Bluetooth audio problems Catalina

Yes - what i've noticed on my headphones is that the "high quality stereo" bluetooth profile becomes disconnected so that music/sound output is redirected to speakers - HOWEVER my headphones are still connected on bluetooth but now on the "noisier 8kHz phone quality headset" bluetooth profile that you would be utilizing for skype audio, for example. So they are still connected to bluetooth in one mode but not the other. I hope that's helpful to apple developers troubleshooting the issue. I wonder if they've been able to recreate the issue or if they are even looking into it? I wish there was some official place they could acknowledge bugs and issues - if I wasn't so lazy I guess I should go up to the apple store.

Ok. I have now experienced the problem three times the last 24 hours, but these were exclusively linked to playing a music video in Music, which has worked perfectly for several weeks. This happened after the bluetooth unit was entirely unpaired due to «too low sound» and was reconnected - a common procedure in other words - to obtain louder sound. The sound related to the music video afterwards was directed to the internal speakers, but after the video finished and went over to a normal music file in the playlist, the sound came back to the external speakers and played the next songs. In the time between, the external speakers did not appear in Music. If I interrupted the dropout with disconnection and a restart, both Music and the «system control» appeared «not responding» in Activity Monitor. I got the usual error messages afterwards.

I looked at the memory usage. I have something called «buffer» memory, which is very likely the same as cached memory in English (just translated). I had used 6 GB of memory at that time. The cached memory was at 1,89 GB or lower. I have 8 GB RAM. The video requires full screen. Usually, I hit cmd+tab. But now I have replaced the file.

Music is an odd app. I don’t know why it behaves like this. Sometimes, the volume bar in Music is adjusted down. Sometimes, the video doesn’t play at all. This did also happen one of the three times, even after a restart. Sometimes, I have to restart Music to add new songs from Apple Music or to get connection.

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

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.

I have previously posted on this topic and while it appeared my issue was resolved, it came back but was able to finally resolve it. Plus, there's a lot of people who know waaayy more than me, so I'm not gonna try sound smart but will suggest mileage may vary.

My setup at the time:

MacBook Pro (15-inc, 2019)

macOS Catalina (10.15.1)

LMP Dock (connecting to 2 Dell UltraSharp 25 monitors)

Bose QCII 35 Bluetooth headphone

Logitech keyboard and mouse using the Unifying dongle, not Bluetooth

Followed these steps:

1. Made sure to update macOS Catalina
2. Identified firmware a firmware update for the Bose headphones and performed the update
3. Disconnected bluetooth and removed list of paired devices
4. Unplugged all devices (for me was the Dock and the Logitech Unifying dongle)
5. Restarted and performed NVRAM reset

After this the first thing I did (coz why not?) was reconnect the headphones to the MacBook and it has been working well ever since.

Since performing this I know there was a .2 release. I risked the upgrade and the issue did not come back.

I do hope that this helps someone.

I absolutely thought I was going nuts with this (now I don't feel so alone). I have both AirPods 2 and Beats Wireless 3 headphones and both are exhibiting the exact same behavior. I see really strange messages in the console log related to bluetoothaudiod and then they simply just disconnect. I've tried all the fixes that I've seen relating to resetting the bluetooth module.

Apple what the heck... Please respond to this thread. We're are out here music-less.

Help!

I've had this issue since updating to 10.15.3. Specifically, all bluetooth headphones (Bose QC 35 and a cheap gym pair) would connect for about 15 seconds and then immediately disconnect. I've tried everything on this and many other forums to fix it but nothing worked (reset BT module, repair, enable AAC in BT Explorer, reset PRAM, etc.).

I finally decided to spin up the Console app and filter by bluetoothd to see if I could find anything useful. During connection I noticed the following error pop up multiple times:

"Trigger core audio to connect to bluetoothaudiod but we don't know about coreaudiod"

Seeing that, I decided to manually restart core audio with the following Terminal command:

sudo launchctl stop com.apple.audio.coreaudiod && sudo launchctl start com.apple.audio.coreaudiod

Immediately I was able to connect my headphones and they stayed connected. I no longer saw an error in the Console app. I don't know if this will help everyone but it's working for me. If it is core audio related I won't be surprised if this issue pops up again. Hoping it's fixed in 10.15.4.

Voyta, thanks a lot for this! Forcing aptX as decoder didn't solve my issue, but the Audio Graph showed an issue with transmission rates - and deselecting "force use of aptX" seems to have reset and my issue of stuttering sound in the BT headset is gone

I have a problem that seems to be related to this thread. I have a Mac Mini (2014) running Catalina 10.15.4. After the recent (for me) switch from Itunes to Music, when I connect via Bluetooth to a Sony receiver (Model STRDH190) I get a very annoying "squelch" noise at the beginning and end of every song played. This doesn't occur with other sources of music, only my Itunes (now Music) library. I've tried deconnecting, turning off, restarting, all bluetooth devices and have rebooted the computer numerous times. the problem occurs even when the Sony receiver is the only bluetooth connection. I am not a developer so "solutions" that require Apple developer access seem daunting (and unnecessary). Please is there a non-developer fix to this annoying problem?

I was having a similar problem with my Soundcore Flair. It would connect via Bluetooth, but the sound would not be redirected to the Soundcore speaker. If I did certain "magic" that I have no idea what it was, I could get it to work. Once it started working it usually continued to work, but not always.

Today I connect my Soundcore directly to my MacBook via USB. I have no idea what happened, but now the speaker won't even turn on.

Oh, I suppose it might be important that my battery swelled and I sent it into Apple last month. They upgraded it to Catalina (sadly) and ever since I cannot enumerate al the problems I've been having. I just updated to 10.15.6

Hi I am experiencing similar issue too. My JBL Flip 5 has static sounds when I am connecting Magic Mouse and Keyboard to my 2019 MacBook Pro 13". There are error messages of "Too many outstanding packets. Drop packet of 7 frames (total drops:1990 total sent:112781 percentDropped:1.733888) Outstanding:17" and "Error sending audio packet: 0xe00002e8" on bluetoothaudiod.AudioProtocol.

I am on macOS Catalina 10.15.6.

I have the same problem with stuttering bluetooth audio. I tried everything Apple support advised me to do including reinstalling Catalina with the latest version (10.15.6) and still the problem persisted. Apple support then advised me to erase the route drive and start over with a clean drive restoring from a backup. I really did not want to do this and procrastinated for a while until I could not take the stuttering any more. I use a Logitech MS Master 2S bluetooth mouse. The audio stuttering effects Bose head phones, AirPods, AirPods Pro and hearing aids and the mouse is also effected by loosing its link even though it shows connected. It turned out that the Mouse is causing the Stuttering. When I disconnected the mouse, the stuttering stopped. Reconnecting the mouse caused the stuttering restarted. I have also found that the mouse intermittently stops functioning even though it shows that it is connected. When I reconnect the mouse, the stuttering resumes after a little while. Disconnecting the mouse stops the stuttering.

I'm having this issue as well. I'm on a late 2014 Mac Mini running Catalina 10.15.6. I'm using Cowin E7 headphones. While playing from Apple Music there is a consistent skip in the sound about every minute 20 seconds. It happens weather the music is downloaded or not. I switched to my iPhone with the same headphones and no skipping. The problem does not seem to occur on Airplay from the Mac mini.

I've just upgraded to Mojave, not Catalina yet, and I have the same problem (which many here say didn't happen to them in Mojave). Plantronics + 2017 Macbook Pro. My point is that the problem's quite extensive, and not exclusively new.

As an update, I noticed that my Apple Trackpad was sitting under the iMac (I dont usually use it but it remains connected), I just clicked disconnect in the Bluetooth setting and now the audio is playing fine with both Bose and Enacfires?

So the question is, is the bluetooth struggling with too many devices connected (have bluetooth mouse, keyboard and trackpad and then 1 pair of headphones)? or is there an issue with the trackpad?