Ubuntu – How to get a consistent bluetooth audio playback

bluetoothbluetooth-speakerkeyboardpulseaudiosound

I am trying to use bluetooth audio speakers, as my integred laptop speakers are so awful… The speaker is a Bose Soundlink mini and works just fine with my smartphone for example.

When I try to use it with my laptop (Ubuntu 14.04), it works ok, until I begin to work. Then sound begins to shutter, with this kind of logs:

Sep  3 17:29:38 franck-ThinkPad-T430s pulseaudio[3673]: [bluetooth] module-bluetooth-device.c: Skipping 30147 us (= 5316 bytes) in audio stream
Sep  3 17:29:38 franck-ThinkPad-T430s pulseaudio[3673]: [bluetooth] module-bluetooth-device.c: Skipping 79152 us (= 13960 bytes) in audio stream
Sep  3 17:29:41 franck-ThinkPad-T430s pulseaudio[3673]: [bluetooth] module-bluetooth-device.c: Skipping 3467134 us (= 611600 bytes) in audio stream

This happens as soon as I type on the keyboard (be it in libreoffice or in a terminal, or whatever). The keyboard is not a bluetooth keyboard, in case you ask.

When using internal speakers, I don't suffer the same problem.

So, is there a trick to give the full bluetooth audio stack higher priority and get a consistent audio plackback ? (bluetoothd ? pulseaudio ? low level interupts ? ???)

UPDATE:
my bluetooth controller is attached to (internal) USB.

$ lsusb -v -s 001:004

Bus 001 Device 004: ID 0a5c:21e6 Broadcom Corp. BCM20702 Bluetooth 4.0 [ThinkPad]

Best Answer

I finally found a solution (in fact several one):

  1. Add threadirqs to my kernel params
  2. was better, but this was not enough, I also had to install rtirq-init

I then had an (almost) perfect bt sound playback.

Another option seems to use linux-lowlatency kernel. I still have to test this, but it should work. What is unclear is the drackbacks (power consumption ?).

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