Ubuntu – No sound from bluetooth headset, but it’s detected

I have a Divoom Voombox-outdoor, and I had similar issues. Everything playing would stop/freeze and it would not work after I connected it.

After I have searched on the internet, I have found a procedure to do when connecting and removing it. On a initial connection (and unique if the procedures after this one are always made):

• connect the bluetooth speaker/headset (may be using blueman or bluetoothctl or another equivalent);
• with pavucontrol or blueman (or equivalent), turn off the bluetooth device;
• disconnect the device.

Then connecting it (this time to work):

• connect the bluetooth speaker/headset (may be using blueman or bluetoothctl or another equivalent);
• with pavucontrol or blueman (or equivalent), choose the option High Fidelity Playback (A2DP Sink).

It would need to turn off the internal sound to make all programs use the bluetooth sink.

When disconnecting it:

• with pavucontrol or blueman (or equivalent), turn off the sound device;
• disconnect the bluetooth speaker/headset (may be using blueman or bluetoothctl or another equivalent).

The three procedures can be done using only blueman, as on it there are options to change the audio configuration.

What may happen is forgetting to turn the device off on pavucontrol before disconnecting, which will require to do again the first procedure. This is curious, because the speaker, sometimes, turn off when that is done, as if its firmware had crashed (this is still better than Windows 10, which asks to reboot).

I use Xubuntu 16.04, so there may be differences between the programs used, but the idea is to always turn off the sink of the device from pulseaudio before disconnecting it.