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10.10.3 Bluetooth sound clipping

After installing the 10.10.3 update, my late 2014 MacBook Pro 15" Retina starts sending distorted sound to my bluetooth headset (Sennheiser Momentum Wireless). This happens with every sound going out from the Mac (iTunes, Quicktime player, Safari, system noises etc.), its not heard all the time, but happens very regular in various amounts. This is really annoying!

The Sennheisers are the only thing thats connected with Bluetooth.


My specs:

Macbook Pro 15" Retina late 2014

Intel i7 Quad core 2,8Ghz

16GB Memory

NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M

1TB flash storage

MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X Yosemite (10.10.3), null

Posted on Apr 13, 2015 3:23 PM

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Question marked as Best reply

Posted on Jan 2, 2017 8:57 PM

The following solved my problem:

It's an issue with the amount of power/bandwidth supplied to the BluetoothAudioAgent, the daemon in charge of streaming. Apparently most people have had success by entering the following command in terminal.app:

defaults write com.apple.BluetoothAudioAgent "Apple Bitpool Min (editable)" -int 40

Source: http://lifehacker.com/fix-your-bluetooth-audio-in-yosemite-with-this-terminal-16 70380974

The source article lists Yosemite as the specific OS this applies to, but I know that this fix also works back to Mavericks and (possibly) Snow Leopard (untested).

I am having this exact issue at the moment and entered that command with non-noticeable results. I'm going to reboot the machine and see if that takes the new settings into account. But it seems like this command is the way that the wide majority of people have resolved this issue.

EDIT: Just rebooted, the audio quality is significantly better. No noticeable choppiness whatsoever (knock on wood). It appears that the command I posted above does seem to resolve the issue.

EDIT 2 (2015-8-24): The above command does help in many cases and produces noticeable quality improvements. Unfortunately, however, Yosemite is very moody with regard to bluetooth audio. The problem compounds itself when in proximity of other bluetooth devices. To expand on my previous answer above, I highly recommend entering the following additional commands to increase other bluetooth audio parameters:

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 "Apple Initial Bitpool Min (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

EDIT 3 (2015-9-08): Alright. I'm sorry I keep updating this answer, but I keep finding more information about this issue (since improving bluetooth audio on Yosemite is a long-term effort, apparently). I've found several sources that cut straight to the mustard and set everything to 80 which appears to be the maximum allowable value for Bitpool settings. If the above settings don't work well enough for you, try the "All Inâ„¢" approach.

defaults write com.apple.BluetoothAudioAgent "Apple Bitpool Max (editable)" 80

defaults write com.apple.BluetoothAudioAgent "Apple Bitpool Min (editable)" 80

defaults write com.apple.BluetoothAudioAgent "Apple Initial Bitpool (editable)" 80

defaults write com.apple.BluetoothAudioAgent "Apple Initial Bitpool Min (editable)" 80

defaults write com.apple.BluetoothAudioAgent "Negotiated Bitpool" 80

defaults write com.apple.BluetoothAudioAgent "Negotiated Bitpool Max" 80

defaults write com.apple.BluetoothAudioAgent "Negotiated Bitpool Min" 80

To see your current defaults:

defaults read com.apple.BluetoothAudioAgent

Edit 4 (2016-07-14): One more (hopefully last) edit. Make sure that you restart the bluetoothaudiod (or coreaudiod) service after making changes to these settings.

sudo killall bluetoothaudiod

Or, if you are on El Capitan:

sudo killall coreaudiod

Credit for this goes to the multiple wise nerds below who suggested it. (Thank you!)

Source: http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/167245/yosemite-bluetooth-audio-is-chop py-skips

31 replies

May 20, 2015 12:27 PM in response to SiKth88

Do you mean that you've downloaded the Beta version (I don't think 10.10.4 has been officially released yet) and can confirm that this hasn't been fixed?

Wikipedia lists 10.10.3 as the latest version.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OS_X_Yosemite

www.macrumors.com had an article about the latest Beta of 10.10.4 release was released last week.

http://www.macrumors.com/2015/05/11/apple-seeds-os-x-10-10-4-beta-3-to-developer s/

Jun 23, 2015 4:57 AM in response to dmatth

Hi to everybody,


of course I have the same problem with Momentum Wireless 2.0, I quote to all of you the response I have received from

Seenheiser Support which does not satisfy me, problem is still there ,maybe it helps somebody of you guys:


===QTE===

The servise manager from Sennheiser wrote me this. Can you try it?


I found out, you can connect it via Bluetooth as a headphone. Then, also A2DP works fine and everything sounds ok.

When you switch on the microphone in the apple software, the MACBook connects it as a telephone and in this mode,

there is a limitation at about 8KHz and it sounds, what i would call very bad quality.


This is a problem, we cannot solve in the headset so the customer should try to play around with the settings and try

to switch off the telephone profile.


===UNQTE===


I was not able to solve, is it really possible that APPLE can not solve this issue with a SIMPLE SOFTWARE UPDATE...?!?!?!

Crazy...if Our Dear and unique Mr. Steve Jobs would still be here somebody at APPLE would fly out of the window...APPLE...

COME ON GUYS!


Awaiting some feedback, regards to all

Jun 30, 2015 9:52 AM in response to Smibakkjen

Updated to 10.10.4 today. No joy. The problem remains.


Crackling sounds on the Sennheiser Momentum 2.0 Wireless.


Sennheiser support says that since it worked fine on OS X 10.10.2, the problem is not Sennheiser's. Meantime though, Sennheiser has withdrawn this product from the market while they try to figure out what's going on.


The only recourse seems to be to wait till they reintroduce these headphones and then I'll send it off for warranty repair. Any other suggestions?

Sep 3, 2015 2:35 PM in response to tlu87

Not sure if anyone's still experiencing issues, but I came across this solution and it seemed to do the trick:


  1. Open the Terminal utility
  2. Run the following two commands:

sudo kextunload -b com.apple.iokit.BroadcomBluetoothHostControllerUSBTransport;

sudo kextload -b com.apple.iokit.BroadcomBluetoothHostControllerUSBTransport

This is similar to rebooting your computer: forcing the bluetooth kernel extension to reload from scratch.


Source: Macissues

Sep 21, 2015 5:57 AM in response to Smibakkjen

I always wait for a long time before updating to a newer version of OSX due to any software problems at launch. Therefore I installed Yosemite (10.10.5) last week.


After the update I experience the same bluetooth sound problem with my AKG 830BT. I had no problems before the update. I am sitting in front of Macbook pro at a distance of about 50 cm and the connection is _very_ unstable.


Is there any working fix by now?


_____

MacBook Pro (15-inch, Late 2011)

2.4 GHz Intel Core i7

8 GB 1333 MHz DDR3

AMD Radeon HD 6770M 1024 MB

Sep 30, 2015 5:30 PM in response to Smibakkjen

It's been a long wait but I am happy to report that upgrading to OS X El Capitan finally did the trick and now my Momentum wireless headphones are working again! No more crinkly noises and other sound distortions. In the meantime, I understand that Sennheiser temporarily withdrew these headphones from the market due to technical issues. However, this particular issue I'd lay squarely at Apple's door. The sound distortions appeared when I downloaded 10.10.3 and disappeared with 10.11.

10.10.3 Bluetooth sound clipping

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