Bluetooth input doesn't work w/ Bose QC35 ii

[Daniel Newman]

When connecting the Bose QC35 ii, the bluetooth audio works just fine initially, but the microphone does not. When I go to the sound settings and change the mic input to use the QC35 ii bluetooth input, the audio changes from stereo to mono and sounds terrible and cannot understand anything. Also the mic picks up some input, but the result output sounds about the same, completely un-understandable, a stuttering digitized version of the input.

> lsb_release -rd
Description: Ubuntu 20.10
Release: 20.10

Linux dan-xps-9700 5.10.5-051005-generic #202101061537 SMP Wed Jan 6 15:43:53 UTC 2021 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

3. I expected the microphone input and headset output to both work simultaneously via bluetooth.
4. Only the headset output worked well, when enabling microphone both sounded terrible (unusable).

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 20.10
Package: bluez 5.55-0ubuntu1.1
Uname: Linux 5.10.5-051005-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.20.11-0ubuntu50.3
Architecture: amd64
CasperMD5CheckResult: skip
CurrentDesktop: ubuntu:GNOME
Date: Wed Jan 27 17:53:00 2021
InstallationDate: Installed on 2021-01-06 (21 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 20.10 "Groovy Gorilla" - Release amd64 (20201022)
InterestingModules: rfcomm bnep bluetooth
MachineType: Dell Inc. XPS 17 9700
ProcEnviron:
 TERM=xterm-256color
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=<set>
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcKernelCmdLine: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-5.10.5-051005-generic root=UUID=d87c0f2c-adf4-493f-95dc-e2df02f584b3 ro quiet splash vt.handoff=7
SourcePackage: bluez
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)
dmi.bios.date: 09/03/2020
dmi.bios.release: 1.4
dmi.bios.vendor: Dell Inc.
dmi.bios.version: 1.4.0
dmi.board.name: 03CPGC
dmi.board.vendor: Dell Inc.
dmi.board.version: A00
dmi.chassis.type: 10
dmi.chassis.vendor: Dell Inc.
dmi.modalias: dmi:bvnDellInc.:bvr1.4.0:bd09/03/2020:br1.4:svnDellInc.:pnXPS179700:pvr:rvnDellInc.:rn03CPGC:rvrA00:cvnDellInc.:ct10:cvr:
dmi.product.family: XPS
dmi.product.name: XPS 17 9700
dmi.product.sku: 098F
dmi.sys.vendor: Dell Inc.
hciconfig:
 hci0: Type: Primary Bus: UART
  BD Address: 28:C2:1F:87:52:EC ACL MTU: 1024:8 SCO MTU: 240:4
  UP RUNNING PSCAN
  RX bytes:1599 acl:0 sco:0 events:91 errors:0
  TX bytes:198368 acl:0 sco:0 commands:849 errors:0
mtime.conffile..etc.bluetooth.main.conf: 2021-01-27T17:24:11.108718

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Low quality audio when the mic is enabled is unfortunately a feature of the old Bluetooth standard, which is the only Bluetooth standard PulseAudio currently supports.

We currently have bug 1838151 open about this.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.