Stuttering Bluetooth Audio 18.04

Problem:

Audio over bluetooth is unlistenable due to constant stuttering.

System details:

Kubuntu 18.04
USB bluetooth dongle (listed in lsusb as: 0b05:17cb ASUSTek Computer, Inc. Broadcom BCM20702A0 Bluetooth)
Computer connected to internet by Ethernet (no wifi)
packages up to date
2 x Intel Xeon 5150 processors
about 8GB of RAM

Things that aren't the problem:

the problem is not interference (the headphones work fine on my phone / Windows computer in the same location)
audio in general (audio over headphone jack is fine)
probably not a connection issue (the headphones connect quickly, and I've disabled bluetooth on my phone and Windows laptop while testing)

I've tried:

updating bluez (Bluetooth Problem Ubuntu 18.04 LTS)
modifying the tsched on module-udev-detect (Crackling and delayed sound after upgrading to 18.04)
modifying nice and suchlike (https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=42&t=44862)
editing the alsa config to use model=generic (A2DP on PulseAudio - terrible choppy/skipping audio)
enabling threadirqs and installing rtirq-init (How to get a consistent bluetooth audio playback?)

Nothing has worked. It's probably 50% better now with threadirqs and rtirq-init, but it's still unusable...

Any pointers for more things to try would be much appreciated.

Solution 1:

was having the same problem. Also tried upgrade to 19 as well as bluez.

What finally worked for me was to restart the service:

sudo service bluetooth restart

the first time I tried it, it didn't restart cleanly, but it worked on the second try. Listening to music now for over an hour and no stuttering.

Not sure how often this will need to be done, but I can imagine putting it in crontab if no one patches it for awhile.