Survey: A2DP aka Stereo Bluetooth Problems (What have been your Degrees of success?)

[audax]

I am running JF1.5, attempting to inter-operate with a Sony BT2600 Stereo Bluetooth in-dash car stereo. I had no problem pairing initially with the G1 once I installed 1.5. However, the stereo Bluetooth is essentially useless for playing back music because it drops out for a fraction of a second every minute or so, really kills the vibe, ya know. The other really wierd malfunction is that the sample rate seems to vary from time to time, by like 10% or something, as though it was going from 44.1kHz to 48kHz and what not.

Since I have only one device that can recieve A2PD BT, I have no way of testing whether the device that is the root of the problem is the phone, or the reciever. I suspect the phone because it is the type of drop out which is an actual stall of the playback, picking back up where it left off, rather than the type where it misses a section that is never heard, ( which i surmise would indicate a connection problem).

I've also been careful to ensure that there aren't other resource intensive apps running that could bog down the CPU, the pheomena seems to be insensitive to those conditions.

Am very curious to hear what other peoples experiences have been with this new feature, (which is the one that I was most eagerly anticipating on the Cupcake release, as I know many others were).

(I intend to run some more exhaustive tests using a selection of MP3's at different encode rates, as well as standard wave files, I'll post about these results when I've done them).

[GuniGuGu]

I thought there was something wrong with my phone at first to be honest.. maybe a heavy load or something... but yeah.. experiencing the same issue exactly here with my car stereo on a2dp I've been testing it quite a bit over the last few days, and not once has it played ~3mins without some sort of slight pause in-between.

[sdsviet]

i've have issue with my sony bt street style stereo headset (dr-bt21g). i used it before with my sony ericsson p1 and it would do the skipping every minute or so also. i read on the forum that it was the phone since a lot of people have it. i used it on my laptop and i remember not having any problems but now i'm getting the same issue with my g1. so i'm hoping its the phone since it is something that can be fixed. if its the headset i would have to buy a new one.

[skesseks]

yup, same symptoms hear (ha). sometimes it is not as bad... maybe dropping out every 2-3 minutes, other times is does this more like 2-3 times a minute.

sucks...
both sad and glad to hear that it the phone.

my wife has a stock g1, after it is upgraded to 1.5, I will see if it exhibits the same problem

[Pinesal]

I use a LG stereo headset and it works perfect.

[agentaaron]

lol...I have a cheap bluetooth adapter that I bought off dealextreme.com for like $13.00, i must say im impressed, I use it everyday at work for a solid 8 hours and it lasts all day. I have never experienced any cutout of the audio.

P.S. The range is impressive as well...I can easily go outside for a smoke, to my wifes office or to the bathroom and leave my phone in my office on the charging dock...I love it.

[Shel]

I tried the Motorola S9 HD with the G1, and it skipped pretty badly. Also, other then volume up/down, the other controls didn't seem to work. Sound quality, when it was playing, was excellent!

Also tried Sony Ericcson HBH IS800, and they seemed to skip much less. Went about ten minutes without skipping, building my hopes that they wouldn't, but they did then skip for a second, then continued playing. Sound quality was also excellent, and the fit was much better on my nogen. The S9's, for me, were pretty uncomfortable. IS800's were almost unnoticable when wearing them.

Me thinkest that A2DP is still a work in progress for Android. At least it's now added, which I would think will prompt feedback of the skipping errors and hopefully an update.

[LazyGenius]

I tried the Motorola S9 HD with the G1, and it skipped pretty badly. Also, other then volume up/down, the other controls didn't seem to work. Sound quality, when it was playing, was excellent!

Also tried Sony Ericcson HBH IS800, and they seemed to skip much less. Went about ten minutes without skipping, building my hopes that they wouldn't, but they did then skip for a second, then continued playing. Sound quality was also excellent, and the fit was much better on my nogen. The S9's, for me, were pretty uncomfortable. IS800's were almost unnoticable when wearing them.

Me thinkest that A2DP is still a work in progress for Android. At least it's now added, which I would think will prompt feedback of the skipping errors and hopefully an update.

i am going through the EXACT same thing.... same bt headphones same issues...

[perpetualrabbit]

I'm really happy that a2dp works now. I use a jabra bt8030 headset/headphone combination, and it is brilliant.

Unfortunately, audio does skip a lot. Sometimes it skips for as long as 5 to 10 seconds, and multiple times per minute.

My phone seems to skip audio with a2dp when I'm using wifi at the same time, and also when I'm in the neighborhood of someone's wifi basestation, which is very often since I live in a densely populated area. Also cars and motorcycles seem to cause skipping. This would all point to radio interference being part of the problem. However, skipping also happens when logging in with my login pattern, or generally using the phone's CPU, for instance when making photos.

I think it is important to tackle this problem. Therefore I want to pose a number of questions that everyone experiencing this can answer, regarding frequency and duration of dropouts, what radio services are running on your phone (wifi, gps, bluetooth, 3G, 2G etc.), if it is busy with other stuff. We need to know where this problem comes from.

1. How often does audio skip?
number of skips per minute or hour:
2. How long is audio gone when it skips?
duration of skip in seconds:
3. Any other audio degradation like hissing, choppyness, loss of stereo, strange noises?
4. Is wifi on and being used when it skips (mine does)?
5. Is GPS on and being used when it skips?
6. Is bluetooth connecting or trying to connect to anything else besides your headset (obviously)? My audio skips a lot when my G1 tries to connect to the bluetooth fileservice on my computer, for instance.
7. Is your phone using 3G when it skips?
8. Is your phone using 2G when it skips?
9. Does your phone skip audio when using GPS?
10. Does it skips while drawing your access pattern (mine does)?
11. Are you able to use the webradio program `streamfurious´ (in the market) with a2dp? (if you can't, that might point to bluetooth and other radio signals interfering or something like that)
12. Is your phone's cpu very busy when your audio skips?
13. Refrasing 11): what programs were you running on your phone when skipping happened?
14. Does skipping happen when making a photo or a video?
15. Does skipping happen when using the compass?
16. Does skipping happen _more_ when the battery is low?
17. Type of skip: does it pause the music for some time, or does it actually _skip_ a section of the music (i.e. that is never heard). I think this is important too, because I think the thread starter is right in thinking that the first kind can be a load-problem, or missed realtime deadline (is Music a hard realtime application? I think it should be...) while the second kind indeed could be a connection problem. But: when the phone is doing some wifi/3g/gps thing, this could also cause the CPU to bog down or cause some long interrupt in the Linux kernel, therefore causing skipping. So some kind of interference between bluetooth and some other radio service might _not_ be the problem after all.
18. Any other questions that might diagnose this problem?

[Tactical Fart]

I've been having similar problems. I'm using the Motorola S705. I like to walk the neighborhood while listening to my music (it makes it more enjoyable) and I think I noticed that it doesn't "skip" when I just sit on my bed.

Also I'm less than 15 feet from my wireless router.

Another experiment I tried was when I set my phone on a platform in my backyard and walked around vigorously. This was to test whether or not my phone or dongle was to blame because, like I said, it only skipped when I walked.

Also, at one point I was using JF 1.5. I thought it was the build I was using and tried Haykuro's latest. It worked perfectly on one walk, later it messed up again. At least now, I know it's not specifically my phone or device.