Bluetooth headphones won't use A2DP on reconnect

[Alistair Cunningham]

On Ubuntu 19.04 on my Thinkpad T470s, my Sony WH-1000XM3 headphones pair using Bluetooth with no problems, and use A2DP by default. If I then power off the headphones and power them back on, they reconnect but use HSP/HFP and sound terrible. If I manually go into the sound settings, A2DP is offered as an option, but selecting it doesn't take effect. The headphones remain stuck in HSP/HFP mode.

Unpairing the headphones and re-pairing them again selects A2DP by default, until the next time I switch the headphones off. Then they're back to stuck in HSP/HFP until I unpair them once again. I therefore need to unpair and re-pair them every time I want to use them, which is a nuisance.

I'm not sure which package is responsible for handling this, so am reporting to for bluez since it provides /etc/bluetooth/main.conf. If I'm wrong, please re-assign.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 19.10
Package: bluetooth (not installed)
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 5.3.0-19.20-generic 5.3.1
Uname: Linux 5.3.0-19-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: zfs zunicode zavl icp zcommon znvpair
ApportVersion: 2.20.11-0ubuntu8
Architecture: amd64
CurrentDesktop: Unity:Unity7:ubuntu
Date: Sun Oct 27 10:43:21 2019
InstallationDate: Installed on 2017-08-16 (801 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 17.04 "Zesty Zapus" - Release amd64 (20170412)
InterestingModules: rfcomm bnep btusb bluetooth
Lsusb:
 Bus 002 Device 002: ID 0bda:0316 Realtek Semiconductor Corp. USB3.0-CRW
 Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
 Bus 001 Device 003: ID 5986:111c Acer, Inc Integrated Camera
 Bus 001 Device 004: ID 8087:0a2b Intel Corp.
 Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
MachineType: LENOVO 20HFCTO1WW
ProcKernelCmdLine: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-5.3.0-19-generic root=UUID=c023de63-612b-4367-874e-b3c987874f56 ro quiet splash vt.handoff=7
SourcePackage: bluez
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to eoan on 2019-10-04 (22 days ago)
dmi.bios.date: 08/30/2019
dmi.bios.vendor: LENOVO
dmi.bios.version: N1WET56W (1.35 )
dmi.board.asset.tag: Not Available
dmi.board.name: 20HFCTO1WW
dmi.board.vendor: LENOVO
dmi.board.version: Not Defined
dmi.chassis.asset.tag: No Asset Information
dmi.chassis.type: 10
dmi.chassis.vendor: LENOVO
dmi.chassis.version: None
dmi.modalias: dmi:bvnLENOVO:bvrN1WET56W(1.35):bd08/30/2019:svnLENOVO:pn20HFCTO1WW:pvrThinkPadT470s:rvnLENOVO:rn20HFCTO1WW:rvrNotDefined:cvnLENOVO:ct10:cvrNone:
dmi.product.family: ThinkPad T470s
dmi.product.name: 20HFCTO1WW
dmi.product.sku: LENOVO_MT_20HF_BU_Think_FM_ThinkPad T470s
dmi.product.version: ThinkPad T470s
dmi.sys.vendor: LENOVO
hciconfig:
 hci0: Type: Primary Bus: USB
  BD Address: F8:59:71:8D:1A:16 ACL MTU: 1021:4 SCO MTU: 96:6
  UP RUNNING PSCAN ISCAN
  RX bytes:730576 acl:159 sco:13734 events:3688 errors:0
  TX bytes:2014957 acl:979 sco:13705 commands:2568 errors:0

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. This particular bug has already been reported and is a duplicate of bug 1845046, so it is being marked as such. Please look at the other bug report to see if there is any missing information that you can provide, or to see if there is a workaround for the bug. Additionally, any further discussion regarding the bug should occur in the other report. Feel free to continue to report any other bugs you may find.