I have a DR-BT50 bluetooth headset (they are headphones) that I want to use with my MacBook unibody. I didn't use to have any problems, but as of recently I am running into gaps/skips in the sound. This happens mostly in third party music players (including flash/youtube videos) although I see it in iTunes, just less often. I know my headset is ok, because it works perfectly with my phone. Also, interference is unlikely the problem, since the headset works well with the phone one foot away from MacBook, and one would think that whatever is interfering with the computer talking to the headphones would also mess with the connection to the phone. Anyway, I know it's a Bluetooth issue because I have absolutely no problems with wired headphones. That said, I have no idea where to start debugging it. I played with all the Bluetooth options I could find, and reset everything to factory defaults (erasing all devices and re-pairing) yet to no avail.
On top of this, maybe related or maybe not (this is an older problem) the Bluetooth audio connection sometimes becomes "garbled". What I mean by this is that, whenever music is playing on the computer I just hear crazy digital noise on the headphones. No errors, no nothing, just continuous garble. I have to turn off Bluetooth on the computer and re-connect to make it go away.
Is there anything else I can do, or am I stuck with using wired headphones with my MacBook?
Best Answer
The best step to isolating your issue would be to collect some data about the bluetooth environment where you are using your mac. Radio waves come and go with other devices, new phones, degrading antennas and changes in bluetooth firmware.
The Bluetooth Explorer is the best tool I have found to troubleshoot bluetooth hardware and data. It's free as part of Xcode from the Mac App Store.
You can debug data issues, see the protocols that connected devices are using, and get to all manner of engineering data relating to bluetooth such as errors, relative signal strength indication (RSSI). It's hard to tell if this will help you, but it lets me know when a microwave or home phone was causing noise issues on several occasions when my hardware was otherwise working properly.