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Ask HN: When will I be able to have “duplex” good quality audio over Bluetooth?

3 points by filleokus ↗ HN
In the current year of the lord 2020, I still get horrible playback audio quality when the microphone on my bluetooth headset is active. E.g, listening to music while being in a muted Skype-call or something.

This has been an issue for as long as I have used Bluetooth products.

Will this ever get fixed? What's the problem? Surely there is enough bandwidth over Bluetooth to fit say 128 kbit/s audio in both directions?

Or does it actually work with some devices?

3 comments

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mkarliner
High quality audio over Bluetooth is carried by a mechanism called a2dp, which can go in either direction. However, on Android at least, while it can act as an a2dp source, it does not have a corresponding a2dp sink. Bottom line, it's possible, but not with the current Android
filleokus
The same on all recent iOS/Mac devices I've tested. Dosen't work on my new work Thinkpad either.

Does the headset need to support bidirectional a2dp also somehow?

mkarliner
Absolutely. I'm working on this at the moment, using a raspberry pi, and that does support 2 way a2dp, it still won't work until Apple and Android support it.