bluez-5.47-r1 and PA audio source connected to AVR sink

MickKi · Veteran Joined: 08 Feb 2004 Posts: 1173

Hi All,

I've tried to set up a Gentoo laptop as audio source to play music out of an AVR which accepts bluetooth as input. I am able to connect with bluetooth to the AVR using bluetoothctl. However, I am not able to play music with VLC and make it come out of the AVR speakers.

I suspect this is a pulseaudio/alsa issue, but I am not sure how to trouble shoot it. I've tried various things like installing bluealsa, which didn't help. Then installed media-sound/pulseaudio-10.0:

vasettoo · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 11 Nov 2012 Posts: 97

May be useful for debugging will be providing dmesg log for bluetooth connectivity. I'm having similar troubles playing audio to Bluedio Vinyl Plus bluetooth headset in GNOME 3.22 and latest Bluez - it connects succesfully with my Intel AC 7260 bt controller, pairs too, but it takes endless tries fiddling on and off switch in GNOME settings for the device to establish successful connection and redirect the A2DP audio profile to my headset. I cannot find any pattern in the module loading for bluetooth A2DP sink - it just activates randomly but never on first try. I think there was a bug report related to consolekit and pulseaudio, but can't find it ATM.

LIsLinuxIsSogood · Veteran Joined: 13 Feb 2016 Posts: 1179

Connection first, then sound next.

Are you going to try with bluealsa or go the overly complicated pulseaudio way? You have to decide.

Getting pulseaudio and bluetooth to work together (itself isn't going to be the problem) but there is a huge hassle involved in keeping things working due to the configurations, and stuff. It's possible even after the fact that some local system software can interact with bluetooth in a way that the device is not meant to be used thus breaking the system further. Have you thought about what you want to do in terms of uses for the sound in which applications specifically. If it is a limited number of applications than going the bluealsa route could be an answer that saves some time and energy. As opposed to using Pulseaudio which of course also uses ALSA as a backend and therefore gives you twice the worries and potentially twice the headache. If that makes any sense.

vasettoo, there's going to be some bug reports with just about any software and it is really highly unlikely that it is actually a problem with the software when it comes to getting the connection to work for the purpose that it is intended (making sound). But I myself have had so far zero luck getting pulseaudio and bluetooth to work for something super simple even like playing music with mplayer or mpc. Have you looked at the FAQ for pulseaudio, there's so much to know about and the crappy thing here is that they claim it works out of the box, but really you actually need to know all of it just to get the thing to work!

Sorry for venting, and not offering a better solution.

MickKi · Veteran Joined: 08 Feb 2004 Posts: 1173

Thank you both,

This is the dmesg output:

LIsLinuxIsSogood · Veteran Joined: 13 Feb 2016 Posts: 1179

Just a guess, but if in one of the cases mentioned the kind of a symptom, your best bet could be to recreate the pulse audio configuration (lengthy and tough) or perhaps just reinstalling will get you very close to the optimal configs you have to be for pa audio on your system.

This message is really in reply more to vasettoo initial question.

It soes not however address the situation for this post by OP, who may be better served using one of the blueman configration tool i think as what is that makes ot seem like the a2dp is the correct profile?

The bluetooth AVR needs to work on at least the two most basic levels (hardware is the first), so make sure you know some basic info about the AV receiver. Second is the software, which is your system communicating over bluetooth with receiver. In the OSI network layers model this breakdown is a huge ovrrsimplification but the isea is what can be helpful hopefully. Check if the hardware has the builtin features for compatibility with whatever you are using it for (just audio right?) the find the tight bluetooth management tool and it should help a lot to manage the settings of a connection.

With any luck youbwill hit on the issue shortly and theni would suggest after the connection works to see that the configuration is getting saved and stored for future uses. MicKi not to discourage you but curious actually why would the profile be a2dp for the device? Isnt that complicatinf it more than it needs to? There should be a iotion for dingle sink use, saving the pissibility of your blueman thinking this piece of audio output is maybe a input.

MickKi · Veteran Joined: 08 Feb 2004 Posts: 1173

thank you LIsLinuxIsSogood,

MickKi · Veteran Joined: 08 Feb 2004 Posts: 1173

Ha! What do you know?! Blueman worked! :-)

I had to disconnect/reconnect with the AVR using blueman twice over, then disable/re-enable a2dp, the laptop speakers went quiet and sound started coming out of AVR speakers - after I unmuted the audio using pactl.

Thank you LIsLinuxIsSogood for suggesting blueman - now I need to find out why I need blueman to do this, or how I can achieve the same without it.
_________________
Regards,
Mick

LIsLinuxIsSogood · Veteran Joined: 13 Feb 2016 Posts: 1179

Yea, I believe this isn't going to be the answer you want to hear, but the reason for various software interfaces like blueman or even pulseaudio is because of the otherwise difficult job the user faces alone when configuring these highly complex systems for audio, networking components.

Here's a book that could help:
https://www.amazon.com/Bluetooth-Operation-Use-Robert-Morrow/dp/007138779X/ref=sr_1_12?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1512697681&sr=1-12&keywords=computer+network+bluetooth

It's sort of a joke, but also maybe not!