El Capitan - bluetooth streaming choppy

I too would like to give input. I have a late 2013 27" iMac. It has 24 gigs of ram. El Capitan version 10.11.5. I recall I believe that the el capitan update prior to the one just released had mention of "fixing" bluetooth cut out/stuttering. Obviously since I'm writing this post I STILL had problems. In reading other posts I decided to try and turn off my bluetooth mouse as I'm playing through some little jam2 speakers that are bluetooth enabled as well. Anyway I prefer the Microsoft Sculpt mouse (bluetooth as well) because I prefer seperate right, left, scroll/click buttons and wheel which is clickable as well. Anyway I was having the issue and switched to my Apple Magic Mouse and the problem is resolved! Yeah for me but I have to state for the record we all need to start considering Apple's business practices as you can find plenty of information about the fact that they are selling old hardware (think of a mac mini made in 2013) which is still sold in 2016 with the same hardware! It seems they just don't care that bluetooth along with incompatibility issues with external reader/writers (same scenario) can use the same drive without issue. The official position from Apple is that it is a "third party device" which also includes apparently any device that wasn't designed and manufactured by Apple corporation. Well that is just ludicrous because at least from what I can see bluetooth, wireless and the other technologies were designed to allow ALL manufacturers of their product(s) to be readily compatible with just about all third party addon devices. Why are we only seeing this type of thing on macbooks and iMacs? Even their own iPhone/iPad has no issue with the same exact "third party product" not working correctly on the iMac or Macbook, etc. This is eventually going to end them up with a class action law suit as I feel this is consumer fraud plain and simple. I have no issue paying the higher cost of supporting Apple for their computers but not if I can build an equivalent PC that is faster and more current on their hardware offering than Apple. OS X is an awesome OS and so are most of the programs/apps for them. But since the illness and passing of Steve Jobs their offerings have been in a definite decline. USB should "just work" so should bluetooth in the majority of the cases. I don't hear PC folks complaining all the time about issues with multiple bluetooth devices paired and connected causing issues. Of course I say this in the context that if you have 5,6,7 or more BT devices paired and active then yeah probably not really going to work with all the short wave radio signals bouncing around. I hope this helps both Apple to improve and stay the awesome innovators that they have been in the past and for my fellow Mac lovers if they can't solve bluetooth audio issue(s).

Just spoke with Apple Support, they gave me a cure for Bluetooth Audio interference. I have a Bowers and Wilkins T7 and this worked for me.

So power down your iMac

Unplug all your connected items from the back of your iMac.

Then unplug power cord from back of your iMac and wait 20 seconds.

Plug in all your items back your iMac usb,s etc and then the power plug.

Then hold down the P & R & Alt & Cmd buttons ( Little finger on the P, forefinger on the R and thumb on both the Alt/Cmd buttons). Then press the power on keep holding down all the buttons till you hear the startup sound 3 times, then release the buttons.

Wait till everything powers back up and hopefully that is your problem solved.

I hope this helps

Thanks for the heads up!. I would caution others though that this might not fix their problem with choppy bluetooth. As I posted previously I finally figured out it was my Microsoft Sculpt Bluetooth mouse that caused my problem. When I turned it off and used the Apple Magic Mouse the problem resolved. I personally feel it is a mix. I think Apple's implementation of the bluetooth stack is really one of the primary causes. They have issues with USB as well. Bought a new Blue Ray DVD reader writer. Got told basically they don't support 3rd party devices so they couldn't assist with the error message that occured when starting the burn process. In recent years as in the past Apple has been behind the curve in providing more of the newer main components of a computer. Look up the video from a guy on YouTube that built a Hackintosh (PC running OSX) and comparing it's performance AND hardware components. It was pretty sad. Don't get me wrong I love Macs and have used them (not exclusively) for years. Apple should step up their game they charge more for their computer products which have excellent quality but should any of us pay more money for older hardware that can easily be beat by the PC hardware available for less total cost of build than a Mac? I"m really considering building one and seeing about how to get OSX to run on it. Sorry for the rant but I really hate Apple's position on USB and Bluetooth problems. I think we all agree it should just work like on a PC. Now in saying that I"m not contemplating someone running 7 or 8 bluetooth devices all paired up and active at one time. But I do think if a person had 2 or 3 it should be not issue at all.

Glad your problem was resolved!

Thanks! This post really helped me. I had the same issue on a MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2015 running OS X El Capitan 10.11.4 (15E65), and I was able to resolve the issue as instructed here. However, I had to drop the "Current/Initial bitpool" setting to a value of "20" for my JayBird X2 headphones to stream sound without intermittent choppiness.

This works for me too! 😕 How you figured that out is beyond me considering it's a silly solution to an issue that shouldn't be happening.

I turned of all Bluetooth devices (keyboard, Trackpad, mouse) and turned them back on and BINGO! Really weird. Never had that happen before.