Bluetooth audio quality concerns

Hi folks,

I had posted this to a different support forum and was directed here, so I figured I would re-post it here. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

I have a very hard to diagnose problem and need some assistance. I've tried everything I can and looked for assistance from friends and forums and am fully stumped. Here is an information dump on every possible piece of useful information (and some useless pieces) in case any of you can help:

A few months ago, I was using an old Plantronics 510 headset with my new iPhone 3GS and my wife noticed that when I was driving in my car above 50 miles per hour (with the windows closed), she heard a loud whining noise, which sounded like I was in a wind tunnel, with what can be described as the sound of an old cassette tape being rewound or waves from an ocean crashing against the rocks. I have confirmed with other people using other phones that this is not a problem specific to my wife's ears or the phones she uses to speak with me. This wasn't an issue she had noticed with my previous phones with that same headset but I figured it was a problem with my headset since it was old so I bought a Plantronics 520 headset which promised even better background noise cancellation but the same issue occurred. I figured it was a Plantronics issue, so I replaced it with a Motorola H710 headset (I bought my wife one, too) which has been rated very well for background noise.

I tried my Motorola H710 headset with my wife's iPhone and my wife's H710 headset with my iPhone and the same issue happened with both combinations. Since both of our H710 headsets have the same issue, I finally figured it was my iPhone.

Of note, using my Apple-supplied wired headset seems to keep the noise to a minimum (considering the background noise of the road), as does using the handset up to my ear and the speakerphone. However, those earbuds fall out of my ears in a really bad way, and it's illegal and unsafe to use the handset, even on speaker.

Weird, right?

Ok, so next I figured it was interference with something in my car, so I tried turning off both my car stereo and my GPS. Didn't help.

I even tried driving in my wife's car to see if it was interference from my engine or something specific to my car, and it is still happening.

In case it helps, this is happening in Long Island, NY on every road where I find myself driving over 50 mph, including the Northern State Parkway, Long Island Expressway and Route 135.

I highly doubt I have had 4 defective headsets, 2 defective iPhones and/or two cars with that kind of interference. So I am looking to the user community to help me out.

Any takers? Thanks in advance.

-Scott

Wow!!!!!
:):)

But not too hopeful...

Message was edited by: masterstif

I would not get too excited. The fix list for 3.1.3 did not include this issue. Perhaps 3.2 or 4.0, provided the problem is not a hardware or circuitry limitation. What a downer...my Plantronics is lonely without a good phone to work with.

It's definitely not a hardware problem.
The problems appear only with new (relatively) headsets.
Very old ones (at least 1 and half year) BT headsets, which use
an older bluetooth firmware work just fine on iphone. Triple checked
that by various sources!!!!!

OK, apologies, but the thread name is bluetooh audio quality...

For what it is worth, I have no beef with the quality of the voice calls using my BT stereo headset but streaming stereo music, well...

Thanar I suppose that being so quiet lately means that the problem is solved...
and u dont say it yet cause u dont wanna rush things? 😝
Testing it again and again?
Positive silence I smell 😀

I'm still on 3.1.2 and thus still suffering... just wanted to share another symptom I've experienced. When the sound quality is bad when using Bluetooth HFP to my headphones and I then start listening to a song in the iPod application then I hear both at the same time.. both the speaker on the other phone and the music. But when I first start with a song and then originate a phonecall then the iPhone most of the time manage to switch from the stereo music sound to the phone conversation and I never hear both at the same time...

So, my little workaround is to always listen to music just before I start a telephone conference, and then the chance that the sound quality is better in the phonecall seems higher...

Finding a BT headset with 1.2 or earlier is much harder than I thought...

They actually don't give a s... about this, don't they...?

Add me to the list. Have four different BT headsets (Jabra, Sennheiser, etc.). All four give clipping, crappy audio when paired to my iPhone 3GS, worst results occur when there´s background noise on the other end of the conversation.

Have paired all four headsets with an old Sony Ericsson K750, talking to the same person / phone on the other end, and lo and behold: Perfect, crisp clear audio, no matter what ambient noise we created.

Clearly an iPhone issue! Please Apple, with sugar on top, put somebody really bright on this!

//Zteff

Thanar wrote:
It took me some days to report, since the issue does not occur every time. You have to talk to somebody who's in a mall or something for it to became noticeable and then -gradually- irritating.

There is a simple test to reproduce the problem.
Just call yourself on your home number and hold the home phone to one and the BT headset to your other ear. If you start to say something you should hear yourself talking on both ears normally with every combination of phones or headset. However using a BT headset on the iPhone you hear yourself clearly on the BT speaker, but not or choppy on the home phone.

This shows that the incoming audio on the iPhone somehow "filters" the outgoing audio in case of using a BT headset explaining why you all discover the problem when talking to someone with noise or music in the background, or simple while the other one is talking. Try to say something while your calling partner counts from a to z 😉

Another VERY important annotation:
in december I called Apple support regarding the bug and they told me, that Apple does NOT read the discussion forum to determine bugs or problem. ONLY reporting to the Apple support makes them investigating problems. So all go and call support and refer to this thread !!!
After a while they wanted me to start some debug modes on my phone and to send log files by mail. But I mailed them the above simple test and told them to try it with their own phones, hehe. No reply since then ...