Improve Bluetooth Performance for headphones and speakers

Hi.

I've been recently on a quest to find the perfect hi-quality wireless bluetooth headphones / headsets for use in the office with my Macbook Pro (13", 10.8.2, 8GB ram, 750 GB HD). Although this post is not about the headphones / headsets themselves, I've learned something along the way while testing them out.

It appears that for some wireless bluetooth speakers, headsets and headphones, the Mac, although it supports A2DP, produces a poor sound quality with cracks, breaks and dead noise. After a lot of back and forth, testing and research, it appears it is NEVER the speaker, headset or headphones. It turns out that OS X is using a very low bit rate for bluetooth audio by default.

Here below are all the hints I've found online on how to fix the issue and get the best audio quality from your Mac through to your bluetooth speaker device.

TRY THIS FIRST

1/ Make sure your device is paired with your Mac.

2/ Open "Bluetooth Preferences".

3/ In the left column panel, select your bluetooth device (speakers, headset, headphones).

4/ Go to the "GEAR" pull down menu near the bottom center of that same panel.

5/ While your device is selected, open the pull down menu and select "Update Services".

This seems to work for about 50% of the cases and cleans up audio very nicely. If is still does not work....

TRY THIS SECOND

1/ Make sure your device is paired with your Mac.

2/ Open "Terminal".

3/ Copy and paste the following line into Terminal:

defaults write com.apple.BluetoothAudioAgent "Apple Bitpool Min (editable)" 53

4/ The "53" is the quality level. Depending on your device, you can adjust it up or down.

(the level 53 appears to be what has worked for most people I've found online - other settings that have worked include 40, 45, 50)

If you want to know what the default, min and max levels are for the various bluetooth settings, copy and past the following line into Terminal:

defaults read com.apple.BluetoothAudioAgent

You will see that Apple has set the MIN for OS X at 2 which as I understand it is extremely low.

(big props to Dan Warne from danwarne.com for putting this out there - go check out his site)