randomly mute the bluetooth mic on hedset

Yes this is ridiculous and clearly a Monterey bug. I noticed that my AirPods work fine. It is only 3rd party bluetooth headphones with a Mic that are defeated by Monterey. Apple - issue a software update now!!! It's ridiculous in the pandemic state. I can no longer have private web meeting and have to shut off my headset and use the Mac mic and speakers. Fix it now please.

FYI my headset model is also the Aftershokz Aeropex.

thx

Hey peeps,

Have you resolved this issue?

I have a similar problem as the OP.

Ever since the Monterey update, my Samsung earbuds live have been constantly put on mute in the middle of my meet and/or slack calls. It is only audio going out being muted, as I can hear the sound from others in the call but they cannot hear me once the "mute" issue happens. Strangely, I can use them without issue to listen to music or videos but the problem essentially is related to my headphones microphone, which get muted constantly and have not been able to fix.

Its is important to mention that the only way to resolve it is to disconnect from bluetooth and just take calls on the regular audio/mic from my MacBook Air (bought with Big Sur 2021). But it has been months now and I cannot keep working like this.

I hope Apple can solve this ASAP as it is a huge issue considering I am constantly on calls at work.

Thank you all for your input.

Regards,

Os

UGGH. Updated to Monterey at end of last week… I knew there was a reason I should wait!!! My Aftershokz auto mute in both Meets (Chrome) and Facetime (from M1 Macbook Air) tonight while troubleshooting w my IT partner. My other bluetooth 3rd party airbuds the sound is extremely low, too much to use. I have to plug in a headset with audio jack. 🤦‍♀️ This is not workable for a professional meeting.

I will add my case to this list as well. Currently running 12.0.1 on MacBook 16 (Intel). This exact problem began right after upgrading to Monterey. All browser-based video/audio recording and meeting systems are affected including VOIP calls. At some random point, while I am talking, my Plantronics V8200 headset (using a Bluetooth connection) will go into mute mode on the device. I am able to unmute on the device. The audio/meeting/VOIP software does not mute during this bug. This bug only occurs when I am talking, it does not occur when I am quiet.

Hi, I also experience the same problem when using Aftershokz Aeropex BT headset, Monterey 12.1 and Zoom. The headset gets muted frequently. Almost reported it as a bug to Apple and then discovered it was actually Zoom problem. Zoom has a setting 'Automatically adjust microphone volume'. When I turn it off, the problem is gone.

I hope it helps someone.

Looks like a Chrome / Chromium related problem. Any Electron based meeting app may be affected too.

Using Firefox or Safari I do not see that problem when in Jitsi or BigBlueButton calls.

See https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=1275566

Great that you all found a work around! Not possible in Google Meet as far as I can tell.

My update is that I have been working with Apple Support on this. We have had two sessions and they have collected data from me to bring to the developers. I will be meeting with them again tomorrow.

I was able to get this issue to stop happening by Enabling AAC in Bluetooth Explorer > Audio Options. I took calls in chrome, slack, etc and didn't experience the disconnect. I was going to fiddle with the settings some more to really isolate the issue to see what specifically fixed it, but didn't want to get back into the broken state.

Hopefully this helps some of you.

At the Chromium issue tracker mentioned above a confirmation of the bug as well as a workaround was posted today.

The workaround is to start Google Chrome (or other Chromium based applications) from the Terminal with an additional parameter.

Example:

/Applications/Google\ Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google\ Chrome \
    --force-fieldtrials="WebRTC-Audio-AgcMinMicLevelExperiment/Enabled-20"

You may need to adapt that to match the actual path to the binary (application file) inside the Content > MacOS folder inside your Chrome application.

I have installed the Bluetooth Explorer, the recommended setting above did not fix my problem.

In the bluetooth Status I see, during a call (when the mic is on) the Connection switches from Audio ACL Connection to SCO Connection. These seams to be normal. But during these SCO connection the Mic will be switch to mute on and just after to mute off which results in a pause of 3 Sec while the Mic is off. What I need is a hint how to observe and fix these SCO connection. Yes before the update to Monterey all was working fine.

Not sure why there is an entry marked as “solved” here. I tried it and it didn’t work for me. I’m guessing Apple doesn’t really care if it has a bug that basically mutes third-party headsets. I suspect if this was happening to AirPods we would get a fix pretty quick. I’ve been using Macs for decades and one of the best things about them was that they just always worked when you plugged something in (or connected via Bluetooth).

This worked for me. I got a constant two beeps on my Aftershokz while using Zoom on my Macbook Pro but not on my iPhone nor iPad nor another Macbook Pro. I just entered my Zoom settings and disabled the "Automatic adjust mic sensitivity" and the problem never recurred. One temporary thing to do while you are "Zooming" is to press the Volume + and volume - at the same time to temporarily unmute your headphone.

Thank you for your tip. This worked for me

Exact same issue here with a pair of Sennheiser HD 450SE. I actually thought it could be the headphones and asked for a replacement just to find the same issue again.

Too much money for a high end laptop that won’t let you have a decent videocall…

I have a hack that seems to work. I play music in Spotify on my Mac at the same time as i'm on a call (in Google Meet) and then the headphones don't randomly mute. I'll post if this hack stops working.

I have the same issue described, and have found a workaround.

O/S: Monterey 12.2.1 (issued surfaced on first upgrade to Monterey)

Headset: Aeropex Aftershokz

Application: Google Chrome 98.0.4758.102 (all VC apps: Google Meet, Zoom, etc)

Fix: In the VC app, open sound settings. Change the microphone setting to something besides the headset. In my case, I keep output through the Aeropex, and use my webcam for the microphone. It stops the forced muting of the headset and the loud beeping sound.

Issue: I suspect some 3rd party headsets are using the wrong connection profile -- connecting as a stereo device, rather than a communications device. The muting only happens on the first instance of speaking, so it appears to be triggered when there is a microphone signal. This leads to the headset being sent the signal to shut down the input channel. I cannot find a setting in MacOS to force the connection profile for a headset, but my guess is that Monterey introduced a bug/feature that tries to correct for unexpected input.