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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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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 In™" 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

10.10.3 Bluetooth sound clipping

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