Bluetooth headset

PulseAudio[edit | edit source]

Following instructions from PulseAudio and BlueZ 5 should be sufficient to make Bluetooth headsets work (through pavucontrol for instance).

There is two protocols for handling microphone input (and button input) from headsets: HSP and HFP. In order for the microphone to work the headset has to switch from the A2DP protocol to HSP/HFP. Headset using HSP will usually work out-of-the-box with the current pulseaudio version.

pulseaudio 13.0 does not support HFP properly. There is ongoing work on this. You might have luck building the current development version from source using this merge request 288 and the accompanying hsphfpd.

ALSA + Bluez 5[edit | edit source]

You can use bluez-alsa to provide integration between Bluez and ALSA. This setup can be used either completely without Pulseaudio, or you can then use your headset as another ALSA device in Pulseaudio (in which case disable its bluetooth support, so the two don't collide).

• Install bluez-alsa:

• In your ALSA configuration, /etc/asound.conf (system-wide) or ~/.asoundrc (user-level), specify the parameters of the Bluetooth connection (replace the MAC address with the MAC address of your device)

# Bluetooth headset
defaults.bluealsa {
     interface "hci0"            # host Bluetooth adapter
     device "10:4F:A8:00:11:22"  # Bluetooth headset MAC address
     profile "a2dp"
}

A static ALSA configuration is also possible, make sure to change the device name in the below examples for aplay.

# Bluetooth headset
pcm.btheadset {
        type plug
        slave.pcm {
                type bluealsa
                device "10:4F:A8:00:11:22"
                profile "a2dp"
        }
        hint {
                show on
                description "Your description of Bluetooth Headset"
        }
}

• Make sure the bluetooth and bluealsa services are started. You probably want to add them to your default runlevel via rc-config.
• Make sure the device is paired and connected to your computer. See Bluetooth for details.
• Test with e.g. aplay, passing the PCM device 'bluealsa'

• For other applications, the precise option to set the output device may differ.

• Hardware volume control:

Can't open input device[edit | edit source]

Compile and load the uinput kernel module, when things don't work, and the logs show this error:

bluetoothd: Can't open input device: No such file or directory (2)
bluetoothd: AVRCP: failed to init uinput for 00:16:44:FD:6B:A0
bluetoothd: Unable to select SEP

Device Drivers  --->
   Input device support  --->
      [*]   Miscellaneous devices  --->
         <M>   User level driver support

No audio service is available[edit | edit source]

After updating to net-wireless/bluez-5.xx it might happen, that a Bluetooth headset is connected, but ALSA / PulseAudio fails to pick up the connected device.

An error message like this might be shown in the output of PulseAudio:

I: [pulseaudio] module-card-restore.c: Restoring profile for card bluez_card.00_16_94_0B_6F_DE.
I: [pulseaudio] card.c: Created 10 "bluez_card.00_16_94_0B_6F_DE"
bt_audio_service_open: connect() failed: Connection refused (111)
W: [pulseaudio] module-bluetooth-device.c: Bluetooth audio service not available
W: [pulseaudio] module-bluetooth-device.c: Service not connected
I: [pulseaudio] card.c: Freed 10 "bluez_card.00_16_94_0B_6F_DE"
E: [pulseaudio] module.c: Failed to load module "module-bluetooth-device" (argument: "address="00:16:94:0B:6F:DE" path="/org/bluez/31716/hci0/dev_00_16_94_0B_6F_DE""): initialization failed.

To fix this, the following needs to be done:

1. Enable the audio socket of bluetoothd

[General]
Enable=Socket

1. Restart bluetoothd by doing one of the following things:
   • Turn the software wireless kill switch off and on again

1. • Turn the hardware wireless kill switch off and on again
   • Reboot the computer
2. Reconnect the Bluetooth headset

Audio device not visible when using GDM[edit | edit source]

If you are using GDM, but not logging into GNOME (e.g. i3 instead), GDM might block your headset, which will it not being available for PulseAudio. This will result in your headset being connected, but the applications won't see it.

As a workaround, you can switch to a different display manager (e.g. LXDM), or disable PulseaAudio for GDM^[1]:

autospawn = no
daemon-binary = /bin/true

If you have created the file, make sure that GDM can read it:

Audio device not visible using PulseAudio volume control (but working with ALSA)[edit | edit source]

According to this forum post, add the following to /etc/pulse/default.pa (and possibly /etc/pulse/system.pa):

### Automatically load driver modules for Bluetooth hardware
.ifexists module-bluez5-device.so
load-module module-bluez5-device
.endif

.ifexists module-bluez5-discover.so
load-module module-bluez5-discover
.endif

Ensure that the pulseaudio and bluetooth USE flags are enabled