It's an issue with the amount of power/bandwidth supplied to the BluetoothAudioAgent, the daemon in charge of streaming. Apparently most people have had success by entering the following command in terminal.app:
defaults write com.apple.BluetoothAudioAgent "Apple Bitpool Min (editable)" -int 40
Source: http://lifehacker.com/fix-your-bluetooth-audio-in-yosemite-with-this-terminal-1670380974
The source article lists Yosemite as the specific OS this applies to, but I know that this fix also works back to Mavericks and (possibly) Snow Leopard (untested).
I am having this exact issue at the moment and entered that command with non-noticeable results. I'm going to reboot the machine and see if that takes the new settings into account. But it seems like this command is the way that the wide majority of people have resolved this issue.
EDIT: Just rebooted, the audio quality is significantly better. No noticeable choppiness whatsoever (knock on wood). It appears that the command I posted above does seem to resolve the issue.
EDIT 2 (2015-8-24): The above command does help in many cases and produces noticeable quality improvements. Unfortunately, however, Yosemite is very moody with regard to bluetooth audio. The problem compounds itself when in proximity of other bluetooth devices. To expand on my previous answer above, I highly recommend entering the following additional commands to increase other bluetooth audio parameters:
defaults write com.apple.BluetoothAudioAgent "Apple Bitpool Max (editable)" 80
defaults write com.apple.BluetoothAudioAgent "Apple Bitpool Min (editable)" 48
defaults write com.apple.BluetoothAudioAgent "Apple Initial Bitpool (editable)" 40
defaults write com.apple.BluetoothAudioAgent "Apple Initial Bitpool Min (editable)" 40
defaults write com.apple.BluetoothAudioAgent "Negotiated Bitpool" 58
defaults write com.apple.BluetoothAudioAgent "Negotiated Bitpool Max" 58
defaults write com.apple.BluetoothAudioAgent "Negotiated Bitpool Min" 48
EDIT 3 (2015-9-08): Alright. I'm sorry I keep updating this answer, but I keep finding more information about this issue (since improving bluetooth audio on Yosemite is a long-term effort, apparently). I've found several sources that cut straight to the mustard and set everything to 80 which appears to be the maximum allowable value for Bitpool settings. If the above settings don't work well enough for you, try the "All In™" approach.
defaults write com.apple.BluetoothAudioAgent "Apple Bitpool Max (editable)" 80
defaults write com.apple.BluetoothAudioAgent "Apple Bitpool Min (editable)" 80
defaults write com.apple.BluetoothAudioAgent "Apple Initial Bitpool (editable)" 80
defaults write com.apple.BluetoothAudioAgent "Apple Initial Bitpool Min (editable)" 80
defaults write com.apple.BluetoothAudioAgent "Negotiated Bitpool" 80
defaults write com.apple.BluetoothAudioAgent "Negotiated Bitpool Max" 80
defaults write com.apple.BluetoothAudioAgent "Negotiated Bitpool Min" 80
To see your current defaults:
defaults read com.apple.BluetoothAudioAgent
Edit 4 (2016-07-14): One more (hopefully last) edit. Make sure that you restart the bluetoothaudiod (or coreaudiod) service after making changes to these settings.
sudo killall bluetoothaudiod
Or, if you are on El Capitan:
sudo killall coreaudiod
Credit for this goes to the multiple wise nerds below who suggested it. (Thank you!)
I solved this choppy audio issue with just one simple trick.
(This might not work for everyone, but I solved it this way)
Short answer
If your hardware uses Bluetooth 4.0 instead of 4.2 or above, this solution is highly likely to work for you.
Open System Preferences > Sound > Input
Change sound input from Airpods to Internal Microphone
Long answer (+ Possible explanation)
(This is just my hypothesis based on my observation)
First of all, to clarify my symptoms,
I am using a MacBook Pro 15 inch (Late 2013) which has Bluetooth 4.0 hardware.
The choppy audio issue only happened in my MacBook Pro, and it did not happen in my other Apple devices such as my iPhone 7 Plus (which btw, has Bluetooth 4.2), nor my iPad Pro (also Bluetooth 4.2).
Based on these observations, my hypothesis is that Bluetooth 4.0 devices have too low bandwidth to handle both input/output (microphone & speaker) at a high quality. However, if I just change the audio input to the internal microphone, the Bluetooth connection only delivers sound output, so I think it can handle higher quality audio. On the other hand, if I use both microphone & speaker on a Bluetooth 4.0 device, I think the connection degrades and sacrifices audio output bandwidth in order to make room for delivering audio input.
Indeed, according to some sources, Bluetooth 4.2 is 250% faster and has 10x more capacity
Reference:
- https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-main-differences-between-Bluetooth-4-0-4-1-and-4-2-in-the-Layers-Baseband-LMP-L2CAP-app-Layer
- https://www.semiconductorstore.com/blog/2015/BLE-4-2-vs-BLE-4-1/1548/
Best Answer
Looking at support documents at Jabra, the earbuds aren't designed for use with a computer:
No, we do not recommend you pair your Jabra Bluetooth device directly with a computer. Jabra Bluetooth headsets are optimized to be used with other Bluetooth devices, such as, smartphones or tablets. They are not optimized to be used directly with a computer. We cannot guarantee device performance or provide support for performance problems that may result from this. If you choose to pair your Jabra Bluetooth device with a computer, it could work for audio streaming, but not for call control, which is not supported by many computers. Also, audio quality could vary depending on the model of the computer.