Bluetooth audio problems Catalina

posting an update. Been using my bluetooth for at least 3 + hours since I did the update to 10.15.1 - safe now to say that it fixed the issue for me.

I restored to Mojave from a Time Machine backup. It was a good choice.

for me it looks like problem is gone after 15.2 update. it's like 6+ hours of music playback with frequent putting my mac to sleep and no problems yet

Use the Activity Monitor and Console apps to look for strange behavior. Activity Monitor will tell you if anything is using excessive CPU time. It will graph the overall CPU usage which should point out times of high CPU utilization. The Activity Monitor can also show you the processes using the most CPU. On my system, I had four mystery background processes using 100% of a processor each. After updating Parallels, these mysterious processes went away on the next reboot. Even if you can't resolve the problem this way, identifying troublesome processes will allow more useful information.

If you look at the System log using Console, you may be able to spot error messages. Look for the words audio and bluetooth.

The more information that you can provide, the faster the problem will be resolved.

If you want something really odd, my laptop says that it is connected to the internet through my iPhone, but my iPhone says that it isn't connected to the internet. I think the near simultaneous introduction of Catalina and iOS 13 may be making the problem worse.

As has been said numerous times on this thread - NVRAM reset + bluetooth pref delete + blutooth debug + disconnecting/unpairing & every other trick here does NOT work. I repeat this is a bug in MacOS Catalina. None of the solutions in this thread will work. You can only downgrade to Mojave, and/or contact Apple who will takes months to fix this.

I've proven beyond a shadow of a doubt this is a Catalina problem. I restored my MacBook Air from Time machine to Mojave 10.14.6 and my Bluetooth problems have completely disappeared. No more Catalina for me. It looks like I'm going to have to stick with Mojave, not only for this Bluetooth thing, but because Catalina breaks some software that I really like. Actually Catalina doesn't break the software it just won't run it because it thinks it's too old.

-Bob

I'm having a similar problem but my device disappear from sound devices and the Bluetooth connection is still there.

It's been driving me nuts lately, but do you have a "boom app" or any app that act like an audio equalizer?

For me I think, that's the cause of the issue. the virtual audio device is scrambling everything in there...

I feel frustrated that Apple didn't include a simple audio equalizer like Windows!

Visit https://support.apple.com/mac then choose your mac type, then scroll to the bottom to find "Tell us how we can help". There, choose "internet & connectivity" (or something like that - it redirects me to my native language, so yours may be named differently). You'll be presented with an option to schedule a call with Apple employee. They're very friendly and thorough in my experience. As has been said, refer to this discussion thread, to make them aware that it's not a singular issue.

For me, I had been using Sennheiser HD 4.0 BT Headphones with my Macbook Pro, which was recently upgraded to Catalina.

It was working fine earlier (before upgrade). But after upgrade, everytime I connected this headphone via Bluetooth, it would disconnect within few seconds. Deleting the device and repairing didn't help

However I followed the instructions on https://www.catalinaosx.com/bluetooth-not-working-catalina-os/ . I did both deleting the plist file as well as resetting the NVRAM (Cmd+Option+P+R on reboot) and re-paired it. Now it has been 10-15 mins and it hasn't disconnected yet.

FWIW - since this issue has been running for me now for all updates of Catalina, I decided to see if there's a workaround. I've installed Background Music https://www.producthunt.com/r/f998f155fe3ba2. While it doesn't solve 100% of the issues, it certainly has improved the reliability of my BT audio output over what Catalina offers for now.

This worked for me:

https://btu.bose.com/

Hard to find on Bose's website but when i got to it, it was a simple update to the device. Just follow the instructions and see if it works for you.

Hope it helps!

Hi GF95,

The issue is completely fixed for me now.

For some reason I investigated the Bluetooth 5.0 and AAC codec because I thought you were using Apple Airpod (second generation), but re-reading I see there is no mention of airpods. Anyway, here is what I found (which is possibly irrelevant to your case).

Apple Airpod second generation uses the "H1" chip. This is a "digital signal processor" and as such it needs software to make it do stuff. After considerable looking, it turns out H1 *only* has the AAC codec according to this article ( https://www.androidauthority.com/apple-h1-979713/ ).

If you have Airpods and the disconnection issue, then disabling the AAC codec will effectively disconnect them because (it is claimed) there is no other codec.

I then checked the Bluetooth 5.0 specification ( https://3pl46c46ctx02p7rzdsvsg21-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Bluetooth_5-FINAL.pdf and it turns out there is no mandatory codec specified in that document.

However, examining the relevant A2DP standard from bluetooth.com ( https://www.bluetooth.org/docman/handlers/downloaddoc.ashx?doc_id=457083 ) in section 4.2.1 it is clearly stated that "The A2DP mandates low complexity subband codec (SBC) to ensure the interoperability."

From my current understanding, even with Bluetooth 5.0 devices, A2DP compatibility is required.

Apple's documentation Accessory Design Guidelines for Apple Devices ( https://developer.apple.com/accessories/Accessory-Design-Guidelines.pdf ) in section 24.12 Audio Routing states "This section describes how an accessory can differentiate between various audio contents coming from a device and use this information to decide playback behavior." and goes on to say (in 24.12.2) that "Audio content transferred via A2DP profiles can " etc. etc.

So Apple audio devices should support A2DP and as such "must" support SBC or else such devices are non-compliant.

.... all of which doesn't solve the problem.

Essentially disabling AAC worked for me, but effectively some devices don't have SBC (and don't comply with the Bluetooth standard).

redparadox, as I understood they are not reading these discussions. Also I think bluetooth module is working very well the same as it was for me. I had bluetoothaudiod problem as well, because it has setting to stop when a free memory is needed for something else in the system. And it's not related to bluetooth hardware, it's program for audio processing. So I suppose (the same as for me it was) your devices stay connected even audio lost and you can use you mouse, keyboard (if you have) and see that phones are also connected, just no ability to select them in audio output.

After update to 10.15.3 my problems seems disappeared on MacBook with 8 Gb memory. And also I bought new one MacBook 16 with 16 Gb memory and it has 10.15.3 as well and I didn't have any problem with bluetooth audio, but busy memory is always less than 14 Gb.

I found a fix for this issue, forcing BT to use audio codec aptX fixes the issue.

Please follow instructions on

https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/387986/mac-os-catalina-bluetooth-audio-output-issues-wf-1000xm3-bose-quietcomfort-3