Filed under: Audio, Bluetooth, Leopard
A2DP Bluetooth support confirmed in Leopard
I've always found it surprising that Apple did not have support for the A2DP Bluetooth audio profile in Tiger. A2DP is the profile for stereo music, as opposed to the lower quality mono profile for standard phone headsets. It was rumored, but not confirmed by Apple, that Leopard would fill this hole, and now it appears that's exactly what has happened. Ryan at Thoughts Abound has successfully set up Leopard with his Motorola S805 Bluetooth stereo headset to stream music wirelessly from iTunes. Not only that, he notes that "AVRCP is included as well so you can control your music from the controls on your headphones or stereo."
Unfortunately, A2DP compresses the audio, so it's not exactly a high-fidelity solution. But if you really want to listen to your tunes from your Mac without wires, this is probably the way to go.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
John said 12:15AM on 1-27-2008
I just paired my Motorola S9 with my Macbook, running Leopard, and it still doesn't work in stereo. Leopard was done with a clean install, so I know that it didn't carry over from when I was running Tiger. Can you please tell me what I'm doing wrong?
Thanks
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benjikim said 2:24PM on 11-07-2007
now how about doing this for the iPhone
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Micah Neumark said 2:25PM on 11-07-2007
I'm just waiting for Apple, or a third party to add A2DP support to the iPhone. I think that's a little bit more useful, at least for me.
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Rob Roark said 2:36PM on 11-07-2007
Now that this is in here, does anyone know of a good set of A2DP headphones? I've found a set of motorola's and some logitech's for ~$65-75, but if there are better/cheaper, I'd love to know.
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adisor19 said 2:37PM on 11-07-2007
Now only if they would update the Bluetooth firmware on their macs. As it stands it's absolute CRAP. The audio will cut out and there will lots of static if multiple bluetooth devices are used at the same time : mouse, keyboard, bt headphones etc..
The only way to solve this is for Apple to update the BT firmware.
Adi
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punkassjim said 2:39PM on 11-07-2007
Nice. I think this bodes well for the iPhone, but I hope it doesn't take them long to implement it. I just don't see them caring enough to implement it for the Mac, so since they did, I think the whole impetus must have been the iPhone. Here's hoping.
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pauldy said 3:01PM on 11-07-2007
Confirmed, as if there was ever a question? Anyway this feature works quite well and for those interested in hardware apparently Phillips has a cheap headset people have found at wal-mart of all places for under 20 bucks. It is the VOX340 and I got one from woot.com at http://tinyurl.com/3badc8 It works great on the macbook for listening to tunes or in skype. I even use it to listen to podcasts via the iPhone's visual voicemail bug. I hope they don't fix this bug until after they get a2dp support on the iphone. Oh as an aside avrcp also works with this device in itunes, this means you can fast forward stop and skip tracks in itunes straight from the headset.
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John Laur said 4:49PM on 11-07-2007
I wish they would support using the computer as an A2DP and Handsfree/Headset target as well.
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starkruzr said 3:37PM on 11-07-2007
I wish they'd open-source the Bluetooth "stack." (It isn't so much a stack as a hack, right now.) The dev community would have a real one put together faster than you can say "Fake Steve Jobs was right."
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Richly C. said 3:28PM on 11-07-2007
@3:
Probably the best pair I've used are the Sony DR-BT50 Bluetooth headphones. They are a bit pricey, about $140 on Amazon (considering you can get better sounding cans at about half the price), but if you can spare the extra cash, they are *well* worth it and very comfortable.
http://www.amazon.com/Sony-DRBT50-Stereo-Bluetooth-Headset/dp/B000PCCLPU/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/105-7320971-6242848?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1194467242&sr=8-1
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aguzman said 9:34PM on 11-07-2007
Haven't tested it but there is adapter compatible with the iphone for ad2p
http://www.pdaaccessories.net/productDetail.asp?accid=822&pda=iPhone
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aguzman said 9:34PM on 11-07-2007
Here is another adapter compatible with the iphone - a bit expensive $99,
http://www.8bananas.com/products/srs-200bd.html
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Andre Gaulin said 3:49PM on 11-07-2007
I tested out the A2DP the day after installing Leopard with a pair of Plantronics BT headphones. It works pretty well but the compression does change the overall sound a little and I still found the implementation to be a little buggy.
http://fuzzz.gaulin.ca/2007/10/28/properly-enable-stereo-bluetooth-a2dp-in-leopard/
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Jacques Lema said 3:59PM on 11-07-2007
I have a brand new plantronics 590a headset and while it sounds rather good for music it's basically unusable with skype. It just cuts every now and then and the sound quality as a headset is much much worse. At some point I just went back to my older USB headset.
I do have a bluetooth keyboard and mouse (from Apple). I hoped those wouldn't intefere but apparenty they do or something else does.
So far, it's just a decorative blue blinking thing in my living room. I don't know if a firmware or software update could fix that.
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PSM said 4:24PM on 11-07-2007
I just got a A2DP headset, and didn't realize Tiger never had this feature. It works fine on Leopard on my MBP, but the audio gets choppy sometimes when I walk more than 10ft away, and then other times not, even when I'm in another room.
I actually considered buying an iPod Touch so I could have a wireless iPod, then realized it doesn't in fact have Bluetooth at all. That's lame. It's double-lame that the iPhone doesn't support A2DP. Isn't the point that it's a PHONE + IPOD?! Why would users not want that?
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rafalski said 5:30PM on 11-07-2007
"I've always found it surprising that Apple did not have support for the A2DP Bluetooth audio profile in Tiger."
You're kidding me? They want people to buy airport express and use airtunes. They did include A2DP in Leopard now because they were out of excuses not to do so, but they made sure quality was bad enough not to hurt airport sales. Nothing new under the sun.
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Jean-Denis said 2:06AM on 11-28-2007
Were you able to use the headset as *both* a stereo output device *and* a sound input device? I could not with a Motorola S805: either the stereo sound is disabled, or the microphone is disabled. I don't know whether this limitation is caused by the Mac or the headset. This is a big issue for gaming where you need both at the same time (it works fine in mono).
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Leo D'Angelo said 12:12PM on 11-16-2007
I'm really surprised how crappy the a2dp support is in leopard... I have a motorola S9 headset which works flawlessly with my at&t tilt and blackberry 8200... Sound is great, never skips, etc... So I 'know' the headphones work great...
However, on the MBP with Leopard they sound soooo bad I can't even listen to them... The skip, hiss and have a ton of static... I tried re-pairing with headphones only (as suggested) and it still sucks!
I hope apple fixes this issue before they try putting A2DP on the iphone...
Very disappointing, I upgraded to Leopard 'partly' because of A2DP support... That being said Leopard is great... I'm eagerly awaiting Apples bluetooth update...
-LeoD
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Oliver said 6:57PM on 11-25-2007
Is there any osx-scientist, who can cut out the a2dp bluetooth thing and make it work as add-on-software for tiger?
That would be grrreat! Best, Olé
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jason said 4:35PM on 1-18-2008
I would recommend the 'Trust' ultrasmall Bluetooth adapter for adding Bluetooth support.
http://bluetoothinsight.blogspot.com/2007/12/ultra-small-bluetooth-usb-adapter.html
The low profile is really nice.
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