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I have a DR-BT50 bluetooth headset (they are headphones) that I want to use with my MacBook unibody. I didn't use to have any problems, but as of recently I am running into gaps/skips in the sound. This happens mostly in third party music players (including flash/youtube videos) although I see it in iTunes, just less often. I know my headset is ok, because it works perfectly with my phone. Also, interference is unlikely the problem, since the headset works well with the phone one foot away from MacBook, and one would think that whatever is interfering with the computer talking to the headphones would also mess with the connection to the phone. Anyway, I know it's a Bluetooth issue because I have absolutely no problems with wired headphones. That said, I have no idea where to start debugging it. I played with all the Bluetooth options I could find, and reset everything to factory defaults (erasing all devices and re-pairing) yet to no avail.

On top of this, maybe related or maybe not (this is an older problem) the Bluetooth audio connection sometimes becomes "garbled". What I mean by this is that, whenever music is playing on the computer I just hear crazy digital noise on the headphones. No errors, no nothing, just continuous garble. I have to turn off Bluetooth on the computer and re-connect to make it go away.

Is there anything else I can do, or am I stuck with using wired headphones with my MacBook?

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    I experience exactly the same cracking clicking sounds when using my bluetooth headset (Sennheiser MM-450x) with my MacBook Pro and MacBook Air. It works flawlessly with my iPhone. I wondered if this might be because of the aptX codec? On the iPhone a different codec is used, as far as I know. Does anybody know how to choose the codec being used on a MacBook?
    – user40900
    Commented Feb 1, 2013 at 13:02
  • My device is a hifi system and pairing it again and restarting both the BT service and the device seems to solve the issues so far. Hopefully for good
    – Nikolay Spassov
    Commented Dec 19, 2015 at 20:20

14 Answers 14

Reset to default
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The best step to isolating your issue would be to collect some data about the bluetooth environment where you are using your mac. Radio waves come and go with other devices, new phones, degrading antennas and changes in bluetooth firmware.

The Bluetooth Explorer is the best tool I have found to troubleshoot bluetooth hardware and data. It's free as part of Xcode from the Mac App Store.

You can debug data issues, see the protocols that connected devices are using, and get to all manner of engineering data relating to bluetooth such as errors, relative signal strength indication (RSSI). It's hard to tell if this will help you, but it lets me know when a microwave or home phone was causing noise issues on several occasions when my hardware was otherwise working properly.

Connection Quality Window

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  • How would I use this tool? Like I said in my post, I'm pretty sure that the problem is not caused by outside interference: the headphones work flawlessly with my phone in the exact same place where they fail with the computer. The link quality, in my case, drops every time the sound breaks, but I have no idea why or how I would fix it.
    – vlsd
    Commented Feb 27, 2012 at 18:52
  • You would need to explore the application and learn how to read the bluetooth error logs it can provide, rule out interference with measurements (although your hunch may be correct that it's unrelated to signal or noise), and generally just start isolating things one by one until you determine the culprit. Troubleshooting is as much art as it is following a process or finding someone else's list of things to check.
    – bmike ♦
    Commented Feb 27, 2012 at 19:08
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    There are no errors. The link quality just goes down.
    – vlsd
    Commented Feb 27, 2012 at 23:42
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My bluetooth audio over AptX was choppy, too. This fixed it for me:

defaults write com.apple.BluetoothAudioAgent "Apple Bitpool Min (editable)" 53

Another great hint I found is to alt(option)-click the bluetooth icon on the top menu bar of os x: Then navigate to the bluetooth music device on that menu and it will show you the type of codec being used (atpX in my case).

Thank you bmike♦ for the hint to using Connection Quality Window of Bluetooth Explorer! Thanks to it, I was able to determine what's the best position for my bluetooth audio receiver[1]. Surprisingly enough, the best position was on one of it's narrow sides! The position that it is designed to be in doesn't actually give the best RSSI :P

[1] ProCaster Bluetooth Audio Receiver BT-02

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    What's the default value for com.apple.BluetoothAudioAgent "Apple Bitpool Min (editable)" ?
    – surfrider
    Commented Jun 1, 2016 at 6:37
  • Mine is 40. You can see the value with defaults read com.apple.BluetoothAudioAgent "Apple Bitpool Min (editable)".
    – dani
    Commented Dec 19, 2018 at 19:54
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I have also suffered 'popping' and crackling using a Bluetooth stereo headphones on a MacBook Air running Lion. The headphones work perfectly when paired with other devices such as my iPhone 4.

I have had substantial improvement by reducing microphone input sensitivity. Open the 'open sound preferences' submenu under your bluetooth devices, and reduce microphone sensitivity to zero.

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  • Thanks for your tip, trying it now. My bluetooth audio device is a hifi system, so it makes sense that louder sounds would trigger the mic. Btw I am using a rMBP 2015 with El Capitan. However I started getting problems with stuttering with the same hifi system also on a 2011 MBP after updating to Yosemite. Definitely a software/driver issue (and not hw) it seems
    – Nikolay Spassov
    Commented Dec 19, 2015 at 19:51
  • I upgraded to MacOS Catalina and I started to hear crackling sounds in my bluetooth earphones. I reduced the microphone sensitivity as suggested and I believe it is solved.
    – saulotoledo
    Commented Dec 7, 2019 at 12:32
  • After some more testing, it reduced the problem, but I still have the sounds and my bluetooth keeps randomly disconnecting...
    – saulotoledo
    Commented Dec 7, 2019 at 14:05
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Run all the related processes on a higher priority:

I made a script to do that: https://gist.github.com/redolent/61e5db9d9685689e21e7

#!/bin/bash

list="$(
    sudo ps -A \
    | grep -iE '([h]ear|[f]irefox|[b]lue|[c]oreaudiod)' \
    | cut -c 1-90
    )"


pids=$( cut -c 1-6 <<< "$list" )


echo sudo renice -5 $pids
sudo renice -5 $pids
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  • I'm using Hear and Firefox.
    – redolent
    Commented Apr 15, 2015 at 20:52
  • Interesting, initially it seems to mitigate the issue. rMBP 2015 here, El Capitan. Doesn't solve it completely though
    – Nikolay Spassov
    Commented Dec 19, 2015 at 19:54
  • If you renice a web browser, make sure you only have one tab open in that particular browser. (For example, I use Chrome for browsing, and Firefox for Pandora)
    – redolent
    Commented Dec 19, 2015 at 23:47
  • @redolent Is the Firefox this for a certain special addon that only works in Firefox? I only use Firefox, but when I thought about moving to chrome, Pandora started playing odd songs that were trying to sell me stuff :)
    – Michael Ozeryansky
    Commented Jan 2, 2016 at 23:52
  • No, I use Chrome and Safari mainly, so Firefox is convenient to only use for audio playback.
    – redolent
    Commented Jan 3, 2016 at 2:42
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OK, so after a whole lot of debugging and reading internet forums, I came to the conclusion that this is a hardware issue. Apparently the bluetooth cable/antenna in a 2009 unibody macbook is inside the screen assembly, on the same cable as the iSight. A while back I replaced the LCD, so I must have nicked the cable/antenna while doing this. I am not opening the display all over again just to fix this, I just got a bluetooth dongle that works flawlessly --- that's how I know it's not a software problem, since I'm pretty sure OS X uses the same bluetooth stack for both transmitters.

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Try this:

  • Disconnect the bt-keybord, the bt-trackpad, the bt-mouse and all the other bluetooth devices one by one while listening the bt-speakers.
    (While doing this, in my case, I discovered that the bt keyboard is interfering, and when I disconnect it, I start hearing the bt speaker working fine.)

  • Then, re-connect the bt devices one by one, and you may see that things continue to work fine on the bt-speakers.

I don't know exactly what happens in my case, but maybe, the bt-keyboard reallocate itself to another "free channel" or something that does not interfere with the already connected bt peripherals.

This solved the problem for me.

I suspect that also the wifi may cause interferences, so while trying to find the responsible of the issue, you may also try to disable the wifi devices while listeing the bt-speakers to identify the guilty device.

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  • Thanks! I'm so happy I stumbled against your answer. Finally, after trying all other suggestions, my bluetooth headset works again by disconnecting and connecting the trackpad.
    – RobinDeCroon
    Commented Nov 30, 2016 at 9:04
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Go to a store and buy USB bluetooth dongle (I bought the smallest I could find for $8). Plug it in and MacBook automatically shuts down onboard Bluetooth and uses the new USB. After that the music plays perfectly without any stutters at all!

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My speakers were set as an input device.

Changing this back in SystemPreferences > Sound > Input fixed things. enter image description here

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I had the same problem and tried tons of different solutions. After a lot of tries, this solved it:

Go to:  → System Preferences → General and uncheck the option Allow Handoff between this Mac and your iCloud devices.

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I have the same issues and have determined that the bluetooth antenna location in my mid 2012 MB Pro is the culprit. I have an Apple BT keyboard and Apple BT Magic Mouse. It is not capable of streaming the BT audio satisfactorily to my 3rd party BT speaker. I've attempted to back off both the keyboard and mouse, but alas, this defeats the reason for them.

Interestingly enough, I'm able to stream beautifully to the 3rd party BT speaker with either my iPhone 5s or my mini iPad. This is the case whether I have WiFi enabled or not.

Nasty flaw in El Capital 10.11.5

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    – fsb
    Commented Jul 22, 2016 at 20:03
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I uninstalled Avira antivirus software and the choppiness immediately went away.

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My issue has been solved! I have a Huawei Bluetooth Mouse, it uses 2,4GHz too. After disabling that I have no audio problems anymore. I'm checking how to solve the issue between them, but I know what is the root cause. Thank you

MOV

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In my case it seems that turning WIFI off/on helps.

Hoping that this is the only cause.

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I stopped leaving my phone on top of my laptop. Turns out that the phone's bluetooth adapter messes up the signal b/n the laptop and my headphones. Another more crude solution is to turn off the phone's bluetooth.

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