Question / Help Bluetooth headphones causing bad audio quality while streaming?

[Enderborn]

Whenever I stream/record while wearing my bluetooth headphones, my audio quality is notably worse than when I stream with speakers/earbuds in the audio jack. I can't seem to figure out why this happens. I already disabled all of the headphones "enhancements" in the sound manager.

Attached is a log where I stream with these headphones.

 

[Enderborn]

Bump

 

[BluePeer]

did not realy "understand" What "Bad" in what direction

what you hear is more bad?
the sounds from the mic over BT?
BT Heatset <-> pc ?
Another cable heatset/Speaker <-> pc ?
And is that not so if you not stream also BT Sound good without stream and Only bad if you stream?
default i will tell BT is 40%(from the compression) of 100% cable quallity
so the it can have different KHZ on the BT device or so idk where the "bad" quallity is ^^

 

[Enderborn]

did not realy "understand" What "Bad" in what direction

what you hear is more bad?
the sounds from the mic over BT?
BT Heatset <-> pc ?
Another cable heatset/Speaker <-> pc ?
And is that not so if you not stream also BT Sound good without stream and Only bad if you stream?
default i will tell BT is 40%(from the compression) of 100% cable quallity
so the it can have different KHZ on the BT device or so idk where the "bad" quallity is ^^

The audio from my game (which sounds good when I hear it directly) sounds bad when streaming.

 

[Sukiyucky]

Bluetooth is good for listening to audio only. But with video and audio, its crap because there is latency. If in the video there is someone speaking, watch their lips and it won't sync with the audio stream. Try watching a live Twitch stream with bluetooth speakers and you will see what I mean.

 

[Enderborn]

Bluetooth is good for listening to audio only. But with video and audio, its crap because there is latency. If in the video there is someone speaking, watch their lips and it won't sync with the audio stream. Try watching a live Twitch stream with bluetooth speakers and you will see what I mean.

Is there a way that I could use the headphones while streaming good audio? Or are my only options to use manually connected headphones/earbuds/speakers?

 

[BluePeer]

The audio from my game (which sounds good when I hear it directly) sounds bad when streaming.

I Ask the question again

WHERE
1. bluetooth on head sound from game over bluetooth Heatset NO OBS running Sound is fine
2. bluetooth on head sound from game over bluetooth Heatset with OBS running Sound BAD

3. bluetooth on Head sounds from game over bluetooth Heatset fine the to the internet send and now looking stream on another PC/Tablet Sound is Bad
4. sounds from game over cable Heatset/speaker fine the to the internet send and now looking stream on another PC/Tablet Sound is Good

Please answer with numbers LIke
1. True
2. False
3. not directly but....

and deklar what "notably worse" means like "Interrupt with soundsless times" "massive Delay to the video file" "some crazy not define able sounds in"


"is there a way that I could " <--- jetzt if we find out first that the problem exakt is

 

[koala]

Bluetooth headsets have 2 modes of operation.
Mode 1: high quality for listening to music
Mode 2: low quality for voice communications

Mode 1 is the default. As soon as you switch your headset on, it is in this mode and you're able to listen to your media player/streaming website in high quality.
Mode 2 is activated as soon as some app activates the headset microphone. The headset switches to voip operation, and this is much lower listening quality than mode 1. It switches back to mode 1 as soon as you close that app or as soon as that app deactivates the headset microphone.

OBS will trigger this switch to mode 2 as soon as it is started, if you configured the headset microphone somewhere in OBS. To prevent this switch, you have to remove the microphone from OBS Settings->Audio (including "default" device) as well as from every audio input source you might have created as source in some scene. If you did this, OBS will not initialize the microphone any more, and the bluetooth headset will remain in high quality music mode.

On the other hand, if you need the microphone, because you participate in some kind of voice chat, and you want to transmit this chat with OBS, you have no choice but live with the reduced music quality of the headset.

This is bluetooth-specific behavior and not the fault of OBS. The low quality mode has something to do with power saving, bluetooth bandwidth and latency. Cabled headsets don't behave like this, and there are also wireless headsets who are able to circumvent this bluetooth behavior by optionally using some kind of proprietary receiver dongle instead of native bluetooth connectivity. There are also wireless headsets who can be optionally connected with a cable, and while connected with a cable they behave like a cabled headset without this mode switching. This all depends on the model and features of your headset.

Because of this weird behavior of wireless headsets, every streamer has probably a drawer full of unused bad-bought headsets.

 

[Alej]

Thank a million for this thorough explanation.
I have noticed this on any device really on any bluetooth headset paired to iPhone, Android, etc and was thinking it was some sort of 'fight' between different applications trying to access or output/input from headsets... recently was trying OBS for Mac and had the exact same 'audio goes low fi' behaviour.
Thanks again, it should be cropped, framed and put somewhere.

 

[bparlan]

Bluetooth headsets have 2 modes of operation.
Mode 1: high quality for listening to music
Mode 2: low quality for voice communications

I registered to OBS forums and writing my first comment right now, just to thank you for this level of explanation... Man...

 

[cybordemon]

I registered to OBS forums and writing my first comment right now, just to thank you for this level of explanation... Man...

I registered to OBS forums just now so I could mention that this helped me on the right track, all I had to do was "disable audio ducking in Windows" (right below default monitoring device) and it fixed my problem.

 

[alwayssome]

This pops up on Google first, so I imagine others will land here. (And I'm sure I will too when I forget this in the future)

I fixed it by simply selecting a different input device and not the bluetooth ear buds. It defaults the bluetooth buds to both output and input.

On a Mac, option click on the Sound icon in the system bar at the top and select something other than the bluetooth device like iMac microphone.

 

[xorlop]

On windows you can fix it by typing Windows+R to get to the run dialog and paste in "mmsys.cpl" without the quotes and hit enter.

Then, go to the rightmost tab, the "Communications" tab, and change the reduce audio option to "Do nothing". I also messed about with the "Recording" tab and made sure to right click on some recording device other than my headphones and make sure that that other device is the default recording and default communications device. I also ensured that my wireless earbuds were disabled as a recording device.

 

[loyal_uk]

Bluetooth headsets have 2 modes of operation.
Mode 1: high quality for listening to music
Mode 2: low quality for voice communications

Mode 1 is the default. As soon as you switch your headset on, it is in this mode and you're able to listen to your media player/streaming website in high quality.
Mode 2 is activated as soon as some app activates the headset microphone. The headset switches to voip operation, and this is much lower listening quality than mode 1. It switches back to mode 1 as soon as you close that app or as soon as that app deactivates the headset microphone.

OBS will trigger this switch to mode 2 as soon as it is started, if you configured the headset microphone somewhere in OBS. To prevent this switch, you have to remove the microphone from OBS Settings->Audio (including "default" device) as well as from every audio input source you might have created as source in some scene. If you did this, OBS will not initialize the microphone any more, and the bluetooth headset will remain in high quality music mode.

On the other hand, if you need the microphone, because you participate in some kind of voice chat, and you want to transmit this chat with OBS, you have no choice but live with the reduced music quality of the headset.

This is bluetooth-specific behavior and not the fault of OBS. The low quality mode has something to do with power saving, bluetooth bandwidth and latency. Cabled headsets don't behave like this, and there are also wireless headsets who are able to circumvent this bluetooth behavior by optionally using some kind of proprietary receiver dongle instead of native bluetooth connectivity. There are also wireless headsets who can be optionally connected with a cable, and while connected with a cable they behave like a cabled headset without this mode switching. This all depends on the model and features of your headset.

Because of this weird behavior of wireless headsets, every streamer has probably a drawer full of unused bad-bought headsets.

made an account just to say thank you koala, not only did you fix my long term issue, you explained it in a way where i could understand . heroes come in all forms you sir/maam are a legend

 

[appydafizz]

Bluetooth headsets have 2 modes of operation.
Mode 1: high quality for listening to music
Mode 2: low quality for voice communications

Mode 1 is the default. As soon as you switch your headset on, it is in this mode and you're able to listen to your media player/streaming website in high quality.
Mode 2 is activated as soon as some app activates the headset microphone. The headset switches to voip operation, and this is much lower listening quality than mode 1. It switches back to mode 1 as soon as you close that app or as soon as that app deactivates the headset microphone.

OBS will trigger this switch to mode 2 as soon as it is started, if you configured the headset microphone somewhere in OBS. To prevent this switch, you have to remove the microphone from OBS Settings->Audio (including "default" device) as well as from every audio input source you might have created as source in some scene. If you did this, OBS will not initialize the microphone any more, and the bluetooth headset will remain in high quality music mode.

On the other hand, if you need the microphone, because you participate in some kind of voice chat, and you want to transmit this chat with OBS, you have no choice but live with the reduced music quality of the headset.

This is bluetooth-specific behavior and not the fault of OBS. The low quality mode has something to do with power saving, bluetooth bandwidth and latency. Cabled headsets don't behave like this, and there are also wireless headsets who are able to circumvent this bluetooth behavior by optionally using some kind of proprietary receiver dongle instead of native bluetooth connectivity. There are also wireless headsets who can be optionally connected with a cable, and while connected with a cable they behave like a cabled headset without this mode switching. This all depends on the model and features of your headset.

Because of this weird behavior of wireless headsets, every streamer has probably a drawer full of unused bad-bought headsets.

I registered to OBS forums and writing my first comment just to thank you for this explanation. It fixed my problem.

 

[PayPig]

did not realy "understand" What "Bad" in what direction

what you hear is more bad?
the sounds from the mic over BT?
BT Heatset <-> pc ?
Another cable heatset/Speaker <-> pc ?
And is that not so if you not stream also BT Sound good without stream and Only bad if you stream?
default i will tell BT is 40%(from the compression) of 100% cable quallity
so the it can have different KHZ on the BT device or so idk where the "bad" quallity is ^^

Are you retarded or ESL? He said the audio quality is bad and "notably worse" when he's streaming. This isn't stackoverflow, you fucking nerd.