ubuntu 18.04 cannot connect to sennheiser pxc 550 via bluetooth

Question

Hello I cannot connect the new sennheiser pxc 550. Although I was previously able to connect sennheiser HD 4.50 BTNC.

Please help me with this issue.

Thank you.

Answer 1

I've struggled with that a lot. I posted my solution on medium. Here it is:

I've owned PXC 550 headphone for a while. I tried to make them work via Bluetooth in my Ubuntu several times (spending a few hours each time). I‘ve read tons of stuff on the internet about it. I've tested it with a few BT adapters. I didn’t succeed though. Finally today I've managed it! And the solution was simple, just to buy a pluggable USB adapter. It came yesterday, I plugged it into the PC, did a few operations and now I’m enjoying it.

A lot of changes have been made on my system in the past, thus I don’t know what all needs to be done to make it run from scratch. Anyway, there are several steps:

• download firmware and check system log for errors once the adapter is plugged in,
• pair the device (headphones) with computer,
• set up correct audio profile (high fidelity playback) and play.

This is how to download the firmware and place it in the right path:

wget https://s3.amazonaws.com/plugable/bin/fw-0a5c_21e8.hcd
sudo mkdir -p /lib/firmware/brcm
sudo mv fw-0a5c_21e8.hcd /lib/firmware/brcm/BCM20702A0-0a5c-21e8.hcd
sudo cp /lib/firmware/brcm/BCM20702A0-0a5c-21e8.hcd /lib/firmware/brcm/BCM20702A1-0a5c-21e8.hcd

Now once the adapter is plugged in, no error could be seen in system log

$ dmesg
[686344.270849] usb 3-6: new full-speed USB device number 21 using xhci_hcd
[686344.401001] usb 3-6: New USB device found, idVendor=0a5c, idProduct=21e8
[686344.401003] usb 3-6: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
[686344.401004] usb 3-6: Product: BCM20702A0
[686344.401006] usb 3-6: Manufacturer: Broadcom Corp
[686344.401007] usb 3-6: SerialNumber: 5CF3709399DA
[686344.508594] Bluetooth: hci0: BCM: chip id 63
[686344.524654] Bluetooth: hci0: BCM20702A
[686344.525617] Bluetooth: hci0: BCM20702A1 (001.002.014) build 0000
[686345.235615] Bluetooth: hci0: BCM20702A1 (001.002.014) build 1338
[686345.251605] Bluetooth: hci0: Broadcom Bluetooth Device

Next step is pairing. I believe it could be done in GUI, but for me it was easier to do in in command line. Before pairing hold the headphones button for apx. 5 s.

$ bluetoothctl
...
[NEW] Device 00:16:94:17:F8:B6 PXC 550[bluetooth]# power on
Changing power on succeeded[bluetooth]# agent on
Agent registered[bluetooth]# default-agent
Default agent request successful[bluetooth]# scan on
Discovery started
...
[CHG] Device 00:16:94:17:F8:B6 Icon: audio-card
...
[bluetooth]# scan off
[bluetooth]# pair 00:16:94:17:F8:B6
Attempting to pair with 00:16:94:17:F8:B6
[CHG] Device 00:16:94:17:F8:B6 Modalias: bluetooth:v0082p0046d0106
[CHG] Device 00:16:94:17:F8:B6 UUIDs: 00001108-0000-1000-8000-00805f9b34fb
[CHG] Device 00:16:94:17:F8:B6 UUIDs: 0000110b-0000-1000-8000-00805f9b34fb
[CHG] Device 00:16:94:17:F8:B6 UUIDs: 0000110c-0000-1000-8000-00805f9b34fb
[CHG] Device 00:16:94:17:F8:B6 UUIDs: 0000110e-0000-1000-8000-00805f9b34fb
[CHG] Device 00:16:94:17:F8:B6 UUIDs: 0000111e-0000-1000-8000-00805f9b34fb
[CHG] Device 00:16:94:17:F8:B6 UUIDs: 00001200-0000-1000-8000-00805f9b34fb
[CHG] Device 00:16:94:17:F8:B6 UUIDs: 00001800-0000-1000-8000-00805f9b34fb
[CHG] Device 00:16:94:17:F8:B6 UUIDs: 00001801-0000-1000-8000-00805f9b34fb
[CHG] Device 00:16:94:17:F8:B6 UUIDs: 0000180f-0000-1000-8000-00805f9b34fb
[CHG] Device 00:16:94:17:F8:B6 UUIDs: 1ddce62a-ecb1-4455-8153-0743c87aec9f
[CHG] Device 00:16:94:17:F8:B6 UUIDs: 63331358-23c1-11e5-b696-feff819cdc9f
Pairing successful

Now the headphones are paired. Just choose the quality:

And the output device

Enjoy!

Answer 2

I had the same problem on Ubuntu 16.04 with my Sennheizer PXC-550 II. Bluetooth manager saw the headphones and correctly connected them, but ALSA didn't see them.

The solution that I found is to set option ControllerMode to bredr in file /etc/bluetooth/main.conf

# Possible values: "dual", "bredr", "le"
ControllerMode = bredr

After that, just restart the Ubuntu Bluetooth service using the following command

sudo systemctl restart bluetooth