Ubuntu – No sound with bluetooth headset, and media freezes

16.04bluetoothheadsetsound

After very painful update to 16.04 I have a problem with wireless headset Sony DR-BTN200. It doesn't produce any sound, and the media freezes.

For example, I open some video on youtube. It plays on laptop's speakers, I can hear the sound. Once I connect headset, the sound stops and video just pauses (however, pause button of youtube player is not pressed). The same thing is when I try to play some mp3 or watch any movie. The only exception is Spotify – it shows visually that track is playing, but there's no sound and also Spotify displays a notification that track cannot be played.

Once I disconnect headset, the video or audio continues playing from the place it paused. If I try to first connect headset and then open a video, it doesn't start (but is loading), and starts right after I disconnect headset.

I tried to press buttons on my headset. I can tell that youtube reacts on play button – it shows buttons, just like if I moved the mouse or pressed any button. But there's no any reaction, video still stays paused.

Headphones are connected as headset, profile is Hihg fidelity playback (A2DP sink). The problem appeared right after update to 16.04, it worked perfectly with 14.10.

Best Answer

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.

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