Poll of the Day > Why are my Bluetooth headphones crackling on my pc?

(+) Yeah! (+)

No issues when I pair them to my phone but they crackle like mad when I connect to my desktop.

No built in Bluetooth on my motherboard so Ive always used a BT adapter. Went out and bought a new adapter yesterday, same issue.

Tried a different pair of BT headphones, same issue.

Updated all my drivers, still the same issue. I am so stumped - theyre still crackling when connected to my pc. Ive had a different pair of headphones before which worked just fine so not sure why these two new pairs are suddenly all fucked up.

How I fix that

Anything that could be interfering with it? New microwave?

EM interference

sounds like bluetooth uses the same frequency as some WiFi (2.4GHz) and that can be the culprit (if you have one of those dual setups with both a 2.4GHz and 5GHz network and only use the 5GHz you could try disabling the 2.4 one.)

other things can be microwaves or fluorescent lights. maybe try moving the dongle if it's near something in particular with a large EM field around it like a powerbar/wall adapter or something.

em interference.

grab a laptop and move around with it to try it out

Ill try the laptop. Also Im wondering if its the GHz interference thingy, how come when I used my phone from the same location theres no crackling?

FatalAccident posted...

Im wondering if its the GHz interference thingy, how come when I used my phone from the same location theres no crackling?

certain frequencies are reserved for certain things. cellular seems like it's using a wide variety of frequencies that are less than 2GHz (with the odd one being above 2GHz). bluetooth and WiFi are both specifically using 2.4GHz (which really means something like 2.40-2.48 GHz). I don't have any direct experience with them interfering, it's just what comes up when researching this.

it may also just be coming from your PC directly. I know I've used a lot of computers where you could hear mouse movement and hard drive activity in the sound system, for example.

(one thing I wonder is how bluetooth would pick up interference if it's a digital protocol. I don't know enough about the protocol to know one way or the other, but it could mean that the interference is only present at the analog level, which I guess would be in the earbuds/headphones themselves. but I don't know and have nothing to test.)

Sahuagin posted...

cellular seems like it's using a wide variety of frequencies that are less than 2GHz

yeah 4g is exclusively <= 2.4GHz, 3g and lower use the wider bands.

Sahuagin posted...

certain frequencies are reserved for certain things. cellular seems like it's using a wide variety of frequencies that are less than 2GHz (with the odd one being above 2GHz). bluetooth and WiFi are both specifically using 2.4GHz (which really means something like 2.40-2.48 GHz). I don't have any direct experience with them interfering, it's just what comes up when researching this.

He's talking about connecting to the phone via Bluetooth.

Realistically the adapter isn't a very high standard and still has to pass through a noisy USB connection to be translated further along, while phones have their bluetooth and wifi built directly in to the chip, which is where the vast majority of R&D goes in to on a phone.

The only thing I could suggest is a high quality PCI-e network card to get a high standard of bluetooth straight to the motherboard, but even then I suspect it's not going to be as good as what your phone will manage.

It's also worth noting that if the new pairs run a higher bandwidth transfer protocol, there's more data to be interfered with, so it's more susceptible to loss than lower ones. There are sometimes ways to reduce the bitrate to improve connection standard (Sony had a system that would auto-switch between 3 different bitrates dependant on connection standard).

i dont get it

i've tried disabling the 2.4GHz and having just the 5GHz that doesn't work.

The crackling problem is only when I go onto youtube or play games.

No crackling when I use WMP or itunes to watch movies or listen to music.

What the fuck is going on? Wtf is it about sound from YT or games that makes it crackle but not sound from music or movies?

I'm so stumped

blow on them

FatalAccident posted...

No crackling when I use WMP or itunes to watch movies or listen to music.

What the fuck is going on? Wtf is it about sound from YT or games that makes it crackle but not sound from music or movies?

theoretically it would be which part of your computer it was passing through or how much is passing through.

but if youtube does it but playing a video file doesn't, that's definitely odd. I would guess that one of the two is hardware accelerated and the other isn't, or one is very high bandwidth and the other isn't. could also be that one is being played off a noisy drive and the other isn't. (though that would probably be the reverse of what you describe unless YT buffers video to the drive).

if games do it, then maybe it's hardware acceleration. (I know on mine that graphics and video playing both compete for graphical throughput and if I watch a video at 1080p60 my load times in games will be 10x longer and stuff will start failing to load into the game world.)

if it was me I would find a youtube video that did it and then download that video and try playing it off different drives, and I would try to find hw acceleration toggles in programs to see if that made a difference or not. also try switching between hi-res and low-res video.

(chrome hw accel. toggle is at Settings -> Advanced -> System. interestingly mine is off.)

@Sahuagin you mind explaining what hardware acceleration is?

Ill try playing with the settings and see if it makes a difference. Otherwise Im so exhausted with this shit Im just gonna buy a wired headset because its not worth the hassle.

edit: Ive just done a quick Google and apparently its when you offload tasks to a GPU or a sound card instead of just the CPU. I just remembered Ive got a shit sound card that I dont use taking up a PCIE slot so Ill remove the bitch and see if that makes a difference.

FatalAccident posted...

@Sahuagin you mind explaining what hardware acceleration is?

Ill try playing with the settings and see if it makes a difference. Otherwise Im so exhausted with this shit Im just gonna buy a wired headset because its not worth the hassle.

edit: Ive just done a quick Google and apparently its when you offload tasks to a GPU or a sound card instead of just the CPU. I just remembered Ive got a shit sound card that I dont use taking up a PCIE slot so Ill remove the bitch and see if that makes a difference.

I thought 'hm weird' on everything, but I bet you'll get results with this.

FatalAccident posted...

Ive just done a quick Google and apparently its when you offload tasks to a GPU or a sound card instead of just the CPU.

yeah. basically maybe the interference comes from the GPU, so theoretically turning HW accel. off could improve it. just random things I would try if I had the problem.

I'm gonna throw this computer out the window.

I took the soundcard out but now my bluetooth settings on win10 won't even let me click on "add new device" it's just greyed out lmao

OK put that back in lmao. Different slot?

ReturnOfFa posted...

OK put that back in lmao. Different slot?

I would see if that makes a difference again but slight problem with that

thanks for your help guys but this bitch is going straight into the bin.

All cos I changed a pair of fucking Bluetooth headphones jfc windows

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/1/6/1/AAUuW4AADSu5.jpg

"that escalated quickly". how did this turn out? losing your machine just from crackling wireless audio would not be great.

Sahuagin posted...

"that escalated quickly". how did this turn out? losing your machine just from crackling wireless audio would not be great.

it really did lol

im building a new computer now Made sure the motherboard has Bluetooth built in so Im not fucking around with adapters

rice krispies