Debugging Help: S11-FLEX HD Won't Select A2DP Profile

by Stephen Fluin 2012.12.29

I recently purchased a S11-Flex HD Wireless Stereo Bluetooth Headset . This high quality bluetooth headset has very decent audio. I use mine for going to the gym, or just listening to music on my phone while travelling, or even sitting at my desk.

I have a bluetooth adapter that is plugged in an working well with my Kubuntu 12.10 installation. When I plugged in the adapter and paired with the S11 headset, everything went great. I could play audio from my computer on my headset, and the device even mixed in audio from my phone at the same time. The problem came when I tried to listen to music and everything came out low quality.

I went into both the System Settings in KDE as well as installing pavucontrol, but I didn't have any luck in terms of switching the device away from HSP/HFP which is the headset protocol into A2DP, which is the audio protocol. After debugging for quite some time, I realized that the headset is capable of mixing streams, but only by combining these two protocols.

The solution was to unpair my phone (or temporarily turn off bluetooth), and then my computer could select the appropriate profile for high-quality audio streaming.


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