Is it possible to have a Bluetooth audio device in HFS (Output/Input) with high quality audio?

I just purchased a pair of Sony WH-1000XM4s and have been impressed with the audio playback (music, calls).

However after spending an hour of configuration on Kubuntu 20.04, I cannot find any way of using the headphones with HFS mode and having high quality playback and recording.

Therefore as a current workaround I am using a separate laptop microphone as audio input and the bluetooth headset for audio output.

Is this a limitation of bluetooth, the distro, linux drivers?

Is there no way to hack this to have good quality?

Kubuntu Version: 20.04

Bluez Version: 5.53-0ubuntu3.3

Pulseaudio Version: 13.99.1

Pulse Audio Profile: A2DP Sink: LDAC

Solution 1:

In Ubuntu 21.10 the support for mSBC (a 16 kHz monaural configuration of the SBC codec) for the HFP profile got fixed. Not sure if it works out-of-the-box, but it's working for me and I'm very happy with the quality in my conference calls.

Just make sure you install pulseaudio-module-bluetooth:

sudo apt install --reinstall pulseaudio-module-bluetooth

Then check what codec is being assigned to your headset by running:

pactl list | grep -A2 "bluetooth.codec"

If you get something this in the output:

bluetooth.codec = "mSBC"

then congratulations, you're now using the mSBC codec!