windows 8 bluetooth audio stream broken

Having the exact same problem.

There is an alternative downloader for 64-bit editions of Windows here:

iTunes 12.1 for Windows (64-bit — for older video cards)

that seems to address the playback issues that some users have been reporting with the full 64-bit version (the alternative installer here is the same architecture as most previous "64-bit" versions of iTunes, i.e., a 32-bit application with a 64-bit installer). I've not seen an issue reported for Bluetooth, but the "true" 64-bit version - the one that you get by default - does seem to have a number of playback-related issues that don't occur with the installer referenced above. The "for older video cards" appears to be something of a misnomer as some people have reported that this corrects problems found on current / high-spec systems.

You are assuming that someone has an older video card. I do not. And please note that both me and the other person who posted about this problem were having no problems at all prior to this latest update. In fact, speaking from my personal experience, I have never had any audio problems with Itunes ever and I have been using it for many years and many many updates.

I did try your suggestion and nothing changed. Same problem. So unless you have some specific experience on this issue and know tht the problem is, I suggest maybe not giving advice of which you seem to clearly know nothing about.

Many users have reported various playback issues with the "full" 64-bit version of iTunes 12.1, including problems with Bluetooth, that have been resolved with the alternative version (32-bit application with 64-bit installer). As I noted in my original response, the "for older video cards" label appears to be a misnomer, though there are cases where the 64-bit version will detect an incompatibility with specific video hardware and direct users to this alternative installer. However, many people have found that the "for older video cards" version addresses playback issues on 64-bit systems even where video hardware is very recent and drivers are up to date. Overall, it seems that the full 64-bit version of iTunes 12.1 has some significant incompatibility issues which, hopefully, Apple's developers are aware of and will fix in a future release.

Having installed the alternative version, you may want to check that "Direct Sound" is selected in the "Play Audio Using" dropdown under Edit > Preferences > Playback - in some cases, this defaults to "Windows Audio Session" which may give problems.

Update to this problem. First off I got this fixed. I don't know what part of the procedure actually worked but this is what I did. First I updated to the latest version of Itunes as there was a small update about a week ago that made some mention of audio problems. That update did not change anything. I still would update though.

Then I went into preferences and changed things on the playback to direct sound vs windows audio session. That did not work either. And just so you know, after each of these steps I did a complete shutdown of my computer and started it back up just in case something needed to be loaded.

My next step was this. Under the Itunes Help menu there is an option to run diagnostics. I figured what the heck I will give that a try. Basically what that does is first it checks your internet connection with Itunes, then it checks whether there is a CD/DVD device in your computer and if it is working and lastly it checks the ability to sync with a phone. So I am thinking to myself well none of that seemed related at all the audio problem but at the end of the diagnostics, a little window pops up showing what looks like different support drivers running and their version numbers. I noticed something in there and it said that Quicktime was not installed. Well, I know I installed Quicktime on this system so why would it be showing that message.

So you guessed it, I went and downloaded Quicktime and ran the installer. There was no option to install it (as it is already installed) but there was an option to repair it. So I clicked on that and let it repair Quicktime. Went back into Itunes and like magic the audio was now working once again.

I am not going to sit here and say what it was that actually fixed the problem. Based on what I did, I suspect that maybe some file somewhere along the line got messed up and in the Quicktime repair option it fixed things. That is certainly what it looked like.

One other thing I would like to point out. When I started having these problems, I noticed that when I would quit Itunes a little dialogue box would come up saying other applications were using Itunes and there was a little timer counting down 10 to 15 seconds before Itunes would then quit. I could try to exit Itunes once more and then it would close or if I waited until the timer went to zero, it would close itself. Prior to this audio problem I had never seen that little window ever in Itunes.

Now that the Itunes audio is working again, that little dialogue box does not come up anymore. Not sure what the issue with that was but it is fixed now too.

I honestly am not sure where the problem was in all this. Was it an Itunes problem that happened during an update. Was it a Windows update problem that impacted this? Who really knows. All I know is that is what I did and things are working now so give it a try.

Thanks for the feedback - that's another possible remedy to add, especially for those who've not found that 12.1.1.4 (either the standard or "for older video cards" version) resolves playback issues encountered in 12.1.0.71. Given the range of issues found in 12.1 (both releases so far) and that fact that there is clearly no single fix that works for everyone, I can't help think that there's some pretty major bug or misconfiguration still lurking in there.

Your speculation about the Windows updates could be relevant too, since there was a major batch of updates that Microsoft pushed out the same week that iTunes 12.1.1 was released - and part of that was a major SNAFU, in that the update to Office 2013 for Windows RT (Surface/Surface 2 tablets) caused PowerPoint to stop working completely. Microsoft did, though, release a fix within 5 days - so rather better than Apple in this case 🙂

I tried a lot of debugging but the step which fixed for me was this change to Direct Sound. Bluetooth playback returned and all is back to normal.

I have been searching for this fix for 3 days. Now I can go to sleep, thank you!