Trouble getting sound with bluetooth hearing aids

English Hardware
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1

Hi OpenSuSE’ers, I am running the pipewire sound system under OpenSuSE 15.6 x64 with the KDE/Plasma/X11 desktop. This is on my Dell XPS 15 9530 laptop.

My trouble is I have a nice new set of hearing aids that I would like to use with my laptop. I have managed to figure out how to pair and trust the hearing aids with the Bluetooth connection from the laptop. Trouble is I cannot figure out how to tell the sound system to direct sound to my hearing aids. When I look at configuring the devices to use, within the sound configuration menu, there is nothing that mentions Bluetooth hearing aid devices. So my question is simply, how do I get sound to my hearing aids over the Bluetooth connection?

Any and all efforts to help guide me into the hearing aids light are much appreciated, of course, and come with many thanks in advance.

2

For completeness, are you using the KDE Plasma desktop version used by Leap 15.6, or are you using the current Plasma environment offered via the openSUSE KDE repos?

Show what is returned by
kinfo

Does the BT device show up in the results of the following commands?
pactl list cards
inxi -Aa

3

At a Bluetooth level, what is reported about the connected device?
bluetoothctl info

4

Thanks Deano_ferrare for your generous gift of taking the time to help me! I don’t know for certain what the answer to your question is, but perhaps “kinfo” will be more helpful. All I can say is I am using the KDE Plasma desktop that was set up by the 15.6 installation media I downloaded from the get.opensuse.org website.

> kinfo
Operating System: openSUSE Leap 15.6
KDE Plasma Version: 5.27.11
KDE Frameworks Version: 5.115.0
Qt Version: 5.15.12
Kernel Version: 6.4.0-150600.23.30-default (64-bit)
Graphics Platform: offscreen
Processors: 20 × 13th Gen Intel® Core™ i9-13900H
Memory: 62.5 GiB of RAM
Graphics Processor: Mesa Intel® Graphics


> pactl list cards
Card #46
        Name: alsa_card.pci-0000_00_1f.3-platform-skl_hda_dsp_generic
        Driver: alsa
        Owner Module: n/a
        Properties:
                api.acp.auto-port = "false"
                api.alsa.card = "0"
                api.alsa.card.longname = "DellInc.-XPS159530--0GY0F9"
                api.alsa.card.name = "sof-hda-dsp"
                api.alsa.path = "hw:0"
                api.alsa.use-acp = "true"
                api.dbus.ReserveDevice1 = "Audio0"
                api.dbus.ReserveDevice1.Priority = "-20"
                device.api = "alsa"
                device.bus = "pci"
                device.bus_path = "pci-0000:00:1f.3-platform-skl_hda_dsp_generic"
                device.description = "Raptor Lake-P/U/H cAVS"
                device.enum.api = "udev"
                device.icon_name = "audio-card-analog-pci"
                device.name = "alsa_card.pci-0000_00_1f.3-platform-skl_hda_dsp_generic"
                device.nick = "sof-hda-dsp"
                device.plugged.usec = "6732275"
                device.product.id = "0x51ca"
                device.product.name = "Raptor Lake-P/U/H cAVS"
                device.subsystem = "sound"
                sysfs.path = "/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1f.3/skl_hda_dsp_generic/sound/card0"
                device.vendor.id = "0x8086"
                device.vendor.name = "Intel Corporation"
                media.class = "Audio/Device"
                factory.id = "14"
                client.id = "41"
                object.id = "46"
                object.serial = "46"
                object.path = "alsa:pcm:0"
                alsa.card = "0"
                alsa.card_name = "sof-hda-dsp"
                alsa.long_card_name = "DellInc.-XPS159530--0GY0F9"
                alsa.driver_name = "snd_soc_skl_hda_dsp"
                alsa.mixer_name = "Realtek ALC289"
                alsa.components = "HDA:8086281f,80860101,00100000 HDA:10ec0289,10280beb,00100002 cfg-dmics:2"
                alsa.id = "sofhdadsp"
                device.string = "0"
        Profiles:
                off: Off (sinks: 0, sources: 0, priority: 0, available: yes)
                HiFi: Play HiFi quality Music (sinks: 4, sources: 2, priority: 8000, available: yes)
                pro-audio: Pro Audio (sinks: 5, sources: 3, priority: 1, available: yes)
        Active Profile: pro-audio
        Ports:
                [Out] HDMI3: HDMI / DisplayPort 3 Output (type: HDMI, priority: 700, latency offset: 0 usec, availability group: HDMI/DP,pcm=5, not available)
                        Properties:
                                port.type = "hdmi"
                                port.availability-group = "HDMI/DP,pcm=5"
                                device.icon_name = "video-display"
                                card.profile.port = "0"
                        Part of profile(s): HiFi
                [Out] HDMI2: HDMI / DisplayPort 2 Output (type: HDMI, priority: 600, latency offset: 0 usec, availability group: HDMI/DP,pcm=4, not available)
                        Properties:
                                port.type = "hdmi"
                                port.availability-group = "HDMI/DP,pcm=4"
                                device.icon_name = "video-display"
                                card.profile.port = "1"
                        Part of profile(s): HiFi
                [Out] HDMI1: HDMI / DisplayPort 1 Output (type: HDMI, priority: 500, latency offset: 0 usec, availability group: HDMI/DP,pcm=3, not available)
                        Properties:
                                port.type = "hdmi"
                                port.availability-group = "HDMI/DP,pcm=3"
                                device.icon_name = "video-display"
                                card.profile.port = "2"
                        Part of profile(s): HiFi
                [Out] Speaker: Speaker (type: Speaker, priority: 100, latency offset: 0 usec, availability unknown)
                        Properties:
                                port.type = "speaker"
                                device.icon_name = "audio-speakers"
                                card.profile.port = "3"
                        Part of profile(s): HiFi
                [Out] Headphones: Headphones (type: Headphones, priority: 200, latency offset: 0 usec, availability group: Headphone Mic, not available)
                        Properties:
                                port.type = "headphones"
                                port.availability-group = "Headphone Mic"
                                device.icon_name = "audio-headphones"
                                card.profile.port = "4"
                        Part of profile(s): HiFi
                [In] Headset: Headset Mono Microphone (type: Headset, priority: 300, latency offset: 0 usec, availability group: Headphone Mic, not available)
                        Properties:
                                port.type = "headset"
                                port.availability-group = "Headphone Mic"
                                device.icon_name = "audio-headset"
                                card.profile.port = "5"
                        Part of profile(s): HiFi
                [In] Mic2: Headphones Stereo Microphone (type: Mic, priority: 200, latency offset: 0 usec, availability group: Headphone Mic, not available)
                        Properties:
                                port.type = "mic"
                                port.availability-group = "Headphone Mic"
                                device.icon_name = "audio-input-microphone"
                                card.profile.port = "6"
                        Part of profile(s): HiFi
                [In] Mic1: Digital Microphone (type: Mic, priority: 100, latency offset: 0 usec, availability unknown)
                        Properties:
                                port.type = "mic"
                                device.icon_name = "audio-input-microphone"
                                card.profile.port = "7"
                        Part of profile(s): HiFi


> inxi -Aa
Audio:
  Device-1: Intel Raptor Lake-P/U/H cAVS vendor: Dell
    driver: sof-audio-pci-intel-tgl
    alternate: snd_hda_intel,snd_sof_pci_intel_tgl bus-ID: 0000:00:1f.3
    chip-ID: 8086:51ca class-ID: 0401
  API: ALSA v: k6.4.0-150600.23.30-default status: kernel-api with: aoss
    type: oss-emulator tools: alsactl,alsamixer,amixer
  Server-1: PipeWire v: 1.0.5 status: active with: 1: pipewire-pulse
    status: active 2: wireplumber status: active
    tools: pactl,pw-cat,pw-cli,wpctl

As usual, I HTHs Marc…

5 
> bluetoothctl info
Device D4:87:CC:12:BC:36 (public)
        Name: Marcus's hearing aids
        Alias: Marcus's hearing aids
        Paired: yes
        Bonded: yes
        Trusted: yes
        Blocked: no
        Connected: yes
        LegacyPairing: no
        UUID: Generic Access Profile    (00001800-0000-1000-8000-00805f9b34fb)
        UUID: Generic Attribute Profile (00001801-0000-1000-8000-00805f9b34fb)
        UUID: Device Information        (0000180a-0000-1000-8000-00805f9b34fb)
        UUID: Google Inc.               (0000fdf0-0000-1000-8000-00805f9b34fb)
        UUID: Vendor specific           (0a23ae62-c4c2-43d1-87b1-e8c83839a063)
        UUID: Vendor specific           (56772eaf-2153-4f74-acf3-4368d99fbf5a)
        UUID: Vendor specific           (7d74f4bd-c74a-4431-862c-cce884371592)
        UUID: Vendor specific           (8341f2b4-c013-4f04-8197-c4cdb42e26dc)
        UUID: Vendor specific           (c8f777d0-21b2-45b8-87f8-bd49a13eff49)
        UUID: Vendor specific           (c8f7a831-21b2-45b8-87f8-bd49a13eff49)
        UUID: Vendor specific           (d1d4dc2a-215f-44d2-b44c-0f4de3c91af2)
6

The bluetoothctl output is telling. I would expect to see an “Audio Sink” UUID entry for a supported audio device. There looks to be a number of vendor-specific UUIDs enumerated, but these are not relevant to open source audio operations.

More info about Bluetooth UUIDs here:

7

This article may be of interest to you:
https://hackandhear.com/how-to-use-bluetooth-hearing-aids-with-linux/