Bluetooth audio problems Catalina

Just like you guys - having issues w/ seemingly random and frequent bluetooth headphone audio disconnects. I have Plantronics Backbeat Pro headphones and I get the audible message that "Bluetooth headset has been disconnected" and the music starts playing from my mac book pro internal speakers <angry face>. The bluetooth menu shows my headphones are still connected and the sound preferences menu still shows my headphones as a sound output option - if I try to select it just spins forever. The most quick and reliable workaround for me is to just turn off my headphones and turn them back on and my headphones reconnect and resume playing. Can't wait until Apple acknowledges this problem so we can start looking forward to an update & fix!

These actions presented by javotroya are too specific, and cannot work. You should rather find coreaudiod in Activity Monitor and kill it there. Otherwise, you can try a restart of your Apple computer. These actions are basically the same, except that the killing will cause problems when you restart. If you do the kill, the music will be interrupted for a short time.

I am not sure if this is going to solve the problem. Not for me.

I can only speculate in the soda/super user command, perhaps a user dilemma? I don’t have an answer.

Adding to the issue backlog in hopes Apple will pay attention!

Switching my internet to 5ghz instead of 2.4 helped for a time, like a week, but this bug showed up again today. It's also insanely annoying you can't even disconnect the audio device in the BT dropdown! It still registers as connected, and like others have said you need to turn off BT then back on, then reconnect to bring it back. SMH

I had trouble with this immediately after upgrading to Catalina. I connect primarily to a Pioneer X-CM32 stereo system, which has worked flawlessly for years together with my Mac prior to Catalina. After the upgrade, it would drop back to the internal speakers at random times, usually 3 to 4 times a day, without Bluetooth stopping or disabling. I simply had to disconnect and reconnect using the BT menu and it would be fine again.

Around three weeks after the problem started, it completely cleared - without upgrading, restarting, reconfiguring or re-attaching any devices. I have no idea why.

So today I tried something different. While leaving the Pioneer turned on, but disconnected from BT, I connected my BeatsX earphones to see whether the issue was device-related. The result was interesting. Within 15 minutes the sound stopped in the BeatsX headset and somehow the Mac reconnected to the Pioneer - it just re-established the BT connection switched over.

Now that's very weird, and I have no explanation for it. So I turned the Pioneer off completely and reconnected to the BeatsX - which has happily remained connected to the Mac for some hours now without interruption.

So now I wonder whether this is a result of BT devices interfering with one another. I know for certain that they can - I have a problem with my iPod Touch and iPhone, where both are associated with all my BT speakers (Car systems, Pioneer stereo, BeatsX and Wonderboom). If I turn the Wonderboom on, for instance, and connect the iPhone to it, the iPod will interfere if it's in range, causing the sound to glitch every few seconds - until I either stop BT on the iPod or tell it to forget the Wonderboom. The same happens with the BeatsX and Pioneer.

I have opened an issue with Apple about this, and even spent time at the Genius bar and proved this to them - but they have no idea what causes it, and prefer to just say it's one of my devices (I have two iPhones and an iPod) - although this happens with a combination of any two devices: iPod+iPhone1, iPhone1+2, iPhone2+iPod.

I've had a few other problems with Apple devices and both of my my cars' BT systems, and I can't help thinking that this is an issue with Apple's interfaces with Bluetooth systems, rather than BT in general.

What I found regarding this problem is that it's fully related to memory. When memory pressure indicator changes to orange (memory is almost full), then BT headphones loose ability to play sound. I didn't try 10.15.3 version (currently 10.15.2 and the problem is still here), but I will try to update as soon as it available (not available version for my macbook yet).

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 Escape. 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.

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...

Max_mxx, in your situation it looks like the problem with "coreaudiod" exactly. When I had a problem before .3 update, restarting of "coreaudiod" didn't help, because it couldn't connect to bluetoothaudiod which wasn't working, even BT device was still connected. So 1 problem seems fixed, but with more or less similar symptoms there can be a lot of different places, like you have. In the past I also faced many times the same problem with coreaudiod, but it happened usually right after device connection: I connected device, I see it in BT devices connected, but I don't see it in Output devices; then I reconnected it and it started working.

Currently the only bad thing for me is that when I switch between Windows and Mac I have to remove and add device again (except of the some problems with crackling sound in windows when connected mouse, but it's different OS).

Hi Butyear,

Unfortunately there is no solution for AirPod2 or AirPod Pro. These devices use Apple H1 chip.

Apple H1 *only* has AAC.

SBC is not on the H1 chip. This means AirPod2 and Airpod Pro do not comply with Bluetooth specification OR Apple's own specification.

User's must wait for Apple to fix Mac OS 10.15.x AAC encoder.

I don't use AirPods. I only use Sennheiser PXC550, SoundBlasterX Katana and Plantronics Voyager. The Katana has AAC but it does not work at all with Mac OS 10.15.x.

Only SBC works with everything for me. My Son has AirPod 2 so I could test, but your observations are most likely correct and it is also reported in other places that it cannot work with SBC. Nobody can use AirPod 2 without AAC.

Sorry this does not help in the case of AirPod 2.

PhillB

Just update. I have turned off AAC and use SBC only. While I run iPhone Simulator, Android Simulator that consume high RAM, the problem still occurs.. So the workaround for me, just use bluetooth util like previous post while the problem occurs, or playing music on iPhone Spotify. I have contacted Apple Support but still no solution for this problem.

Since I updated to 10.15.3 I had no any troubles with bluetooth audio on MacOS (however when I load bootcamp windows 10 - it's like a **** at all :D no any info about codecs or ability to change anything and crackling when I have more than only BT sound on 2.4 GHz connection, even wifi).

Hello,

My macbook pro is a 2019 model.

I Just updated to 10.15.4 with a hope to solve those issues but nothing.

I have an AirPods 2 and this works some times, if not, restarting macbook or making sudo killall -9 bluetoothaudiod coreaudiod some times works, some times not.

I have an JBL Xtreme 2 and this one not work any more, i can connect (the JBL makes the characteristic sound of connect) but after a few seconds the connection drops. I cannot even select the output sound to this device.

If i click on the bluetooth icon on the menu bar holding Option + Shift and go to JBL Xtreme 2 device appears with the option Active Codec: Not Active:

it's a very annoying problem.. ;(

Sergio.

Just chiming in to say I have the same problem. I've tried a lot of the workarounds mentioned in this thread, but no luck. I notice it more with my Magic Mouse stuttering. Audio drops when I have my Bose QC35 II connected, but I only have them on for meetings. Mouse issues happen even if no BT headphones are connected. I mostly listen to music with wired headphones, which have no issues.

MacBook Pro (15 inch, 2019)

2.6 GHz 6 core i7

32GB RAM

I rarely max out my RAM or CPU, so computer performance doesn't seem to be a cause for me.

BT devices I have are Apple keyboard, Magic Mouse, and Bose QC35 II - nothing else.

I have noticed a lot of bluetoothd errors in Console, this one several times a minute:

error	09:45:50.950544-0700	kernel	Sandbox: bluetoothd(209) deny(1) mach-lookup com.apple.server.bluetooth

This one every few minutes:

error	09:54:23.758877-0700	bluetoothd	Stop tracking peer when central manager state is 5

When the Bose headphones are connected, I get a ton of errors for dropped audio.

Wish I could go back to a wired mouse and keyboard...

Weird. Did you try restarting your mac? It's been a while since I used BT on catalina so I can't say for sure if its widespread.

If rebooting doesn't, try reinstalling macOS - it may help reset driver and things like that:

How to reinstall macOS