 UTC

Higher values mean higher priority.

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