Bluetooth audio in OSX Lion

Apple does monitor these forums from time to time, someone from Apple Support did e-mail me to get some Bluetooth Diagnostic traces. That was last week - I haven't heard back from them since.

Well at least some hope.

I have 10.7.4 with a MacBook Pro Early 2011 and have the same problem here.

Try to connect my Logitech Boombox. It used to work but the sound was crackling. Very strange. Now it isn't working anymore.

That is really really really annoying.

Actually that helped me.

It's in german but should be clear with Google Translate:

http://gdgts.de/mac-os-x-bluetooth-audioausgabe-verbessern/

After having followed this thread for months, having tried out every single fix and spent countless hours looking for a solution on the internet I think I have finally found a way to get my Belkin bluetooth receiver to work flawlessly with my late 2008 Macbook core 2 duo running the latest version of Lion. Buy a $3 bluetooth dongle from ebay. Not the most elegant way to go about it and certainly ruins the look of the laptop a bit but at least I now get perfect sound; no cracking, skipping or breaking. I guess that the built in bluetooth is just not up to the task.

BTW, it has also worked on my wife's laptop which is identical to mine but runs Snow leopard. Before it worked slighly better than mine (although still unacceptable) but now it's flawless as well.

I tried an external dongle (Mac Pro 3,1) but my system profiler doesn’t see it.

Tried turning blue tooth off/on, rebooting, everything.

Thanks ... Ken

@chsoto, how did you disable the internal dongle?

@sgginc Have you tried eliminating the bluetooth device from the bluetooth preference tab, then pairing again and then updating services? That's what I did with both laptops. Nothing else.

@coolspot I read somewhere that it's automatic, i.e. when you plug a new bluetooth dongle the built in bluetooth disables itself automatically. Seems to work for me. I wondered whether the new dongle was actually working at all but when I use the bluetooth audio receiver the dongle's light pulsates so it must be using the dongle, not the built in bluetooth. Don't expect any messages, notices, changes to your system information or anything of the sort though! (Macs ease of use can sometimes be unsettling 😉 )

Thank you! Looks like this has solved my problem! Wow!

Thanks for the suggestions!

Where did you “Update the Services”?

Thanks ... Ken

After more than a year somebody found a solution, yes the BT dongle and it does work for a while. I said for a while because it also crashes any program using bluetooth, such as VoiceCandy, skype etc.......

Thanks guys, as the french say ¨bel effort ¨

Will Apple please wake-up and listen to its clients.

Well, really happy that it worked (even if it was just partially) for you guys. Have to say that I was quite frustrated with the whole. thing. Still can't understand why the airplay from my iPhone works flawlessly but the one for a laptop doesn't. Anyhow.....

One thing though, make sure that the dongle is MAC compatible. I've heard that not all dongles are MAC compatible.

@Ken (sgginc). WHen you click on the bluetooth icon in the toolbar go to "open bluetooth preferences", then click on your device and then click on the cog (gear or sprocket) and select "Update services". Hopefully that will do the trick.

Thanks chsoto I’ll give it a shot.

The last time I played around in there it brought my system down requiring a hard reset.

I’ll see...

ok .... here is my solution

copy this

defaults write com.apple.BluetoothAudioAgent "Apple Bitpool Max (editable)" 80 
defaults write com.apple.BluetoothAudioAgent "Apple Bitpool Min (editable)" 48 
defaults write com.apple.BluetoothAudioAgent "Apple Initial Bitpool (editable)" 40 
defaults write com.apple.BluetoothAudioAgent "Negotiated Bitpool" 58 
defaults write com.apple.BluetoothAudioAgent "Negotiated Bitpool Max" 58 
defaults write com.apple.BluetoothAudioAgent "Negotiated Bitpool Min" 48

then run "terminal" and run commands

then reboot, if it still cracking or/and weak sound do this:

0. turn on bluetooth in MacBook –>Disconnect headphone

1. Open HALLab App, It will list all audio device, In and out, select you headphone (stereo one), –>click [info button]

2. It will pop up new windows, with lot of info, In IO Buffer size –> 512 ( my default value) –> 256 (Changed value)

3. Next to IO buffer size, there is [Take button] click that one. Quit HALLab and disconnect headphone –> connect again.

and after all click button "Launch" and make louder volume -->http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/801/capturadepantalla201207w.png/

I'm just here to say "Me too"

My Macbook Air mid-2011 (Lion) loses connection after just a few minutes with my Jawbone ICON and P311 headsets as well as my Motorokr EQ7. I get the infamous "Stop using headset" error dialog when I shut a device off, but I can't reconnect because OS X immediately disconnects.

I must re-pair any device every few minutes if I want to use it. (This means deleting from prefs, going into add device mode, and turning the device into pairing mode.)

I'm surprised to see this thread with 19 pages of people essentially having the same problem. In another month it'll be a year old.

I use all of these same devices on my iPad, iPhone and various Windows netbooks and laptops.

Has anybody heard from Apple that they confirm this as a software issue?

I tried all of those things.

Nothing really helped.

It works for a short time and then the crackling sound starts again.

It's really really really really really annoying. I bought the bluetoothspeaker because I don't want to use cables.