Bluetooth audio stops working after a while

    Got this same problem, did anyone solve this problem?
    When on HDMI and Analoge sound everything works perfect, problem only with bluetooth sound. After the bluetooth sound did disappear it also does not work on hdmi or analogue.
    Have to restart my rapsberry.

    Quote from lrusak


    Use an external Bluetooth dongle with your RPi

    Nice Joke! My friend, this is a bug who need to be fixed. The onboard bluetooth of the RPi it's already good. Think if yours USB Ports of your PC are not working because of drivers, what you do? You buy a PCI USB adapter? Or you find the drivers? :)

    • Official Post
    Quote from MysteriousBoy

    Nice Joke! My friend, this is a bug who need to be fixed. The onboard bluetooth of the RPi it's already good. Think if yours USB Ports of your PC are not working because of drivers, what you do? You buy a PCI USB adapter? Or you find the drivers? :)

    "drivers" aren't going to fix the poor on board antenna or limited bandwidth the on board Bluetooth device provides especially when using the on board wifi at the same time.

    Sorry.

    Bug also present when WiFi off! I think it has more to do with the audio format. Anyone can look in my log which i posted here?!

    [size=-1]Send with much love & Android.[/size]

    Quote from freefly42


    ↵I've been chasing down the same problem--very difficult to trace the problems, but it doesn't seem to be anything wrong in Kodi, it's actually in the bluetooth stack. With a bluetooth keyboard connected, I found when the Dolby Digital audio started to cause problems it also caused the keyboard not to work.

    In trying to troubleshoot, I found other references to problems with the built-in bluetooth device on the Pi3. Since I happened to have a Bluetooth USB dongle, I disabled the built-in bluetooth by adding the following to /flash/config.txt

    Code
    dtoverlay=pi3-disable-bt

    This disabled the built-in bluetooth, but does not disable USB bluetooth. Interestingly the built-in bluetooth is not USB, and I believe the root issue is actually the bandwidth for the data interface with the built-in bluetooth being insufficient for hi definition audio.

    Anyway, with USB bluetooth device streaming audio works perfectly even with Dolby Digital. Seems annoying to have such a limitation on the built-in hardware.

    Ok.
    Disabled the build-in BCM2835 BT controller in the config.txt
    Put in usb my BCM2045 BT controller
    Reboot


    But under LibreElec 7.0.3 settings > bluetooth > No Bluetooth Controller found
    bluetoothctl list = empty


    Is my BT Stick not compatible?

    Found a "Cambridge Silicon Radio, Ltd Bluetooth Dongle (HCI mode)" Stick under my couch! Is working now, YEAH!

    Send with much love & Android.

    Edited once, last by Cris_ (February 14, 2017 at 11:59 PM).

    I had the same issue, tried the suggested workarounds - no success,
    I tried the following: setting the "Keep Audio Alive" to "10 minutes" in "System"--> "Settings" --> "Audio..." Don´t set it to "Always", doesn´t work, tried it.
    Now I can listen for an extended period of time... still waiting for the drop out... fingers crossed.
    Hope that helps, as this Pi 3 is a nice system and crappy bluetooth hardware would be very stupid.

    Quote from kaios

    I had the same issue, tried the suggested workarounds - no success,
    I tried the following: setting the "Keep Audio Alive" to "10 minutes" in "System"--> "Settings" --> "Audio..." Don´t set it to "Always", doesn´t work, tried it.
    Now I can listen for an extended period of time... still waiting for the drop out... fingers crossed.
    Hope that helps, as this Pi 3 is a nice system and crappy bluetooth hardware would be very stupid.

    Does it work correct now?
    Kaois are You still fighting with the raspberry bluetooth or working on a dongle?
    I have ordered a bluetooth dongle will check it out.

    Quote from Wozik


    Same here. I use Logitech BT Adapter that is connected to my amplituner.

    Got the same BT Adapter.
    Im trying with the external bluetooth and still got the same problem.
    How should I configure the system to be sure the bluetooth that im using is dongle not internal? :)

    Hi, suffering from a similar problem here. At work so I can't post a log file, but these are my symptoms:

    Hardware and config: Pi 3 with ethernet cable via homeplug, internal wifi off via LE config screen (how can I tell it's really off?), internal bluetooth enabled. Latest LE (8.0.1).
    Headphones are these:

    Bluetooth Headphones, Orinsong Bluetooth 4.1 Wireless: Amazon.co.uk: Electronics

    Turn headphones on, boot up, sometimes they are already connected, otherwise I need to go into the set up and reconnect them. Make sure audio is set to PULSE audio out, I haven't tweaked any other setting like downmixing. Play a media file from my NAS, it works fine for a few seconds then I lose sound and usually the picture breaks up too. Press stop, start, the picture is jerky and unwatchable, still no sound. I reboot, try the same video, no sound at all and the video stutters severely. If I turn the Pi completely off, wait a few seconds and start, then all is well until I start the video, same issue then. If I change the audio output to HDMI and play the video it works perfectly.

    I'm sitting a metre away from the Pi all this time. I can't believe it's due to the "weak" strength of the internal Pi BT chip due to the symptoms above, it's far more likely to be a software issue.

    Any recommendations? I don't want to get a USB dongle for the Pi as I reckon this is a LE issue and I'd end up with the same problems. Looking at one of those BT dongles you can plug into the TV headphone out socket in the meantime but this just seems a little OTT.

    Edited once, last by richardb70 (April 4, 2017 at 9:22 AM).

    So I am dealing with this same issue, I have found that playing an file lower than 1080p it plays almost without any issue. Has anybody found a solution to the audio dropping and frame rate stuttering with PULSE audio?

    Hilarious that people keep posting asking for a solution when the solution has already been posted. Buy a USB Bluetooth dongle. The problem isn't the antenna nor the software stack. The same software stack is used for external BT devices. The problem is the built in bluetooth uses a very limited UART interface and it lacks DMA and the bandwidth to support high quality streamed audio. Can't fix that with software.

    Hi there,

    I have used an external bluetooth dongle for my RPi ZeroW and I get the exact same behaviour as with the onboard. Connection drops after a few seconds or after playback starts.

    Thanks.

    Quote from Cris_

    Disabled the build-in BCM2835 BT controller in the config.txt

    Found a "Cambridge Silicon Radio, Ltd Bluetooth Dongle (HCI mode)" Stick under my couch! Is working now, YEAH!

    This solves my problem. I tested first an older BT 3 dongle which works better than the internal one. But with the BT 4.0 Cambridge Silicon Radio with CSR8510 A10 for 4 € the dropouts away. But there are only 10 cm between my sender and receiver. Maybe I will try sometime a headset and walk around.

    I fiddel sometime around with the tips from Raspberry Pi 3 + UART/Bluetooth issues - YouTube

    In order to get the UART run reliable. But no success.

    Maybe someone is smarter an get the internal bt run stable.