Bluetooth headset with poor sound quality on Ubuntu

Solution 1:

Solution: Go into sound settings, then see what the SHB4000 is using. If it uses HSP/HFP change to A2DP.

Solution 2:

Here is the solution that worked for me on Debian 9 (menu impossible to apply)

Important: you will have to restart bluetooth before each reconnection !

Source: https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/415928/325467

I am using a SoundBuds Curve headset in Debian 9, and have had the same problem, I was unable to switch from the HSP/HFP profile to the A2DP profile.

What fixed the issue for me, was editing /etc/bluetooth/main.conf

sudo nano /etc/bluetooth/main.conf

First add the following lines under the [General] tag (copied from audio.conf, I found searching for a solution):

# Automatically connect both A2DP and HFP/HSP profiles for incoming
# connections. Some headsets that support both profiles will only connect the
# other one automatically so the default setting of true is usually a good
# idea.
AutoConnect=true

Next you must enable support for multiple profiles (a few lines below) just uncomment and set value to multiple

MultiProfile = multiple

Then restart bluetooth service

sudo systemctl restart bluetooth 

Important: you will have to restart bluetooth before each reconnection !

Solution 3:

For those experiencing this with Ubuntu 16.04, and switching to A2DP only worked once, I had to disconnect, forget the device, reconnect, switch to A2DP, for it to start working again.

(Wanted to post this as a comment, but n00b-ness prevents this)

Solution 4:

For anyone, that uses the Microphone of their Headset with Ubuntu and complain about bad sound and speech quality:

There is a new update in Mai 2021:

With this commit, HFP can be enabled which supports wideband audio-speech via bluetooth. I was able to improve my microphone quality alot and my colleagues actually can understand me now and I dont sound like talking with an old phone.

Tested on Ubuntu 20.04 with Sony 1000-mx3

For this to work you need to clone the latest pulseaudio master from their git repository by:

git clone https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/pulseaudio/pulseaudio.git

Compile and install via

meson build
sudo ninja -C build install
sudo ldconfig

Taken from the docs of pulseaudio

You might have to install source-dependencies for the compilation to work. For this goto open Software-Settings with software-properties-gtk and enable source. Then install the build-dependencies with sudo apt-get build-dep pulseaudio

Restart. Then, when you open your Sound-Settings you are able to choose the HFP-Profile, which enables much better sound-quality for VOIP. For best music-quality, still better switch to A2DP again, however, this one does not support microphone usage.

Solution 5:

The solution which worked for me is here

basically it says to do:

$sudo apt install pulseaudio pulseaudio-utils pavucontrol pulseaudio-module-bluetooth

then add:

[General]
Enable=Source,Sink,Media,Socket

to /etc/bluetooth/audio.conf and run:

sudo service bluetooth restart

Then reconnect your headphones and it should work. It did for me!