Poor sound quality over Bluetooth streaming music to Jawbone Jambox

The "headphone" (vs headset) profile for the Jambox is very flakey. When switching on the Jambox and using with my Macbook Pro (2008), it defaults to the headset profile. When I try changing to the headphone (MONO) setting, 9 out of 10 tries fails. If I try the STEREO option, I sometimes get intermittent chirping from the Jambox or it simply fails to connect.

I've had the MONO headphone option running for sometime less than an hour and get disconnected, even though the Bluetooth indicator shows a good connection (data line going through BT symbol). In these cases, the Jambox is w/in 5 feet of my laptop.

Is this an OSX or a Jambox issue?? The Jambox works great with my iPhone 3Gs and iPad2.

Hi J-Bird,

I had the same problem when I first got my Jambox. Turns out the Jambox is a Bluetooth device of type "headset" with two "services": a mono headset service and a stereo headphone service.

iOS devices somehow correctly assign each device to its function and music automatically plays via the high quality "headphone" device.

Macs however see each device as equal and will connect to the mono headset service first, which results in poor sound quality.

In your Sound preference pane there should be two entries for the Jambox, one of type Bluetooth Headset, the other Headphones. Select Headphones an you're set.

Sometimes the connection will fail. Initiating the connection from my Mac usually does not work.

Turning the Jambox off and back on should make it try to connect to your Macbook Air. When the message pops up saying do you want to use this MONO device, click disconnect. A second message will appear offering the STEREO device. Connect to that one.

Also, I find that sometimes after a while the sound quality will degrade to a crackle, like the bluetooth signal is getting weaker and weaker. I have to turn the Jambox off and back on to fix this for the next few hours. This does not happen when connected to my iPhone or other iOS devices.

Good luck!

Today the crackling starts happening about every 45- 60 minutes. I found that restarting iTunes is enough to fix it... 😕

...or even just pausing playback for a few minutes. 😕

Have read through Mac Forums and Jawbone's.

Issues are well documented and occurr just as described.

I called Jawbone per suggest of jawbone's forums. They suggest contacting Apple. Even worse, they indicated that out of the millions of users only a few hundred were having problems.

For those who have purchased already - please continue to post results. For those who haven't purchased, roll the dice. This issues exist, more so with computers than pairing with phones.

AP

Update: Yesterday, there was an update available via MyTALK. After updating, I repaired the Jambox and when prompted I selected Headphones. Now it seems to prompt me for stereo headphones (vs mono headset) whenever the Jambox is on. I also left the house with the Jambox playing yesterday and when I came back it was still playing. Problem seems to be resolved either by repairing and selecting stereo headphones first or by the new driver or both. Good luck.

Basically, this product, for the mac book pro is a sham. I have spoken to the half wits at customer service at JAWBONE and they very quickly point to mac saying it is a mac issue.

If that is the case why is no research or recall done on this for certain macs? I bough this speaker at teh mac store! It's on display with an ipod touch and was sold as something that would work with mac products like macbook pro, ipad etc, hence it being sold in mac stor e..duh! The truth is that there is some glitch somewhere and no one is copping to it. I have tried it on two different computers with different OS systems, I have tried it with my 3gs - nothing, nada, niente, rien, zilch.... AND I have tried two different JAMBOXES, after teh first one wasn;t working I returned thinking it was a lemon.

I've done teh trouble shooting mentioned above and on other forums and it doesn't change the fact that these two products do not integrate seamlessly as advertised.

It is WRONG for Apple to sell these in teh stores and it is wrong for Jambox to advertise them as working with Macs. False advertising on this thing.

MAC says it's JAWBONE issue. JAWBONE says it's MAC issue. NO ONE WILL TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR THIS ISSUE.

And for the final insulting cherry on top- It's $$$217 out the door at the Mac store.

This is easy to fix once you know. Once you have the jambox connected. Go to the top bar and click the blue tooth icon. Click on "Jambox by Jawbone " in the list and then go to " open sound preferences". Then click "Output". This will allow you to click " Bluetooth headphones". Fixed.

"This is easy to fix once you know. Once you have the jambox connected. Go to the top bar and click the blue tooth icon. Click on "Jambox by Jawbone " in the list and then go to " open sound preferences". Then click "Output". This will allow you to click " Bluetooth headphones". Fixed."

- and what are you supposed to do if "jambox by jawbone" does not show up when you click the bluetooth icon? Which it doesn't in mine....

-- and "open sound preferences" from where?

To set up first. Go to " system prefernces" and click bluetooth. Turn on jambox and hold power button up for 3 seconds. click on the + sign on your screen below the list of boothtooth devices and a new window will appear and the jambox will apprear. click continue.

Jambox will apprear in the list on the bluetooth memu. turn the jambox off and and turn back on and the green light will come on beside the jambox on the memu.

once done, follow this post

This is easy to fix once you know. Once you have the jambox connected. Go to the top bar and click the blue tooth icon. Click on "Jambox by Jawbone " in the list and then go to " open sound preferences". Then click "Output". This will allow you to click " Bluetooth headphones". Fixed."

i appreciate your time and answer, but it does NOT work. trust me. this device is glitchy and flawed when pairing with mac book pro and mba....

the fact is that when i go to discover the device it neve rshows up as "jawbone jambox", rather it finds the jambox as device "00-21-3C-52-2D-A2".... so as a result, when i then go to click on the device from the bluetooth drop down menu the only option it has is to "disconnect" the device, there is no "open sound preferences" as an option.

the thing is flawed, and like i said, nether apple nor jawbone take responsibility for this. I've already files a report with teh better business bureau, not much else to do really. thanks again.

I too have had crap sound from my MacBook Air, but the solution when found was a bit confounding.

I have all the settings correct but the Jambox connected as a headset, sounded bad, checked settings. Over and over checked Jambox settings, as I have done a number of times, and it does not help one bit.

So I see on here that restarting iTunes might help, I do that and boom! Perfect sound. Yes 🙂

I don't quite know why that helped, perhaps some common settings across iTunes and the sound preferences? Confounding yes. So it was an Apple issue for me.

Another Apple issue is no drivers for Jambox in BootCamp, so no chance of using it all via BlueTooth in Windows through BootCamp.