A2DP's Reign of Terror: Help me be able to VC in Linux

The rabbit hole beckons. This post was really long, so here’s the short version instead:

Context:

  • Arch (though Windows doesn’t work well or consistently in this)
  • Voyager 104, confirmed to be functional
  • Bluetooth 2.0 dongle, suspect but at least mostly functional

Problem:

  • Headset defaults to an A2DP (i.e., output only) devices upon connection
  • A2DP works fine. It’s not what I need.
  • Headset can be switched to an HSP/HFP device, and it seems to work - hiss starts up as expected, etc. But the microphone doesn’t respond in various programs (Discord, Audacity) - or the microphone works fine and the speaker is silent (these issues alternate).

Relevant installed packages (everything is very recent):

  • ofono
  • pulseaudio
  • pulseaudio-alsa
  • pulseaudio-modules-bt-git
  • bluez
  • bluez-utils

Relevant default.pa snippet:

.ifexists module-bluetooth-policy.so
load-module module-bluetooth-policy ag=true auto_switch=1
.endif

.ifexists module-bluetooth-discover.so
load-module module-bluetooth-discover
.endif

I’ve tried:

  • bluez-utils-compat
  • using the bluetoothctl instead of the KDE stuff, and vice versa
  • pulseaudio-modules-bt
  • adding “headset=ofono” to the second line of the snippet above
  • Many instances of changing one variable, running pulseaudio -k, waiting a few moments, and giving it a shot again

I don’t need A2DP at all, and frankly I don’t know why Voyager would include it - the headset is physically mono regardless. But I do need to be able to VC on this machine with this headset, and I suspect that should be entirely doable - but I don’t know what to try next. So, anyone willing to help out?

I only ever had USB problems in Linux when I bought a shady USB dongle. Turns out it had a counterfeit Cambridge Silicon Radio chip in it with some weird firmware.

Have you tried swapping the USB dongle with another? I find that these counterfeit CSR chips only work with windows and nothing else. I also dont know how to flash the CSR chip to a correct one or if that is even possible.

Also, what is VC?

1 Like

Voice chat.

Both dongles are self-reporting as CSR, but the supposedly 5.0 one just doesn’t work.