OBS Studio broke my bluetooth earphones!

[theowldude]

Hi, first post in here.
I've been trying to start recording videos for a dev blog but i have bluetooth earphones, i've read the problems OBS have with them and how to solve it, which i couldn't try because the first time opening the software while having them connected, silence.

I moved the settings, putting sound and mic on default and the earphones, no sound so i gave up and closed OBS.
The problem came after because the sound never came back, even with OBS closed, now everytime i try to connect them to my PC it doesn't work, sometimes it takes a lot of time and other times it keeps trying for a long time with no success. When it does work, all fine but now i fear everytime i will connect the headset, it will be a long process that wasn't necessary before.

Any help with that?
(By the way i use a dongle for the bluetooth, which works fine just by plugging it in.)

 

[Harold]

Setting the audio device selection in windows wrong for your use case with the bluetooth device is what causes audio to fail.

If you're using the bluetooth device's mic the stereo audio (A2DP) device DISABLES because of how bluetooth itself behaves. If you have audio set to go to the stereo audio bluetooth component while the mic is active, you will not hear it.

The same is the case if you use the phonecall audio (HFP) device for your sound but your mic is not enabled. Your stereo audio device then becomes the active audio device and the phonecall audio device disables.

If your audio is muting when you launch OBS, and you're using a Bluetooth headset, it's caused by the underlying design of Bluetooth.

Bluetooth headsets typically have 2 modes, stereo audio (A2DP), and headset (HFP - Hands Free Profile). These two profiles have separate audio devices on the computer side.

When you have OBS set to activate a Bluetooth headset's microphone, that causes the headset to automatically switch to HFP mode, as A2DP is a lower priority. The reason your audio mutes is because it's still being sent to the A2DP device instead of the HFP device.

To fix this, you either switch to a wired headset, don't use the Bluetooth headset's mic, or set your sound to go through the HFP device for your headset.

Note: HFP offers lower sound quality.

 

[AaronD]

The "old school" mentality still works wonderfully for live media of any kind:

Don't use wireless *anything*, unless you absolutely have to!

If you *can* run a wire, even if it's inconvenient, DO! You might have a bad connector sometimes, but that's easy to find, compared to radio problems that often seem to take a PhD to figure out! (radio is weird, and the more you study it, the weirder it gets!) That's true for both consumer *and* professional gear, despite the pro stuff being explicitly licensed to do exactly what they're doing the way that they're doing it, and anyone else doing the same thing the same way is therefore illegal with stiff penalties, to try and eliminate some direct-interference. But direct-interference is only one source of problems among many...

 

[theowldude]

I guess i'll get my wired headphones for that. I was expecting i was doing something wrong or there was a chance, you know, the money spent on the bluetooth headphones and everything.

I thought it was a good idea but seems like i need to spend on a separated microphone and put the headset as audio only.

Thank you all!