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[Q] Bluetooth Audio Quality Issues Fix?

Hey guys,
I've just got droid charge last week and I like everything about it (only after rooting and installing Gummycharged), but there is one huge problem for me. Well, it might be 2, but one of them is slightly better with Gummycharged and voodoo lagfix.
Here's the issue - I love listening to music in my car through bluetooth and until recently I've been using my Ipod touch 4g and it has been working flawlessly and music quality was great. Now, once I got the Droid Charge, I've noticed 2 things - every minute or 2 the songs would skip (interrupt), and the sound quality was pretty terrible (mainly with the high end - sounded like tweeters were being overloaded).
Rooting the phone helped with skipping - it now happens once in 10 minutes or so, so that's acceptable, however the sound quality is still pretty horrible. I've looked around on these forums and people had similar issues with quality with their stock phones and most people suggest CyanogenMod. I'm not all that familiar with what different ROMs are available for Charge, but as far as I can tell this one isn't. Does anyone know if there is way to fix/configure the quality of bluetooth transmission on this phone? Is there any mod I can install? Anyone having similar issues?
Any help is much appreciated!

FuriousOne said:
Hey guys,
I've just got droid charge last week and I like everything about it (only after rooting and installing Gummycharged), but there is one huge problem for me. Well, it might be 2, but one of them is slightly better with Gummycharged and voodoo lagfix.
Here's the issue - I love listening to music in my car through bluetooth and until recently I've been using my Ipod touch 4g and it has been working flawlessly and music quality was great. Now, once I got the Droid Charge, I've noticed 2 things - every minute or 2 the songs would skip (interrupt), and the sound quality was pretty terrible (mainly with the high end - sounded like tweeters were being overloaded).
Rooting the phone helped with skipping - it now happens once in 10 minutes or so, so that's acceptable, however the sound quality is still pretty horrible. I've looked around on these forums and people had similar issues with quality with their stock phones and most people suggest CyanogenMod. I'm not all that familiar with what different ROMs are available for Charge, but as far as I can tell this one isn't. Does anyone know if there is way to fix/configure the quality of bluetooth transmission on this phone? Is there any mod I can install? Anyone having similar issues?
Any help is much appreciated!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Have you looked at this thread? It's more about disconnections, but the fix they list might help you, too.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1099603

chadness said:
Have you looked at this thread? It's more about disconnections, but the fix they list might help you, too.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1099603
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks, but the problem is more fundamental, I suppose. Looks like HTC and Samsung use some custom bluetooth code in their ROMs. Apparently it limits the bitpool value at 32, which makes the audio quality terrible over bluetooth. Surprisingly, everyone knows what the problem is but so far the only reported solution is the cyanogenmod.
Here's more about it:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=708685
http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=9888

Wow, nasty and long standing! Glad I didn't buy one of those headsets like I was going to. *sigh*

Hey guys,
I'm running GummyCharged 1.85 w/ the voodoo kernel (pbj) and also getting skips over bluetooth to my car stereo. It's seriously distracting and annoying. My Droid 2 worked flawlessly in this respect, but it seems like any time the Charge does any "thinking" it makes the BT audio skip.
Any hope of a fix for this?

My Charge is stock and I haven't had a chance to try the bluetooth audio streaming yet, but when I plug my phone into my car to listen to music through the aux jack it does the same thing, about once every song it skips. Seems odd. I'll try bluetooth today on my way to school and see what happens. You'd think with Bluetooth 3.0 on board the signal would be strong enough to stream decent quality music...
I can confirm this issue is there and in your face a lot. I tried it on the way to school (about a 40 minute ride), it skipped once or twice every few minutes, no big deal. The quality was acceptable for wireless transfer, nothing to write home about. Not a lot of low end, and just a hint of static and slightly over-boosted highs. However I tried it again on the way home once I realized I had forgotten my aux cable, and it skipped so often I just switched to FM. It was so annoying. I can confirm your suspicions that it seems to happen when the phone is trying to do something. Switching towers, background apps, turning on data and checking traffic with Google Maps really freaked it out, but it was fine once I was done. Kinda sucks for those who wish to use the feature regularly.

Update?
I have a droid charge, and the bluetooth streaming quality really sucks, like the OP pointed out, highs are really bad.
Tried with my friends iphone and it worked flawlessly.
CyanogenMod is still unavailable for the droid charge as far as I can tell.
Is there any other fix that anyone has found that will fix the bluetooth sound quality when streaming music?
Any help or places to look is appreciated.

[Q] Better bluetooth stereo quality

Got a pair of bluetooth headphones to use while I am riding my bike. The audio quality is very poor, is there anything I can do to improve it? Drivers, fixes etc.

braveally said:
Got a pair of bluetooth headphones to use while I am riding my bike. The audio quality is very poor, is there anything I can do to improve it? Drivers, fixes etc.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What set did you get? I use the Plantronics Backbeat 9xx (913 i think) and the quality is fine (and I'm pretty picky with audio quality). It also adds track skip, volume, mic right at the earpieces. Perfect for workouts.

Not yet (maybe not ever?). The problem is with the bluetooth drivers that Samsung uses. Apparently they have a low bitpool value hardcoded, which means bad sound quality for the end user. I was very much frustrated with the sound quality myself (coming from ipod touch which had crystal-clear lagless bluetooth audio) but there is nothing we can do ATM.
The only fix is a part of CyanogenMod, as far as I know. I think some devs are working on (or will be working on) bringing CM to Charge, but when or if it'll happen is yet to be seen.
Take a look here for more info:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1124466
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=708685

Good to know. I had a feeling that it was a poor driver issue. I have the motorola sd90. just get muffled sound and really poor bass. I get pretty good sound out of them from my laptop so I guess it's more of the phone.
Sent from my SCH-I510 using XDA Premium App

Bluetooth audio lag

Hi,
i have bluetooth Logitech Mini Boombox speaker, and i can say i am pretty disappointed.
Listening to mp3 and music in overall is OK, of course.
The problem is with video. Both BSplayer and Dice player give me a lag when watching movies.
Very hard to watch people speak as lip syncing is off.
Can anyone with bluetooth speakers try some movie and let me know the results.
Maybe some other video player plays better. Maybe it is Boombox that has problems (but i doubt).
Thing to have in mind: i tried playing from internal storage and streaming...both audio streams lag.
Aslo: the new firmware doesn't help.
Is this maybe normal for Android in overall? Shouldn't be.
Thx

Check out this thread maybe it can help
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1787662&highlight=blue+tooth

Svashtar said:
Hi,
i have bluetooth Logitech Mini Boombox speaker, and i can say i am pretty disappointed.
Listening to mp3 and music in overall is OK, of course.
The problem is with video. Both BSplayer and Dice player give me a lag when watching movies.
Very hard to watch people speak as lip syncing is off.
Can anyone with bluetooth speakers try some movie and let me know the results.
Maybe some other video player plays better. Maybe it is Boombox that has problems (but i doubt).
Thing to have in mind: i tried playing from internal storage and streaming...both audio streams lag.
Aslo: the new firmware doesn't help.
Is this maybe normal for Android in overall? Shouldn't be.
Thx
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If it makes you feel any better this problem is universal across multiple devices. It drives me crazy. It is present on the Transformer prime, TF300 Acer a510 and my Excite 7.7 even though these devices use different BT radios and different BT versions. I have heard people claim that some of these devices don't have video slowdown with BT. They do. Its subtle in some cases and might be overlooked but its there.
I have to assume it is OS related or Tegra related as these are the only things these devices have in common. I have found no way to completely minimize the slowdown in video. I have gone back to using wired headphones for video and BT for music and audio only where sync isn't a factor.
Here is one thing that does help. If you are playing a video that has AC3 audio encoding (most downloaded MKV files) the delay is increased slighty because the audio decoding is done by software not hardware - the video is delayed slightly to keep it in sync with the audio as it is decoded. Over BT this delay, for whatever reason is further exagerated.
For the record: ALL video players on Android decode AC3 in software, even Diceplayer - there is NO hardware support for AC3 on the tegra 3 chip.
To speed up your video you can try this: download the free software Avidemux. Use it to convert only the audio of your MKV file to AAC. By doing this you alow both audio and video to be decoded by hardware - this reduces a major source of lag. On a core i7 PC converting the audio to AAC takes less than 2 minutes on most videos. The video is left untouched - it is not re-encoded.
How to use Avidemux:
In the VIDEO drop down box select: COPY
In the AUDIO drop down box select: AAC
in the CONFIGURE box select a bitrate: 160 or whatever you prefer.
In the FILTERS box select Stereo for the Mixdown. (Why stereo? If you are listening through two speakers keep it simple - two channels are fastest to decode.)
In the FORMAT box select MP4.
In the FILE menu select SAVE then SAVE VIDEO and name your video with an MP4 extension. It will begin converting and will likely take only a couple of minutes on a fast machine.
Now you may find that your video plays fast enough to be acceptable over BT. I still find a faint lag noticeable even with full hardware decoding of audio.

Digital Man said:
If it makes you feel any better this problem is universal across multiple devices. It drives me crazy. It is present on the Transformer prime, TF300 Acer a510 and my Excite 7.7 even though these devices use different BT radios and different BT versions. I have heard people claim that some of these devices don't have video slowdown with BT. They do. Its subtle in some cases and might be overlooked but its there.
I have to assume it is OS related or Tegra related as these are the only things these devices have in common. I have found no way to completely minimize the slowdown in video. I have gone back to using wired headphones for video and BT for music and audio only where sync isn't a factor.
Here is one thing that does help. If you are playing a video that has AC3 audio encoding (most downloaded MKV files) the delay is increased slighty because the audio decoding is done by software not hardware - the video is delayed slightly to keep it in sync with the audio as it is decoded. Over BT this delay, for whatever reason is further exagerated.
For the record: ALL video players on Android decode AC3 in software, even Diceplayer - there is NO hardware support for AC3 on the tegra 3 chip.
To speed up your video you can try this: download the free software Avidemux. Use it to convert only the audio of your MKV file to AAC. By doing this you alow both audio and video to be decoded by hardware - this reduces a major source of lag. On a core i7 PC converting the audio to AAC takes less than 2 minutes on most videos. The video is left untouched - it is not re-encoded.
How to use Avidemux:
In the VIDEO drop down box select: COPY
In the AUDIO drop down box select: AAC
in the CONFIGURE box select a bitrate: 160 or whatever you prefer.
In the FILTERS box select Stereo for the Mixdown. (Why stereo? If you are listening through two speakers keep it simple - two channels are fastest to decode.)
In the FORMAT box select MP4.
In the FILE menu select SAVE then SAVE VIDEO and name your video with an MP4 extension. It will begin converting and will likely take only a couple of minutes on a fast machine.
Now you may find that your video plays fast enough to be acceptable over BT. I still find a faint lag noticeable even with full hardware decoding of audio.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Lets run a triathlon to! Hahaha, just to get synced audio to work, so much work. Things should just work they are supposed to. Shouldn't they?

Digital Man said:
If it makes you feel any better this problem is universal across multiple devices. It drives me crazy. It is present on the Transformer prime, TF300 Acer a510 and my Excite 7.7 even though these devices use different BT radios and different BT versions. I have heard people claim that some of these devices don't have video slowdown with BT. They do. Its subtle in some cases and might be overlooked but its there.
I have to assume it is OS related or Tegra related as these are the only things these devices have in common. I have found no way to completely minimize the slowdown in video. I have gone back to using wired headphones for video and BT for music and audio only where sync isn't a factor.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You sure all these devices use different radios or wifi/bt chipsets? The TF700 uses the BCM4329, a very common (and now pretty cheap) chipset that does Wifi, BT (2.1 EDR only) and FM. I'd guess a lot of other Tegra 3 devices uses that one as well. If they'd gone with the BCM4330 they would have BT 4.0 and probably 5GHz wifi as well. The BCM4329 supports this, but it requires antennas for it.
According to someone from Asus (someone here mentioned they'd contacted support about it) BT and wifi shares antennas (makes sense, they're both in the same frequency range) which can cause a lot of interference which leads to abysmal performance, especially for the wifi.
All I know for sure is I'll stick to wired headphones with this tablet...
Sent from my ASUS Transformer Pad TF700T using Tapatalk 2

Einride said:
You sure all these devices use different radios or wifi/bt chipsets? The TF700 uses the BCM4329, a very common (and now pretty cheap) chipset that does Wifi, BT (2.1 EDR only) and FM. I'd guess a lot of other Tegra 3 devices uses that one as well. If they'd gone with the BCM4330 they would have BT 4.0 and probably 5GHz wifi as well. The BCM4329 supports this, but it requires antennas for it.
According to someone from Asus (someone here mentioned they'd contacted support about it) BT and wifi shares antennas (makes sense, they're both in the same frequency range) which can cause a lot of interference which leads to abysmal performance, especially for the wifi.
All I know for sure is I'll stick to wired headphones with this tablet...
Sent from my ASUS Transformer Pad TF700T using Tapatalk 2
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So it doesn't bother you at all dropping half or more of thousand US dollars on a tablet you can't use wifi and bluetooth correctly? It is this type of atitude that makes Asus get away with things like this and not want to make better products. If they know people will just continue to buy their products, even with known defects and issues, they're not going to change anything except charge higher prices for you to pay. So sad.

Hi,
i will try the trick and change audio stream, just because i want to know if it gets any better.
I am not going to do this every time I know I'll watch a movie on my infinity.
Fortunately my bluetooth speaker also has a line-in jack, so i have a workaround, but i could do that on any f*****.. speaker also. Wouldn't need a bluetooth one
Anyway, just wanted to let everyone interested know, that i have tried same movie with wifi on and off - same result.
This means, yes BT and WIFI share antenna, but if that would be a primary problem, wouldn't it be only logical that when wifi is off, bluetooth gets better. And vice versa. Well, for me that is not the case, which means there is an obvious SW problem. Could be Asus, could be Android. That's the main question here now.
Did this problem get any better with custom roms on TF300?
Thx

opentoe said:
So it doesn't bother you at all dropping half or more of thousand US dollars on a tablet you can't use wifi and bluetooth correctly? It is this type of atitude that makes Asus get away with things like this and not want to make better products. If they know people will just continue to buy their products, even with known defects and issues, they're not going to change anything except charge higher prices for you to pay. So sad.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No, it does bother me, just not enough to RMA it. I pretty much just use wired headphones at the moment so I can live with it.
I could complain to Asus directly through their support form, but the last time I complained about I/O issues and ANR messages when browsing they suggested I enable software rendering in Internet Explorer 9.
I could RMA it, wait for months and then receive a tablet with the exact same flaw. Unless Asus can say that they've fixed the issue and you can get it replaced within days, I'm not RMA-ing anything. And that's not very likely to happen, is it?

Mixed results
So after reading this thread I decided to try it. I tried it with my bluetooth sound bar and netflix was stuttering, it would have to buffer and when it worked the video was choppy but the sound on the soundbar was fine. But then when I tried it with mine jay bird bluetooth headphones it works seamlessly kind of weird how one Bluetooth device wouldn't work but another one would.

hslsurfer said:
So after reading this thread I decided to try it. I tried it with my bluetooth sound bar and netflix was stuttering, it would have to buffer and when it worked the video was choppy but the sound on the soundbar was fine. But then when I tried it with mine jay bird bluetooth headphones it works seamlessly kind of weird how one Bluetooth device wouldn't work but another one would.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Bluetooth has been screwed up on so many devices for so long - with video slowdown on every Tegra based device I have owned - but it hasn't gotten a lot of attention. So I'm glad to see that it bugs other people too.
This problem was present even on my Tegra 2 based Galaxy Tab 10.1 and Motorola Xoom. So I've been pretty surprised to find exactly the same problem on the latest generation of devices.
It bothered me so much I took an sd card with videos and my BT headset down to Best Buy and Microcenter and tried every device they had, with the intention of buying the one that didn't demonstrate Video slowdown when listening through BT headphones. There weren't any.
I will say that with the Jaybird Freedom BT headset the problem is almost imperceptible, but when you switch to wired heaphones, you CAN notice the difference.Videos run faster and smoother. With BT there is just the slightest general slowdown which I find distracting.
Custom ROMs have never solved the problem for me either. Overclocking has also been suggested, but the TF700 should have a fast enough processor to handle anything I would think. So I kind of think the OS is to blame.
I've learned to love wired headphones and speakers again. I keep telling myself the audio quality is better anyway, while I try not to trip over the headset cord and flip my tablet across the room....

Does the iPad use the BCM4330 chipet? I know it features Bluetooth 4.0. It is ironic that Apple cheapens out on the camera, storage space, and connectivity, but gives a superior wifi/bluetooth chipset. I would be curious what the price difference between the two chipsets is. You would think Asus would be want to be competitive and advertise Bluetooth 4.0. The standard has existed for 2 years.

Cleanskinned said:
Does the iPad use the BCM4330 chipet? I know it features Bluetooth 4.0. It is ironic that Apple cheapens out on the camera, storage space, and connectivity, but gives a superior wifi/bluetooth chipset. I would be curious what the price difference between the two chipsets is. You would think Asus would be want to be competitive and advertise Bluetooth 4.0. The standard has existed for 2 years.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
There'll always be the tf800, lol

Splaktar said:
So I tried this last night. Here are my results:
Wifi speed with BT off and no streaming: 9.6-9.8 Mbps.
Wifi speed with BT off and streaming music on Google Play: 9.5-9.7 Mbps
Wifi speed with BT on and streaming music on Google Play: 9.5-9.7 Mbps
Wifi speed with BT on and streaming music on Google Play to Jambox: 9.5-9.7 Mbps
Thus I concluded that streaming music over BT to a speaker or headset had no problems or slow downs at all. So I decided to test with video. For this I used Amazon Prime Instant Video.
Wifi speed with BT off and no streaming: 9.6-9.8 Mbps.
Wifi speed with BT off and streaming video on APIV: 6.5-7.8 Mbps
Wifi speed with BT on and streaming video on APIV: 6.5-7.8 Mbps
Wifi speed with BT on and streaming video on APIV with audio going to Jambox: 6.7-7.9 Mbps
Now I think that the BT + streaming final test result being faster was not significant. I ran it at least 3 times to confirm and it was within those limits.
So at least for my personal copy of the Infinity, I am not seeing a WiFi slowdown while streaming over BT. I don't have 40+ Mbps internet, so maybe the slowdown is only at very high speeds and high radio power requirements.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Here are some tests that I posted in another thread.

Splaktar said:
Here are some tests that I posted in another thread.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Just to add another data point. My Prime will stream movies with Bluetooth with no sync issues or excessive buffering and has been like that since the day I got it. I'm unlocked and running a custom ROM (AW2.1). My Prime's WiFi is pretty solid (for a prime LOL) and my GPS is DOA.
I have been a big bluetooth audio fan (I stay up late watching movies frequently but am courteous to the rest of the family) for a while and one thing I have found is some headphones lag no matter what is transmitting. A reviewer will very often not notice it if they just listen to music. I've been using my GOgroove Wireless AirBands as my TF201 'phones, FWIW.

It's not an OS or hardware thing, it's a bluetooth thing. Some apps (like Youtube) simply compensate for this audio lag when using bluetooth (and Airplay as well, btw). You can see it yourself, when you pause the youtube video, it will take a fraction of a second for the sound to pause. I haven't seen an A2DP connection (on iOS as well) that didn't have this lag. Video apps need to compensate for it (Netflix did too, at least for iOS and Airplay, don't know for bluetooth either on iOS or Android), so different players may have this problem or not.
What it's worse for though, is for games. That jambox video where the guy is playing a game is just BS.

zenaxe said:
Just to add another data point. My Prime will stream movies with Bluetooth with no sync issues or excessive buffering and has been like that since the day I got it. I'm unlocked and running a custom ROM (AW2.1). My Prime's WiFi is pretty solid (for a prime LOL) and my GPS is DOA.
I have been a big bluetooth audio fan (I stay up late watching movies frequently but am courteous to the rest of the family) for a while and one thing I have found is some headphones lag no matter what is transmitting. A reviewer will very often not notice it if they just listen to music. I've been using my GOgroove Wireless AirBands as my TF201 'phones, FWIW.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I hade the prime too.
I have two sony bluetooth music headsets (the mw600 and the hbh-ds220). Both were working with the prime without any problem.
Now with my new tf700 i get stuttering when listening to google music. The music is buffered on the tf700 and it even happens when i have no internet connection. So i don't think it's an antenna problem at all.
i also noticed lag when using bsplayer and youtube when i tried to connect the tf700 to my beamer and stream the audio via bluetooth. bsplayer was worse but i noticed it also in the youtube app. I don't know if it would start stuttering too as i disconnected bluetooth immediatly.
I think the stuttering was a little bit less when i go on max performance. But that's just a subjective opinion.
I think it's a problem with the bluetooth chip itself and thus i have to send it back...

Anyone know if the Jelly Bean update for the TF300 fixed this?

FYI, Asus tech support told me that the bluetooth audio lag issues "will be improved" in a future OTA. I read that as "not completely fixed" so I returned (sniff sniff) my TF700 today while I still could.

No lag on video with Bluetooth on a Toshiba AT105–T1032 Thrive.

flhthemi said:
No lag on video with Bluetooth on a Toshiba AT105–T1032 Thrive.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah, none on my SGS3 or iPad2 (BT 2.1 even), but I really wanted an integral keyboard with extra battery for those long flights to Asia.
Kinda hoping the Lenovo S2110 can fit the ticket, but might wait for another round of processors...

[Q] Bluetooth Audio Streaming - Crackling

It seems that the Nexus 5 still has the annoying crackling sound that was introduced in 4.2. I was really hoping that they would have fixed this by now. I found this solution thread which is for the Galaxy Nexus but I'm not even sure if it would work on the Nexus 5. Can anyone else confirm that they are getting some crackling on the mid-tones when streaming through bluetooth. -Ryan

Introduced in 4.2? This **** has been the cornerstone of bluetooth music since it's inception. I've had crackling, low quality treble, overly compressed audio out of every bluetooth device I've ever used:
1. Several Android phones going all the way back to the HTC EVO 4G.
2. Macbooks.
3. iPads
4. aptX adapters
Simply put, bluetooth audio is terrible. If you expect anything more than bare minimum (usually good for voice), you shouldn't be using bluetooth.

I don't have any problem streaming over bluetooth. I have a bluetooth to aux jack adapter.
Sent from the jaws of my Hammerhead!

Interesting link you've posted. I've actually found that I'm getting a little bit cleaner sound with this phone compared to my Evo LTE. I'm using Google Music with Viper4Android sound mod. In my car I've always had an issue with the extreme high end frequencies crackling on "s" words or cymbals and using have to cut down drastically anything above 14k. I haven't had to do that since getting the phone on Friday. Still I'll probably fiddle with the file swaps as I'm always looking for better sound.
Edit: No go for me. Kept getting a music playback error.

I'm having the same problem after 4.2 update. I was using Galaxy Nexus back then. Now my new Nexus 5 is having the same problem. I'm now considering getting one of those bluetooth to aux adapter even though my car has bluetooth built-in =(

Poor Bluetooth audio quality

I just got the tmobile variant s6 and immediately went to test the Bluetooth audio stream on my 2015 gs350. I noticed a crackle in the audio. It is minimal but quite noticeable at high volume. This is disappointing as my Sony Z3 had excellent BT audio quality on my gs. Anyone else notice this?

neles86 said:
I just got the tmobile variant s6 and immediately went to test the Bluetooth audio stream on my 2015 gs350. I noticed a crackle in the audio. It is minimal but quite noticeable at high volume. This is disappointing as my Sony Z3 had excellent BT audio quality on my gs. Anyone else notice this?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I do not seem to have that issue over my car's bluetooth. T-mobile also.

I'm getting good audio quality via my Sony SBH80 aptx BT headset. Perhaps you can play on the Sound Alive equalizer.

Just wanted to let you know that I am having this same problem. When streaming music in high quality from Google Play, the treble is all crackly and distorted. It's really disappointing. I'm going to do some testing today against my old m8 and using non-streaming music. But never had this issue before.

It's probably the fact you are streaming audio. Try some high quality downloaded music, like from Spotify. I've no issues at all.

I am also having the same issue with the Verizon version of the S6. It sounds terrible over my car Bluetooth when streaming but sounds good through my bluetooth Bose headphones. I didn't have any trouble with my car Bluetooth with my iPhone 6. I really hope Samsung gets this sorted out with a software update.

I too am having issues with streaming bluetooth. I think that my issue with it is amplified, because I normally listen to music only on my Magnavox Turntable, and the sound from that console is unbeatable by any electronic streaming or mini-speaker. My son bought me a bluetooth speaker for my birthday last year, which was very nice of him, but the sound just does not compare to the 1970's technology.
Maybe I'm just old.

Do you happen to have any bluetooth le devices, like a fitbit, attached at the same time? I tried disconnecting my garmin vivosmart and there's a dramatic improvement.

evanl81 said:
Just wanted to let you know that I am having this same problem. When streaming music in high quality from Google Play, the treble is all crackly and distorted. It's really disappointing. I'm going to do some testing today against my old m8 and using non-streaming music. But never had this issue before.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Same here. Lowering the treble help a tiny bit but what's music without treble . I've tried disconnecting my pebble watch but no dice. I really don't want to go back to aux.

In my car, before I disconnected the Garmin, I found that adjusting the toggles in Play Music - edging the first dial two toward Treble and the other dial three toward Instrument helped a bit.

I noticed the crackling on treble as well. As evanl81 suggested, I disconnected my Moto 360 (switched it to airplane mode), toggled the phone's bluetooth to have a fresh connection to the car, and the crackling is gone by at least 90%!
Very disappointing. Didn't have this problem with my Nexus 5. I'd very much prefer to not have to disconnect my watch every time I get in the car

palmboy5 said:
I noticed the crackling on treble as well. As evanl81 suggested, I disconnected my Moto 360 (switched it to airplane mode), toggled the phone's bluetooth to have a fresh connection to the car, and the crackling is gone by at least 90%!
Very disappointing. Didn't have this problem with my Nexus 5. I'd very much prefer to not have to disconnect my watch every time I get in the car
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That would be a problem. I'm starting to think that we are wirelessly connected to too many things!!

So it looks like my pebble watch was the problem. Seems i can't have other BT devices connected while connected to my car. Once I put my pebble in airplane mode, then off/on the BT radio and all is good! Sucks but at least it's a workaround.

I'm trying to use AutoInput and Tasker to automate the disconnection and reconnection of my watch when connected to the car bluetooth right now, still working out the kinks though. :\ Endless little things and inconsistent behavior.
It would be fantastic if this gets fixed by Samsung at some point!

stureiney said:
That would be a problem. I'm starting to think that we are wirelessly connected to too many things!!
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No, I have a Nexus 4 with 5.0 and now with 5.1 and its connect to LG g watch, a parrot ck3100 and auki bluetooth reciber and the quality is perfect. With S6 I only connected to my LG g watch and auki and the audio quiality is a ****.

i don't know about bad audio quality for bt but i get audio cut outs and choppiness when using my jaybird bluebuds. it gets really annoying. i noticed it happens in wide open spaces too like when i'm outside but not near any walls or enclosed areas. if i'm indoors, it works perfectly fine. i remember reading about the way bt works and the signal needs to bounce off other surfaces or something like that in order to work properly. i had this same issue way back in my OG Droid days and there was a build.prop edit to boost the signal by giving bt higher priority.
anyone else have this problem? i'm on VZW variant btw.
other than this issue, bt audio sounds perfect. i also use Viper to give the audio volume a major boost.

I'm having the same issue on my car audio.
It was perfect with the Nexus 5, very disappointed to have this with the S6.

I just got my sg6 have a samsung gear live and bluebuds x I get crackling sounding high end, very annoying, coming from an HTC one m7 with the same setup and had zero problems, really hope they are able to fix this!
OK so I enabled the tube amp setting and nothing else, it seems to have made a huge difference. I can now listen to music without cringing. Hope this helps.

Ok, I made a few findings about the issue. I also have a moto 360 connected to the S6 and the crackling is so high that is imposible to hear music with a minimum of quality.So i tried with the watch off or in airplane mode and the crackling is still there but sometimes it dissapears after connect and disconnect the bt devices but not always. Now, the elephant in the room:
I have a Samsung Hs3000 bt stereo headset and the music quality is superb even with te moto 360 connected. The magic is that this particular device has aptx codec included. So if you have an aptx bt device the quality its going to be there. For no aptx devices i'm trying an experiment: i remember from the nexus 7 2013 and other android phones that bluetooth audio quality was bad since kitkat and the problem was bluetooth compression was too high. There are two files that control this behaviour: audio.a2dp.default.so and bluetooth.default.so. If we could edit this two files maybe we could fix this. If someone can help me and tell me what program can i use to edit this files on my computer i'll try to fix it myself.
Enviado desde mi SM-G920F mediante Tapatalk

Just wanted to follow up on this thread - I recently switched to the Note 5 (which I love) and also got a Huawei Watch. When the watch is connected to the phone and the phone is connected to bluetooth, the sound quality is really horrendous. So I'm guessing it's something with the BT smart implementation in Samsung phones or something? It's really annoying. I too tried to work out some stuff with AutoInput, but it's a huge pain. The only real workarounds are to put the watch in Airplane Mode or just disconnect through the Android Wear app. And unfortunately there are no shortcuts through AutoWear. Oh well.