Intel 9460/9560 (USB 8087:0aaa, PCI 8086:a370) with wifi on, bluetooth speaker output sound is stuttering / garbled / jittery

[Kiril Isakov]

That seems to be the oldest unresolved bug around here
(https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/bluez/+bug/424215)

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 20.10
Package: bluez 5.55-0ubuntu1.1
Uname: Linux 5.3.18-050318-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: wl nvidia_modeset nvidia
ApportVersion: 2.20.11-0ubuntu50.5
Architecture: amd64
CasperMD5CheckResult: skip
CurrentDesktop: ubuntu:GNOME
Date: Mon Feb 15 19:53:07 2021
DistributionChannelDescriptor:
 # This is a distribution channel descriptor
 # For more information see http://wiki.ubuntu.com/DistributionChannelDescriptor
 canonical-oem-somerville-xenial-amd64-osp1-20171027-1
InstallationDate: Installed on 2019-04-10 (677 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 16.04 "Xenial" - Build amd64 LIVE Binary 20171027-10:57
InterestingModules: rfcomm bnep btusb bluetooth
MachineType: Dell Inc. G3 3579
ProcKernelCmdLine: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-5.3.18-050318-generic root=UUID=8cd56bb5-4fcb-4c5b-a4ba-f5dd560e9f9c ro elevator=noop alx.enable_wol=1 mem_sleep_default=deep quiet splash vt.handoff=7
SourcePackage: bluez
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to groovy on 2020-10-20 (117 days ago)
dmi.bios.date: 03/06/2019
dmi.bios.vendor: Dell Inc.
dmi.bios.version: 1.8.1
dmi.board.name: 00FK8Y
dmi.board.vendor: Dell Inc.
dmi.board.version: A00
dmi.chassis.type: 10
dmi.chassis.vendor: Dell Inc.
dmi.modalias: dmi:bvnDellInc.:bvr1.8.1:bd03/06/2019:svnDellInc.:pnG33579:pvr:rvnDellInc.:rn00FK8Y:rvrA00:cvnDellInc.:ct10:cvr:
dmi.product.family: GSeries
dmi.product.name: G3 3579
dmi.product.sku: 0885
dmi.sys.vendor: Dell Inc.
hciconfig:
 hci0: Type: Primary Bus: USB
  BD Address: 98:2C:BC:39:1F:29 ACL MTU: 1021:4 SCO MTU: 96:6
  UP RUNNING
  RX bytes:538991 acl:390 sco:2748 events:51466 errors:0
  TX bytes:24976655 acl:37033 sco:2712 commands:14348 errors:0
modified.conffile..etc.default.apport:
 # set this to 0 to disable apport, or to 1 to enable it
 # you can temporarily override this with
 # sudo service apport start force_start=1
 enabled=0
mtime.conffile..etc.bluetooth.main.conf: 2019-05-01T23:43:26.699874
mtime.conffile..etc.default.apport: 2019-04-24T22:54:58.031610

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Thanks for the bug report.

First, please try closing the Settings window and tell us if that fixes the issue (per bug 1797002).

If that did not fix the issue then as a workaround you could try choosing only 5GHz wifi networks as those will not interfere with Bluetooth like 2.4GHz networks do. To find out the frequency of your networks you can run this command in a Terminal window:

  iwlist scanning

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Also, it appears you are using kernel version 5.3.18-050318-generic which is not supported. Please try a newer kernel version if you can.

[Kiril Isakov (kirisakow)]

Thank you Daniel.

I just updated the kernel to the latest 5.7.1 and the sound finally sounds fine.

For information: previously, using 5GHz wifi didn't help; neither did closing the Settings window.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Kernel 5.7 is also old. We currently ship kernel 5.8 with new Ubuntu installations, and the stable upstream version is 5.10. But it's good to hear that a kernel upgrade fixed the problem.