Stuttering bluetooth audio

English Hardware
1

Hi, I have a bluetooth headphone - sennhizer 450BT and wireless budgs - galaxy buds

Both of them produce stutters whenever I play any kind of audio.
I installed ALSA but it doesn’t seem to do anything. I rebooted my laptop, restarted alsasound service as well but still stuttering

evirac@localhost ~> lsusb | grep Bluetooth
Bus 003 Device 003: ID 0bda:4853 Realtek Semiconductor Corp. Bluetooth Radio


evirac@localhost ~> inxi -Aa
Audio:
  Device-1: AMD Renoir Radeon High Definition Audio
    vendor: Lenovo driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel pcie:
    gen: 3 speed: 8 GT/s lanes: 16 link-max: gen: 4
    speed: 16 GT/s bus-ID: 04:00.1 chip-ID: 1002:1637
    class-ID: 0403
  Device-2: AMD ACP/ACP3X/ACP6x Audio Coprocessor
    vendor: Lenovo driver: N/A alternate: snd_pci_acp3x,
    snd_rn_pci_acp3x, snd_pci_acp5x, snd_pci_acp6x,
    snd_acp_pci, snd_rpl_pci_acp6x, snd_pci_ps,
    snd_sof_amd_renoir, snd_sof_amd_rembrandt pcie:
    gen: 3 speed: 8 GT/s lanes: 16 link-max: gen: 4
    speed: 16 GT/s bus-ID: 04:00.5 chip-ID: 1022:15e2
    class-ID: 0480
  Device-3: AMD Family 17h/19h HD Audio vendor: Lenovo
    driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel pcie: gen: 3
    speed: 8 GT/s lanes: 16 link-max: gen: 4
    speed: 16 GT/s bus-ID: 04:00.6 chip-ID: 1022:15e3
    class-ID: 0403
  API: ALSA v: k6.5.6-1-default status: kernel-api
    with: aoss type: oss-emulator
    tools: alsactl,alsamixer,amixer
  Server-1: PipeWire v: 0.3.81 status: active with:
    1: pipewire-pulse status: active 2: wireplumber
    status: active 3: pipewire-alsa type: plugin
    4: pw-jack type: plugin
    tools: pactl,pw-cat,pw-cli,wpctl


evirac@localhost ~> sudo journalctl -b | grep firmware
Oct 17 20:53:35 localhost kernel: Spectre V2 : Enabling Speculation Barrier for firmware calls
Oct 17 20:53:39 localhost kernel: [drm] Loading DMUB firmware via PSP: version=0x01010027
Oct 17 20:53:39 localhost kernel: [drm] Found VCN firmware Version ENC: 1.20 DEC: 6 VEP: 0 Revision: 0
Oct 17 20:53:39 localhost kernel: amdgpu 0000:04:00.0: amdgpu: Will use PSP to load VCN firmware
Oct 17 20:53:42 localhost kernel: rtw89_8852be 0000:03:00.0: loaded firmware rtw89/rtw8852b_fw-1.bin
Oct 17 20:53:43 localhost NetworkManager[1231]: <info>  [1697556223.6752] manager[0x55e69c626e30]: monitoring kernel firmware directory '/lib/firmware'.
Oct 17 20:53:48 localhost.localdomain systemd[1]: Startup finished in 2.782s (firmware) + 2.453s (loader) + 788ms (kernel) + 4.986s (initrd) + 7.296s (userspace) = 18.308s.
evirac@localhost ~>
2

There are a number of factors that can cause such stuttering, including low signal/interference. From your inxi output, it is apparent you are using PipeWire as expected. Your statement about installing ALSA makes no sense. For audio to work you need an ALSA (kernel) driver, and associated userspace libraries to begin with. PipeWire (and other media servers) sit above this layer.

Check that pipewire.service is not reporting errors (when using bluetooth) similar to that described here.

You could watch the journal logging in a terminal like this…

sudo journalctl -fu pipewire

If applicable, follow the advice in that link regarding wireplumber, and restart pipewire.service when done…

systemctl --user restart pipewire

Report back once you’ve undertaken further investigation.

3 
evirac@localhost ~> sudo journalctl -fu pipewire
[sudo] password for root:

I’m not getting anything back. also did

systemctl --user restart pipewire

still stuttering…

4

Has bluetooth audio stutter-free working before?

Does you have also WiFi active? If so, can you try without WiFi active for instance by using an Ethernet cable.

5

Yes, I do! I played a local file with wifi off and it played stutter free. as soon as I enabled wifi it started stuttering again. Now, I’m certain it has something to do with wifi.

6

Then it wasn’t the issue. :wink:

7

This is quite a common issue. Is it possible for you to use 5GHz connectivity?

8

I think so… it does say my wifi supports both 2.4 and 5ghz frequency in wifi settings
image

9

I had stuttering issues but they were caused by the wrong codec selected, once I changed the format in the (Gnome) audio menu everything was fine.
Also, I recently swapped my WiFi/Bluetooth adapter with a faster 6e/ bt 5.3 and noticed some improvement in the quality and range of the BT signal, maybe you could consider something similar.

10

Ok, so you could try connecting to your router’s 5GHz network, and see if that makes a difference (when using BT).

11

yeah… I don’t know how to do that. I use gnome. and I can’t see any such settings in connectivity or wifi settings

12

You could configure your router to advertise the 5GHz connectivity using a specific SSID, then connect to that.

13

I’m sorry, can you dumb it down for me? I really don’t know what or how to do that

14

You need to familiarize yourself with your home router, and how to access it’s web config interface. At least share the make and model details with us. Google “router 5GHz 2.4GHz” and similar. The general idea is to have separated SSIDs configured for each band eg “SSIDName_2.4” and “@SSIDName_5”. It may already be like that with your Wi-Fi AP. You can choose which network you want to use when you connect a given device.

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