Ubuntu 20.04 no sound out of Bluetooth headphones

Question

This is on a machine I upgraded from 18.04 to 20.04 a few days ago. No issues at all getting sound to play out of headphones on 18.04.

The headphones are paired with Bluetooth. I unpaired and repaired them just to be sure. The settings panel for sound has them as an output option and I can select it without issue. However, no sound ever comes out of the headphones. I've even adjusted the volume both in the settings panel, in alsamixer and in pavucontrol. Nothing changes.

I see no errors in the bluetooth service log.

Output of:

{ sudo lshw | grep product | head -n1 && sudo lspci -knn | grep Net -A3 && lsusb -v; } >output.txt 2>&1

https://pastebin.com/VJ5EQcFb

@K7AAY: there is a huge amount of information in the output, far more than I can put in here. I put it in a pastebin: https://pastebin.com/VJ5EQcFb — siride, Apr 27 '20 at 22:36
@Raffa: already done, along with uninstalling and reinstalling Alsa and such (option #2). I try to do my homework before ever asking questions. — siride, Apr 27 '20 at 22:38
@Raffa, option 3 worked for me on Ubuntu 20.04LTS : I could connect to my bluetooth speaker but even though I chose it as sound output, the sound would still come out of my HDMI screen. Now it works : thank you ! — Polypheme, Nov 05 '20 at 23:13

score 190 · Answer 1 · answered May 26 '20 at 15:44

190

This is a bug (pulseaudio #832, launchpad #1866194) with new version of pulseaudio in Ubuntu 20.04 where old config values have not been cleared and it is not routing to the correct device. The solution is to delete the old config and restart pulseaudio:

Open a terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and run the following commands:

mv ~/.config/pulse/ ~/.config/pulse.old
systemctl --user restart pulseaudio

A pulseaudio fix #298 is currently in progress.

answered May 26 '20 at 15:44

Cas

8,557

20

+1 this is the only solution that worked for me. – begumgenc Jun 08 '20 at 11:13
1

Work for me on Kubuntu. – Erich Jul 12 '20 at 04:57
2

nice, worked for me also, and if want to remove the old pulse config once you succeed restarting it, just: rm -rf ~/.config/pulse.old – Amine M Jul 21 '20 at 09:07
thanks. this command plus https://askubuntu.com/a/1238076/867994. worked – Adil Saju Aug 17 '20 at 10:28
2

In my case there was no sound from one bud, this solution worked in that case too. – Ashwani Aug 18 '20 at 07:15
You may need to restart the computer afterwards (I had to) – Suzana Nov 18 '20 at 15:58
This fixed all my issues. Thanks. – gatoWololo Dec 06 '20 at 21:19
2

This worked for me, but wondering if the fix was merged in for pulseaudio control, will it get updated for 20.04 at some point during system updates? – nemaroller Apr 15 '21 at 17:41
This works great, thanks. – M. K. Nov 06 '21 at 22:11
Thx for this solution!! – r4cc00n Nov 17 '21 at 13:33
This worked for me too! After searching in so many places, thanks! However, if I want to use also the microphone of the headphones as an input sound device I get a background noise in the headphones. Which I can solve by not using the mic of the headphones (which is annoying since I can't get far from the laptop to have a call). – desmond13 Nov 19 '21 at 08:13
There is a big difference of volume as soon as 'high fidelity playback' is activated (compared to mono previously). Raise the volume of the device if necessary. – Rudy Vissers Jan 04 '22 at 13:04
Great, it really worked, thanks. – Trung Le Oct 15 '22 at 01:07
Just restarted pulseaudio without any other action solved the problem. – Fernando Kosh Dec 29 '22 at 18:20

score 31 · Answer 2 · edited Sep 20 '20 at 12:27

31

It's not a fix, only a workaround; I installed pulse audio volume control utility:

sudo apt-get install pavucontrol

The problem seems that Ubuntu doesn't change all the audio sources to the Bluetooth device, in the volume control utility you will see this more clearly, the Bluetooth device is connected but not used as audio playback device. (see pulse audio volume control utility).

Find your audio source; mine was firefox since I was playing some videos from YouTube, and select the Bluetooth playback device (mine was a Xiaomi speaker) (XMFHZ02) and change it. Your device should start outputting audio.

Hope it helps

edited Sep 20 '20 at 12:27

Zanna

70,465

answered May 01 '20 at 09:07

Eduardo Alonso

411

thanks! It was clear as you mentioned after opening the pulseaudo volume control what the problem is. Worked for QuietComfort 35 II Headphone. It is even switching back to headphone as output after turn the headphone off and on again. – Baris May 01 '20 at 17:02
4

doesn't seem to work for me – Grateful May 07 '20 at 02:50
for me working selecting the bluetooth – Jonathan Rodriguez May 18 '20 at 15:03
Does not work for me (Tzumi earbuds). Pavucontrol only shows plugged in audio. The a2dp driver does not load. I have to connect/reconnect. Not a big deal. – ross minet Jun 06 '20 at 11:15
This worked well for me. You can also select the application using sound. – NixMan Oct 06 '20 at 16:33
This worked for me for Sennheiser bluetooth ear buds. – tnk479 Jan 18 '21 at 21:59
After installing "pavucontrol". Open Plus Audio Control or Run "pavucontrol" Command in Terminal. In the Plus Audio Control window, In the Playback tab, all the running applications & Audio Output devices. – Vijay Panchal May 04 '21 at 13:06
This works for me, I'm using Ubuntu 20.04 – ONeZetty Jul 22 '21 at 22:01

score 21 · Answer 3 · edited Oct 01 '21 at 21:11

21

I reinstalled, and it worked, without having to reboot:

sudo apt install --reinstall pulseaudio pulseaudio-module-bluetooth

Then re-connect the Bluetooth headset

edited Oct 01 '21 at 21:11

imok1948

13

answered Aug 14 '20 at 20:08

Chelmite

1,185

I know this is somehow not completely relevant BUT it saved me from a problem that I had for quite long time... So. I couldn't change audio profiles (in order to use the headsets microphone) and I could only use A2DP Sink (only for listening) – kostia Jan 05 '21 at 10:57
this WORKED for me in debian buster stable. thanks! – Allexj Apr 09 '21 at 22:15
amazing... just reinstalled it make everythingworks LOL – ArtificiallyIntelligent Oct 22 '21 at 15:12
This solved my problem. Thanks! – scarface Dec 05 '21 at 16:04
Worked for me on Ubuntu 22.04 – Marged Jun 29 '22 at 14:08
Worked for me on Ubuntu 23.04. Until then I did manage to connect but headphones were not recognized as such and thus no audio output available. I forced reinstalled, paired again, restarted and voila, I'm listening to music while typing this. – Utopiah Nov 18 '23 at 15:03

score 1 · Answer 4 · answered Apr 30 '20 at 08:45

I had a similar problem, this worked for me.

Install Pulse Audio with Bluetooth module:

$ sudo apt install pulseaudio pulseaudio-module-bluetooth

Open it and select the desired output channel in Playback tab.

The tool allows tweaking also other sound settings.

score 1 · Answer 5 · answered May 11 '20 at 12:00

Option #3 as described here worked for me.

Additionally info:

I upgraded from 19.10 to 20.04
When adjusting the volume via the volume up/down hotkeys the feedback sound would play through the headphones. They were also detected in the settings. The audio stream from other applications would still play through the laptop speakers.
The packages @Mirek mentioned, pulseaudio and pulseaudio-module-bluetooth were already installed

score 1 · Answer 6 · answered Aug 31 '21 at 08:19

If you are using Ubuntu 20.04, I would recommend to replace Pulseaudio with Pipewire. It will work with all your apps, because it aims to replace both PulseAudio and JACK, by providing a PulseAudio-compatible server implementation and ABI-compatible libraries for JACK clients..

I run Ubuntu 20.04.3 and Pipewire runs very stable so far. My bluetooth headset works with Microsoft Teams now. In my case I run Bitwig, Spotify, Youtube etc. at the same time and it just works with every output device (Bluetooth Headset, RME Audio Interface, internal speakers).

I post the link for the installation steps, which worked for me: Replacing Pulseaudio with Pipewire in Ubuntu 20.04

score 0 · Answer 7 · answered Apr 28 '20 at 14:07

0

After a few reboots, it seems to be working. I'm not sure specifically which thing worked, but here are the things I tried.

Everything in this answer: Ubuntu 18.04: Audio doesn't work unless I switch between outputs
Un-pairing and re-pairing my BlueTooth headphones. I am using blueman-applet.
Muting and unmuting the sound in AlsaMixer across all devices.
Selecting, deselecting and reselecting the headphones output in the configuration panel for sound.

answered Apr 28 '20 at 14:07

siride

1,093
1
9
13

I just upgraded to ubuntu 20... And it doesn't seem to be working for me! Anyone have any suggestions? – Grateful Apr 29 '20 at 07:28
Same here - installed from scratch 20.04 and no sound. Actually, Bluetooth "tester" in Settings works well. But none of the applications can emit sound. – Piotr Czekalski Apr 29 '20 at 19:26

Ubuntu 20.04 no sound out of Bluetooth headphones

7 Answers7

Linked

Related