Bluetooth audio quality and speed

I have a MBP with the DR-BT21G Sony headphones which is close to the BT22 and it works great with my Iphone with 3.0 and my Ipod Classic with the Sony Adapter but on my MBP it has bad sound. It has a lot of static and clicking which is off and on. I don't know why either but would be interested as well.

I am having similar problems with bluetooth audio to my Sony hws-bta2w hifi receiver. The higher frequencies sound distorted and crackly. It's definitely an Apple-related problem, as I never had such poor quality using A2DP audio on my Windows PC. I think Apple need to fix this and release a bluetooth stack update. No doubt it will take ages for this to be released....

I recently got the Motorola S9-HD bluetooth headphones and I have the same problem with poor audio quality and reception. I have spent hours on the phone with Apple and Motorola and it seems that the best solution is to get an external bluetooth dongle. The supposable reasoning for this is that Motorola products do not cooperate well with Apple products. This is probably the same for other brands of bluetooth headphones. I think it might be a driver issue, but so far there are no drivers out for my headphones at all. Supposed to work fine with Windows though. I'm going to get a bluetooth dongle, but for portability I'm trying to find the perfect express card dongle so that it is not sticking out of a usb slot. I'll repost as soon as I get one and figure this out.

I am using a Jabra BT3030 headset and Ultimate Ears Headphones connectet to the Jabra headset. I too noticed the abysmal audio quality when listening to music through iTunes.

Then I noticed much better audio quality when listening to video played back through Quicktime X. So I tested the same songs that sounded crappy in iTunes against playback in VLC

The sound quality is much much better, especially there is no crackling and distortion on the higher frequencies.

I too have the S9-HD and once I get them to connect, sometimes a challenge as I have to disable BT then enable then turn on the headset then select to use as Stereo device, this usually gets me connected within two to three tries. Making sure of course that I turned off BT on my iPhone first, I have yet to get both to work at once as Moto states as possible in the manual.

However iTunes starts playing at *double speed* every time, I have not tried VLC yet. Pausing the song and un-pausing it fixes the speed of playback. After that it sounds great.

Just as a reminder to all make sure you don't have the volume in iTunes or the OS set too low and then crank up the volume on the headset as you will then be amplifying noise as much as your audio. Typically I have iTunes at 80%+ the OS at 50% and the headset at about 66% (10 of 15 stops).

Hope that helps.

i have the sony BT160AS and the sound is aweful. on top of that, my macbook pro kept on dropping the connection. i can pause a video playback, then unpause it later and the sound is gone. bluetooth said the headset was still connected but no sound coming thru.

I got the S9-HD as well for my MBP and iPod Touch. I have no issues connecting to the Touch and it sounds amazing, but with the MBP I get cruddy sound. Tons of static. I adjusted the Audio via the BT Explorer/Utilities/Special Options up to 40. I have tried everything I could find online. Also, the environment "reason" is wrong. I am in the middle an IT room. We have numerous BT and Wifi connections, not to mention the other electronic. My iPod Touch sound via my S9-HDs are great, no static. Via my MBP, lots of static and much lower volume.

This issue is not answered.

I just got a Motorola S9-HD, and was very disappointed with the sound quality on my MBP. I improved my situation by connecting my headset, and then from the Bluetooth menu (or system preferences), open sound preferences from the submenu of your device listed in the BT menu. For the S9-HD, on the Sound Preferences Pane, Output Tab, select Bluetooth Headphones (not Bluetooth Headset), and the sound was instantly better. The Audio is mono in Headset mode and crap. Hope this helps some.

The headset/headphones was not an issue and figured out in the first use. The MBP will NEVER remember the headphones. It normally takes 5min a morning to get the S9HD to pair with the MBP. Most of the time, it will pair but there is no sound. No problems with my iTouch.

One thing I have found is within the Utilities/Audio MIDI Setup. I can improve the headphones DRASTICALLY, but again, you would think setting would be remembered. Not here.

I am amazed that I have to do a plate-spinnin act to simply use BT headphones.

Old thread now but I thought I'd add my experience with Sony's DR-BT100CX. I paired them with my iphone at first and for $80-$100 they're a good buy - decent sound and remote controls for play, pause, next,previous & volume. The sound was clear, no distortion and no interference. Not so when I connected them to my Macbook Pro Unibody 2.66 10.6.2. When I first paired them with my mbp, I heard a hiss and noise that is reminiscent of blown headphones... Horrible. I tried reconnecting them a few times and it didn't help. Plate spinning is right - Finally I got them working well. As the previous post suggests, use the midi utility. Right after pairing, set the Output to 48Khz instead of the default 41. Make sure you do it before you start listening to anything or it doesn't switch. I've logged out and in again and the setting stayed for me but as yet I've not rebooted or had much time to test.

Good Luck!

Streaming music from my iPhone to my Sony Xplod car radio via bluetooth is ok with the high-bandwidth encoded tracks, but the noticeably worse with tracks encoded in lower bandwidth.

I have a stereo bluetooth headset from Motorola too. I use it on my iPhone and my PS3 and both work nicely. Sometimes I find there is some distortion with the iPhone. If you turn off the WiFi, that helps (because Bluetooth and WiFi frequencies are both 2.4GHz). However, doing this doesn't help with the macbook at all. I too am looking for an answer and I'll post here if I find one.

I have this issue as well with a new MBP 13, connecting to a Motorola DC800 device. Sometimes the first time I connect the bluetooth the sound is very bad until I connect again. I have also experienced the case where itunes output over bluetooth is played at twice normal speed. Reconnecting fixed the issue. It is a pain though. Would be nice to have a driver update.