Bluetooth audio problems Catalina

dominicrowland wrote:

Same problem here. Catalina is utter garbage. It's finally making me consider leaving the Mac ecosystem entierly.

...

Not at that point ... not yet at least ... not for the laptop/desktop stuff.

A little bit angrier when it comes to smartphones... I feel fooled...

Anyway: I think I'll wait for next releases (both Catalina and iOS) and eventually downgrade in worst case...

Giampaolo

Hi , me too have the same problem but with lost connection after a bit from my speaker ( in this case a google home mini). This problem persist also with Xs Max . This night I made the last update for Iphone . Once back at home , I'll try again

I didn't noticed that both Catalina 10.15.3 and iOS 13.3.1 were out.

Had a quick look at the release history, but I found nothing about bluetooth issue(s), nonetheless I'll try to upgrade both this evening.

Please: post your impressions (with regards to the object of this thread...) after upgrading.

Giampaolo

There are a few changes related to bluetooth:

https://eclecticlight.co/2020/01/29/what-changed-in-the-catalina-10-15-3-update/

i'm testing bluetooth headphones for about 7 hours today and connection is ok

Are these persisting disconnections, even after a restart and some manual work in the upper right bar (reconnecting the bluetooth unit after disconnecting it and turning it off)?

In Firefox after the update, I played a Youtube video and the sound changed suddenly to internal speakers, but in this case I just changed it back to the external loudspeakers, which were still connected with Bluetooth.

Music (the app) was improved.

After restart - connection works properly only some time, and then again audio output device misses. working in the upper right bar doesn't help. Bluetooth connection "Connected", but no audio device, and sound goes only to internal speakers.

What is SCMS-T content protection method?

The Serial Copy Management System (SCMS-T) content protection method is

one of the methods to protect the content that is being played using a

Bluetooth® connection.

https://www.sony.com/electronics/support/articles/00051748

24 hours after the official .3 release and problem seems to be gone.

To be sure, immediately after the update finished, I removed the bluetooth.plist, connected apple keyboard, reset module (option+shift+bluetooth menu with a device connected), and then removed all devices, removed the bluetooth.plist again to be sure, and then rebooted with a NVRAM reset.

Hasn't switched outputs yet. Only tested on Bose SoundWear for a significant amount of time to comment. Can't say for other Bose devices yet.

It’s about protection of the content and rights. It’s not related to the Bluetooth error messages in this thread. If you get it, just accept the terms. It secures that sound files aren’t shared through the technology.

Bluetooth disconnections and statics are common issues. It’s not exclusively an Apple issue. This thread is about Bluetooth connection interruptions that aren’t related to interference, statics, incompatibility with devices, rights, inavailability, low battery, pairing&unpairing issues, NVRAM reset, and bluetooth preference list (plist), but rather about a redirection while still connected:

com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.apple.bluetoothaudiod): Service only ran for 0 seconds. Pushing respawn out by 1 seconds

In Mojave the same Bose phones worked without any disconnection even I had more memory consumption. Now in Catalina, when memory consumption goes up, kernel kills bluetoothaudiod because IT'S IDLE, while I'm listening music.

I updated to .3 release, will do a test next hour. Will check if it still there. And also will try to remove plist and test. And if not helped then reset NVRAM. Also I have 4 devices: 2 sony headphones, 1 bose and 1 JBL. Will do a test with all of them :)

Sorry for delay, had to finish urgent work.

Ok so, I updated to 10.15.3 and now I tried to overload memory to reproduce issue with bluetoothaudio (I did it easily previously many times to reproduce the problem: overload memory, boom - bluetoothaudio lost) and now I did what I can to overload everything and bluetooth didn't disconnect. So it seems it fixed now :) Yay! Will write later again, but I think it's the end of the issue with bluetoothaudiod in Catalina.

rayjayjohnson - which data are you talking about and what happened?

Sorry, bad joke, the poster before you sounded like a conspiracy theorist.

Agreed, I didn't think it could have been a memory issue and come to think of it i've been taxing high end but 2013 laptop pretty hard lately... It seems stable now, I'm trying to add the most troublesome bose bluetooth earbuds and they seem fine too

Ah, I see, too much devices? :D I want to sell old ones, since I don't use those anymore after buying bose nc700. But nobody called yet )) need to make lower prices I think. Also JBL flip 4 I bought in the past for watching movies with portable projector, but now I have full home theatre and portable projector already sold.

shahedshah you might had different issue than me. Most of us had issue with automatic killing of bluetoothaudiod by OS kernel. It's quite logic behaviour of kernel when it needs some memory. The problem was that bluetoothaudiod actually wasn't idle, but detected by kernel as idle (some wrong settings/flags or idk what in the code). And it's only software problem of kernel or of bluetooth audio daemon and not NVRAM settings or BT issue (many noticed that BT device even didn't disconnect, just audio couldn't switch there).

And now I see they finally fixed it.

But of course here some people who has more than 8Gb memory and probably didn't even had it fully filled (as I have on MacMini for example). And also there are some people with other BT issues, like firmware or bad chinese mouse clogging BT and WiFi channels (I had one in the past, when understood it became a garbage and replaced with normal one).

Anyway, tomorrow I will close my second question with technical details about it. Thank you all for pushing on Apple, but it seems they had .3 update previous year already, but not everybody got it that time.

Just like before; audio drops out (most likely because of memory pressure) while bluetooth remains connected..

It happens less under 10.15.3, but it still happens. I only have 4gb of ram, so maybe the problem seems fixed, if you have more ram available...