Pulseaudio don't show bluetooth headset when turned on the first time

[eephyne]

Hello,

I have a boring issue. When I turn on my headset (tested with multiple bluetooth headset), it connect to the computer but pulse don’t see it, I can see it in the gnome menu

but its not in pulse (here in pavucontrol)

and of course audio is on the computer speaker and can’t select the headset in the gnome menu.

But when I disconnect and reconnect (in the gnome menu, I do not turn off the headset). its detected in pulse and I can’t switch to them (in fact it does it automatically).

Here the dmesg on the first connect

[ 7févr. 19:40] hid-sensor-hub 0005:00E0:3004.000C: unknown main item tag 0x0
[  +0,000063] hid-sensor-hub 0005:00E0:3004.000C: hidraw3: BLUETOOTH HID v0.01 Device [Pixel Buds Pro] on bc:f4:d4:d3:48:7a
[  +0,179208] input: Pixel Buds Pro (AVRCP) as /devices/virtual/input/input33
[ 7févr. 19:50] nvidia 0000:01:00.0: Enabling HDA controller
[ 7févr. 19:51] input: Pixel Buds Pro (AVRCP) as /devices/virtual/input/input34
[ 7févr. 19:59] input: Pixel Buds Pro (AVRCP) as /devices/virtual/input/input35

and the second time

[ 7févr. 20:04] input: Pixel Buds Pro (AVRCP) as /devices/virtual/input/input36
[  +1,160727] hid-sensor-hub 0005:00E0:3004.000D: unknown main item tag 0x0
[  +0,000072] hid-sensor-hub 0005:00E0:3004.000D: hidraw3: BLUETOOTH HID v0.01 Device [Pixel Buds Pro] on bc:f4:d4:d3:48:7a

If you have an idea

[nikgnomic]

Please post more information about PulseAudio configuration for both non-working and working headset

pacmd dump; pactl list cards

and compare both responses to find any differences in configuration

[eephyne]

Here the diff for the pacmd pacmd dump before and after - Diffchecker
and the diff for pactl : pactl list card before and after - Diffchecker

We can see tha card some différence and it seem that its not detected correctly the first time but why and how to solve or investigate ?

[nikgnomic]

module-bluez5-device is loading with the same configuration in both cases. the modules are not loaded in the same order with respect to module-cli-protocol-unix but that shouldn’t be any problem

But the first (non-working) configuration is showing the card-profile is set to off
for the working configuration the card-profile is set to a2dp_sink

To change the card profile:

pactl set-card-profile bluez_card.74_74_46_1E_D5_C9 a2dp_sink

Or change the card Profile in pavucontrol GUI Configuration tab - pavucontrol --tab=5

The card profile can be locked in pavucontrol GUI by clicking on the padlock icon. But locking the Profile for a Bluetooth headset would prevent device switching from headphone mode to headset mode for voice calls automatically

[Connor]

Just an Idea: Have you considered switching from Pulseaudio to Pipewire?
I recently had some issues with my Bluetooth headset as well (laggy behaviour / multiple connects required / bluez & pulseaudio not working fine with each other).
I followed this entry and my bluetooth headset worked fine afterwards, same as the rest of the audio & bluetooth components.

@Tomek

pamac install manjaro-pipewire

in terms of required setup, that was all I had to do, same as others:

@Ben

… run that and reboot.

YMMV, but pipewire is great on my system.

[eephyne]

I do not use wayland for now (hybrid graphic card, some issue when switching to nvidia), so I can’t switch to pipewire (as far as I know).

I just tested your command @nikgnomic , pactl give me an input/output error (buds first time turn on) and pavucontrol show me a menu item list for it and the a2dp is marked as not available and I can’t select it (can only select turned off or HFP).

[nikgnomic]

ArchWiki has a few possible solutions for A2DP not working with PulseAudio

For some headsets, using the headset’s volume or play/pause controls while connected can trigger the A2DP profile to become available.

try restarting the bluetooth.service

systemctl restart bluetooth

It is possible that connecting to a headset via bluetoothctl from bluez-utils will make the A2DP sink profile available

pactl set-card-profile bluez_card.74_74_46_1E_D5_C9 off
sleep 2
echo -e "disconnect 74_74_46_1E_D5_C9\n quit"|bluetoothctl
sleep 5
echo -e "connect 74_74_46_1E_D5_C9\n quit"|bluetoothctl
sleep 5
pactl set-card-profile  bluez_card.74_74_46_1E_D5_C9 a2dp_sink

Disable the headset profile

/etc/bluetooth/main.conf

[General]
Disable=Headset

Enable MultiProfile support. This may help with headsets that support A2DP as well as Headset audio.

/etc/bluetooth/main.conf

[General] MultiProfile=multiple

[eephyne]

okay , I tried restarting bluetooth service, no result,
I can’t set card profile to a2dp_sink manually when its not already auto selected (the first time I turn them on).
Disabling the headset didn’t do anything either.
and multipleprofile neither, since the issue is not a issue between a2dp and headset (don’t seem so).

Looking more carefully, I saw that when I first turn them on, it pass on a2dp for 10 seconds ~ (show well on pavucontrol) then it fallback to off.
dmesg show simply a new attribution

[  +0,141422] input: Pixel Buds Pro (AVRCP) as /devices/virtual/input/input30

[ +13,300022] input: Pixel Buds Pro (AVRCP) as /devices/virtual/input/input31

Do you know where I could see bluetooth log to debug that ?