Looks like the very latest updates have really improved BT, I get pretty consistent connection and audio path establishment and practically no stuttering anymore.
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I feel like recently it’s been better for me too. The real test will be my car but I’ve been without for so long I haven’t remembered to try it again.
I think that’s the complication with this as well. Everyone has different devices from different eras. My '06 Infiniti refuses to connect to my L5, so there seems to be a backward compatibility issue.
My (2009) car is the only device I haven’t managed to connect. The rest all work. Even a NudeMove L speaker that always gave me trouble on my Windows phone. So, I haven’really encountered a lot of backward incompatibility.
Problem is, you never know which device is gonna stutter or refuse to stream at all on which occassion.
But bluetooth has been improving. Specially the quick stutter.
And I haven’t tried it today. Maybe, i’s all good from now on…
Pity about the car though.
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Oh, one thing that is worse than before, is the connecting itself. In the beginning devices connected automically after switching on the bluetooth, now I have to connect everything manually in the settings.
And the stutter is back with a vengance. I just gave it a try :(. Horrible as ever!
Pattern is the same too: about five seconds of normal sound, five seconds of stutter.
Hey! Here is a new one!
The stutter comes and goes depending on whether the bluetooth settings are active or not. When I close the settings window, its gone…
I had to run the settings to make the connection to the device, and kept them running after.
This is really consistent (at least for now). Only tried it with one device so far.
(Edit: there still is a tiny glitch every nine seconds. Also very consistent.)
Edit: I get the same thing with another device (an old Beats speaker): bluetooth settings active -> five second stutter; no bt settings -> no stutter.
With brand new Roseland RS-400 speakers (bt 5.2) I get five seconds of sound, five seconds of silence. So, the slow and the fast stutter appear to be the same thing.
(Haven’t heard the 9 second glitch with these devices just yet.)
Could it be the searching for devices that does this? There is this constant swirl…This begs the question, why continue searching when there is already an active connection?
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Oh yeah I remember someone else saying this when you have the settings app open because I think the bluetooth is scanning for devices, and for sure that exasperates the stutter big time so I always make it a habit to kill the settings app before I start playing any audio over BT.
Seems like a good reason to make sure people do not have to open the bluetooth settings to connect to a device.
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In case the user wants to connect more than one device, like a keyboard and mouse.
Sure, no argument there. 
Maybe a stop searching button, then.
(In any case, don’t force people to open the bt settings.)
Shouldn’t it time out? It seems to run continuously.
wouldn’t mind a search on/off button
I don’t think so. I think running “continuously” is the way it should work i.e. scan forever for new devices. That’s basically the way WiFi works too i.e. it is always on the lookout for beacon frames from new Wireless Access Points. (There are differences though between BT and WiFi as to how this works.)
So I think that if you want to pair more than one device then pair all the devices one after the other before playing any audio over BT - or if you want to pair a new device while playing audio then it may be a nicer user experience to pause audio playback while pairing the new device.
Is there something going wrong here? I don’t know. I don’t have that level of knowledge of the internals of BT.
It would be nice for purism to add an option to turn continous wifi, bluetooth or mobile network scanning off by default, even with settings open. Its a security issue and leak especially if you are already connected to known network of said wifi, bluetooth, or mobile.
Also gnome settings in that regard kinda is at fault, i created a user story a while back to stop wifi scanning when connected to a wifi spot already and the modem manager actually has a setting for it, its not used for convenience i imagine, but then standard distros arent focused on privacy as much as pureos is.
It should be a button, user clicks on to scan for additional or new networks otherwise just dont!
Benefits additional privacy, lower power consumption, and less interference.
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Depends whether scanning is passive (listening) or active (transmitting something and listening).
That’s tricky though because of the need for roaming. WiFi needs to listen for other WAPs offering the same SSID even when you are already associated with a WAP for that SSID.
Maybe that is more likely to be an issue at work than at home - but that would mean it’s an attribute of the SSID, not a global attribute.
WiFi can do both passive and active scanning. Probably you are right that active scanning should be off by default. (I thought it was already but I haven’t checked.)
However as this topic is about BT, maybe we should leave WiFi out of it.
Then it is easy. Provide a button for “Roaming On” for wifi. It only sounds natural for a security enhanced phone to be able to stop BT scanning (as well as wifi scanning). In most use scenarios continuous scanning is not needed and disabling it will save some battery energy.
Here’s a new one: lately the L5 appears to connect to bluetooth speakers and receivers - the equipment generates a connection beep and/or the connected light comes on - but the music still comes out of the L5 speakers, not the speaker it says it is connected to.
Almost makes you long for the stuttering days…
That isn’t new…I’ve had to do the bluetooth dance turning things off and on (both L5 and devices) and rebooting etc…maddening. There is no rhyme or reason to it. Bluetooth at the best of times is temperamental. For some reason the audio path isn’t getting established after connection, not sure if it’s a timing thing or a handshake thing. Some times when I think I have the right combination of reseting (soft and hard switching) it throws me another curveball. Definitely needs work.
Well. it was new for me. I experienced the stuttering, and I had to manually connect every single time (start music, switch on bt, wait for it… nothing, open settings, click the device, connect the device, close both settings windows to prevent stuttering, enjoy music), but at least it connected and streamed pretty reliably.
Now, not even manually connecting works. Had not expected this kind of regression to be honest. I expect it to be a temporary thing.
Yes I can’t remember which update but this new behaviour came about after that…less stuttering but less reliable connection attempts. One in particular is when I have bluetooth connected and then when I get a call and I want to use the handset audio, I have to turn off bluetooth and then after the call and I turn it on again, I am unable to connect again to my bluetooth device. Let’s hope the next update solves this problem. It will go a long way to ending probably the most frustrating thing I find with it…other than that I love it.