Mojave bluetooth connection -- audio issues

I actually found the solution to my problem:

Mojave was falling back on SBC (low energy bad quality bluetooth standard) instead of higher quality AAC or AptX.

To force use of AAC to the system you can enter use terminal:

sudo defaults write bluetoothaudiod "Enable AAC codec" -bool true

To force use of AptX to the system enter:

sudo defaults write bluetoothaudiod "Enable AptX codec" -bool true

there is still another way described in the following article:

https://www.macrumors.com/how-to/enable-aptx-aac-bluetooth-audio-codecs-macos/

cheers

I have been having issues with bluetooth since upgrading to macOS Mojave but not with my Beats. My MacBook Pro wasn’t unlocking using my Apple Watch a majority of the time I woke it up from sleep. I would have to enter my password instead. I have also noticed that I could not shut bluetooth off (from system preferences, the menubar, and Siri).

Resetting the SMC seemed to fix my bluetooth connectivity issues with my Watch and it is working almost 100% of the time now so I would suggest resetting the SMC:

How to reset the System Management Controller (SMC) on your Mac - Apple Support

Just upgraded to macOS 10.14.1 and my issues have completely gone.

I'm using Bose QC35 Bluetooth headphones. Prior to Mojave no issues at all - great connection - really stable and reliable behaviour and good range. No issues connecting even in "busy" bluetooth environments.

With 10.14.0 I had very unreliable bluetooth operation, broken and lossy connection.

This latest release seems to have completely fixed it - back to how it was before Mojave. OK, so it's early days, but looking good. Well done Apple!

OK... well I'm a persistent one...and I found out what worked for me. I turned OFF my Apple Magic Mouse 2 and VOILA...the earbuds work just fine with my MacBook Pro and macOS Mojave. Of course, I'm stuck using the trackpad on the MBP, but at least I know they work with the Mac.

Although I thought I found a solution to my problem twice, the stuttering returned after some time.

I went back and deleted the Bluetooth preferences file (com.apple.Bluetooth.plist) in directory

/Library/Preferences/

and restarted my machine.

For now bluetooth works great.

I toggled between input and output devices. I changed my sound input to be the "Built-in Internal Microphone" instead of using my Blutooth speaker as sound input device, I maintained my SRS-XB3 speaker as the sound output device. Everything is working fine now, sound is excellent.

I reverted back to High Sierra and I was able to get things back to normal. However, I will state that if you're a podcaster or use any audio capture software such as Loopback Audio or Audio Hijack by Rogue Amoeba, you should attempt to turn off that software. There appears to be a bug where if Loopback Audio has iTunes setup as a virtual device--even if it's not enabled, it can still hang on to the audio stack. In High Sierra, I was able to turn off Loopback and get my Bluetooth headphones working with iTunes.

I found this great hint about holding down the shift+option as you click on the BT menu:

Resetting the BT Module worked like a charm.

https://www.macrumors.com/how-to/reset-mac-bluetooth-module/

Hi There,

I had connection problem with my Sony H900N over the ear headphone. I tried to reset the headphone, it didn't help. Then I reset it to factory settings. It connected right away. Hope it helps.

cheers

My supposed solution actually did not solve the Problem for one of my bluetooth speakers, which can only handle SBC.

So I found another article (in German: https://www.macwelt.de/a/14-typische-mac-probleme-und-ihre-loesungen,3438768) which helped me, I think the method was described somewhere above.

You have to punch in a few lines in terminal to increase Bluetooth energy output:

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

sudo killall coreaudiod

the last line will kill your audio daemon after asking for your system PW. coreaudiod restarts automatically, at least in my case it did.

Downloaded Mojave again and did a reinstall and it worked.

I restarted my MacBook, and it hung. It wouldn't shut down. So I just hard rebooted it and when it restarted Bluetooth worked properly. Something must have been going on with with Mojave.

Yeah, I tried that as well. What worked for me was just restarting my Macbook. It hung during restart and I had to hard re-boot. Then my Bluetooth Beats Studio headphones worked fine.

I'm having problems with my Bose QC 35 headphones.

Connecting is OK and the connection remains stable - no unexpected disconnects.

However, the audio is awfully choppy. Very occasionally I also get a short burst of white noise in both channels. It's just a brief hiss during audio playback for maybe 200 ms.

Prior to Mojave the headphones were absolutely flawless with my MacBook Pro 15 (late 2016). I also regularly connect my phones to my iPhone. That was also working great prior to iOS 12 upgrade and is STILL working great.

I therefore conclude this is a Mojave issue.

I've checked the firmware in my phones and made sure they are fully up to date. Double checked again after doing this and the problem persists with Mojave. Works fine with iOS12 and I've also connected to an older laptop running the previous macOS and they work fine with that.

Pretty conclusive - Mojave seems to have problems with its audio over Bluetooth, at least for some makes of bluetooth headphones.

Same for me as well - after reading through this thread, it seems to me that it is definitely the bluetooth drivers for Mojave causing the issues. I have been having the audio issues with my beats studio 3 headphones, along with very spotty connections to my Logitech keyboard and mouse (either one will randomly not work after starting from sleep, but restarting the computer fixes it). Headphone connections are spotty while using them for videoconferencing as well, and I have found that the battery dies down quickly with my beats when using them with my MacBook Pro (2018 model) than with my iPhone or iPad (will drain in an hour vs. the usual multiple hours).

Hope a future update fixes this - has anyone had any success with one of the MacOS Mojave 14.1 betas?