When I have my bluetooth headphones connected to my mac, if an application is using the Input, the quality of output is extremely degraded. Why is this? How can I fix it?
This can be reproduced by going to the input tab of system preferences while listening to music in the background.
Here's video of whats going on in Audio MIDI setup, the Format seems to be degraded to 16kHz.
https://i.imgur.com/qi356xp.mp4
Kinda of relevant. I found this app and in the description it says something interesting:
Get the best audio quality. macOS will normally use the SCO codec if it think you're going to use the microphone.
Could this be the issue I am having?
I just checked by holidng the option key (suggested by @bmike) on the menu bar icon. The codec does indeed switch from ACC to SCO when the mic is activated.
Also relevant:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7814292?answerId=31255072022#31255072022 https://audaciousfox.net/2017/airpods-macos-call-quality-fix