Bluetooth stereo headset on mba?

[kantonaxtwoo]

hey i was wondering if the bluetooth on mba's support A2DP for bluetooth stereo headsets? this would be very useful since the headset jack on the mba not 100% compatible with all headphones

 

[zedsdead]

I have Motorola Active S9 Bluetooth Headphones, and will test them out later this week hopefully when my Macbook Air arrives. It should work. How well is another story.

I stopped using them on my iMac because of the massive skipping. I think it is due to the fact that I both a bluetooth keyboard and mouse, but still, the point was to be all wireless and it doesn't work great.

Hopefully since I will have nothing bluetooth with the Air they will work flawlessly. I'll let you know.

 

[Mactagonist]

It is BT 2.1 EDR, the latest and greatest bluetooth. It will work find with a2dp headphones and speakers.

 

[enochpeng]

ow about a pair of bt speakers? That would be great to hear instead of the mono speaker

 

[kantonaxtwoo]

I have Motorola Active S9 Bluetooth Headphones, and will test them out later this week hopefully when my Macbook Air arrives. It should work. How well is another story.

I stopped using them on my iMac because of the massive skipping. I think it is due to the fact that I both a bluetooth keyboard and mouse, but still, the point was to be all wireless and it doesn't work great.

Hopefully since I will have nothing bluetooth with the Air they will work flawlessly. I'll let you know.

how are the s9's because ive been looking into a set theres that and the cardo s2's

 

[jbarnhardt]

I have the Moto S9 headphones and they work fine with my Macbook Air 1.6/HD model. Paired right up, shows as both a headset (for mono apps, with mic support) and as headphones (stereo, no mic). You can pick either profile to use. I was playing music from iTunes and it worked great, YouTube audio also fine. I did notice that if I had a bluetooth mouse active at the same time it became pretty choppy. So basically the BT headphones work well, but you don't want to have any other BT devices active at the same time.

-John

 

[emil10001]

I have the Moto S9 headphones and they work fine with my Macbook Air 1.6/HD model. Paired right up, shows as both a headset (for mono apps, with mic support) and as headphones (stereo, no mic). You can pick either profile to use. I was playing music from iTunes and it worked great, YouTube audio also fine. I did notice that if I had a bluetooth mouse active at the same time it became pretty choppy. So basically the BT headphones work well, but you don't want to have any other BT devices active at the same time.

-John

I have a pair of HT-820 bluetooth headphones, and have tested a2dp playback on a number of devices. I haven't tried a2dp playback while using a bluetooth mouse, but I have done a2dp while doing bluetooth Dail Up Networking. The playback skips for a second when connecting, but then resumes normal playback, with no quality issues. The playback is very smooth, and less choppy with DUN going than windows or linux. However, I'm not sure what bitrate it's sending to my headphones (I could define that in linux).

I will have to hook up some more bluetooth stuff to this to try them out, and see how much stuff i can get working at once before it becomes an issue. I have a couple of keyboards, a mouse, a gps unit, cell phone, n800 and headphones. If I do this soon, I'll post results.

 

[eyecool]

Does anyone use or know of a bluetooth stereo headset w/ mic? I have a MP on the way and am looking for something good that works with OS X.

 

[emil10001]

Does anyone use or know of a bluetooth stereo headset w/ mic? I have a MP on the way and am looking for something good that works with OS X.

Both the Moto S9's and the Moto HT-820's have mics and do the headset profile. I actually just tested that profile out with gizmo earlier tonight, and it didn't sound too great, though I'm not sure where the quality issue was coming from.

When you connect your headphones, there will be a bluetooth icon on the menubar. Just click on that, then to the headphones on the dropdown and choose between headset and headphones.

 

[eyecool]

Both the Moto S9's and the Moto HT-820's have mics and do the headset profile. I actually just tested that profile out with gizmo earlier tonight, and it didn't sound too great, though I'm not sure where the quality issue was coming from.

Which set do you have. If both, which do you prefer?

 

[etorres]

I just bought a pair of Motorola S805 DJ style bluetooth headsets and I love them. I prefer DJ style headsets as they cover my ears and drown muffle outside noises. They also keep my ears warm.

 

[LwPhD]

Here's my fix for the choppiness...

It turns out that there is an easy fix for the choppiness, at least on my 17″ Al PowerBook G4. It turns out it is choppy because of the priority of the program called “BluetoothAudioAgent”. So, in order to fix it, here’s what I did…

First open up a terminal.

Then type the following command:

sudo ps -A                 \
| grep BluetoothAudioAgent \
| tr -s ' '                \
| cut -f 2 -d ' '          \
| head -1                  \
| sudo xargs renice -19

You need to have admin access to make this work. Also, make sure that you copy all lines of it and paste it into the terminal window at once.

After you press return, type your administrator’s password. All this does is look for the BluetoothAudioAgent among all running processes, pulls out its process id, and feed it into “renice” so that it gets a very high priority. Thus, when you are browsing the web or whatever, this program always has enough attention from the processor in order to serve up your music without being choppy.

I'm sure this can be automated with something like cron, but for now, I'm just issuing the command at need.

Cheers,

LwPhD

I have the Moto S9 headphones and they work fine with my Macbook Air 1.6/HD model. Paired right up, shows as both a headset (for mono apps, with mic support) and as headphones (stereo, no mic). You can pick either profile to use. I was playing music from iTunes and it worked great, YouTube audio also fine. I did notice that if I had a bluetooth mouse active at the same time it became pretty choppy. So basically the BT headphones work well, but you don't want to have any other BT devices active at the same time.

-John

 

[GenFranco]

worked with mine

I have a plantronics p590, and it took a long time to recognize. But once it did, and I got them paired, it worked fine.

 

[disruptor108]

It turns out that there is an easy fix for the choppiness, at least on my 17″ Al PowerBook G4. It turns out it is choppy because of the priority of the program called “BluetoothAudioAgent”. So, in order to fix it, here’s what I did…

First open up a terminal.

Then type the following command:

sudo ps -A                 \
| grep BluetoothAudioAgent \
| tr -s ' '                \
| cut -f 2 -d ' '          \
| head -1                  \
| sudo xargs renice -19

You need to have admin access to make this work. Also, make sure that you copy all lines of it and paste it into the terminal window at once.

Does this work on a Macbook (2.16 GHz Core 2 Duo, 10.5.2)?

Here's what happens when I run this code...

*******-macbook:~ *******$ sudo ps -A                 \
> | grep BluetoothAudioAgent \
> | tr -s ' '                \
> | cut -f 2 -d ' '          \
> | head -1                  \
> | sudo xargs renice -19
renice: 266: getpriority: No such process

 

[GenFranco]

bt speakers

ow about a pair of bt speakers? That would be great to hear instead of the mono speaker

Sharper Image KP 500 BT speakers work well and easy to pair. I had to tweak some itunes settings tho to get it to sound nice.

 

[danwolkenfeld]

sudo ps -A \
| grep BluetoothAudioAgent \
| tr -s ' ' \
| cut -f 2 -d ' ' \
| head -1 \
| sudo xargs renice -19

I have an old Powerbook G4 15" 1.33 GHz and the sonorix C3 lapel stereo bluetooth headset (you can plug in your own earbuds or patch cord into this device, and it doesn't decorate your head, which I like a lot). The audio coming out of the Mac was fuzzy, not just choppy. Doing the trick above improved the situation a lot, and changing the renice to -22 made it perfect. Thanks!

 

[McGilli]

What kind of range are you guys/girls getting with the bluetooth headsets?

how far can you walk away? and does it get choppy first - or just cut right out if you get out of range?

thanks!