2

I am new to the community and this is my first question. First of all, I thank all the members because so many times in the past I have been able to fix many problems I faced in Ubuntu thanks to this community. But I am unable to find any question relevant to the problem that I am facing right now so I am forced to create my own account and post my own question.

Now coming to the question: I have purchased a Boat Bluetooth headset (Rokerz 550 model) a week ago. It works normally with Windows and with my Android mobile. It also works partially with Ubuntu. I am able to hear the sound from pc on the headphones but the microphone embedded in the headphones is not picking up my voice. The microphone is detected, enabled and selected in the system settings. It is also visible, enabled and selected in the pulse audio control. I am using Blueman Bluetooth manager to connect to this headset. Both in the blue man and in the system settings, I have changed the headset mode from high fidelity playback (A2DP sink) to headset head unit (HSP/HFP). No matter how much I shout and no matter how much I increase the microphone boost it is not picking up any sound. I am pretty sure that it is not muted. I have ensured that in the settings.

I am using Ubuntu 20.4. Not sure if this is relevant but a month ago I was using Ubuntu 16. Then using the software updater I upgraded to Ubuntu 18 and immediately upgraded to Ubuntu 20.4 on the same day. This is way before I purchased the blue tooth headset.

Let me know if you need the screenshots of something or any terminal output. If the question has been answered somewhere else then please point me there.

Thanks

Keerthi Sagar K
  • 21

1 Answers1

0

It feels a bit weird trying to answer my own question, especially this being my very first question on this forum. Anyway, when I initially posted my question, I didn't find any other solutions. But since then, others who have upgraded to Ubuntu 20.04 seem to have faced the same issue with trying to use the microphone of their Bluetooth headset. This appears to be happening because of some bug in Pulseaudio. So completely replacing the Pulseaudio with Pipewire has solved the issue for me. To do so, I have followed 1nfern0's instructions in this link below.

Replacing Pulseaudio with Pipewire in Ubuntu 20.04

I was really worried that my headset was a waste of money. Now, I can use the Bluetooth microphone of the headset normally, just like in Windows and Android. However, I have to manually change the audio profile from the A2DP sink to HSP/HFP every time I connect my headset. Once again, the community has come to my rescue. I really feel thankful for askubuntu.com and all its members.

Also, posting some additional links below with similar solutions. The last two links have solutions that will specifically help fix the same problem on Debian.

https://kumarvinay.com/how-to-enable-bluetooth-headset-microphone-support-in-ubuntu-20-04/

How to replace pulseaudio with pipewire on Ubuntu 21.04?

https://wiki.debian.org/PipeWire

Keerthi Sagar K
  • 21