No gstreamer dependency causes high-fidelity codecs to be missing for Bluetooth devices

[Avamander]

After the announcements of PulseAudio 15 and Gstreamer 1.20, which both advertised LDAC and AptX (HD) support, I expected that jammy (22.04) would support those codecs.

Though in reality it seems that something is missing, gstreamer reports that those codecs are supported but "pactl [...] list-codec" only lists sbc (and variants).

Checking here https://packages.ubuntu.com/jammy/pulseaudio-module-bluetooth it seems that PulseAudio is not built with gstreamer support, is that the current blocker?

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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

[Ernst Persson (ernstp)]

Up to date Jammy system as of today.
They bluetooth service list a number of aptx and ldac sink and source endpoints now.
However I seem to be limited to the SBC codec still.

What exactly is the "pactl [...] list-codec" command you mentioned?

[Igor V. Kovalenko (i-garrison)]

It's in the 15.0 release notes, https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/PulseAudio/Notes/15.0/#supportforldacandaptxbluetoothcodecsplussbcxqsbcwithhigher-qualityparameters

  pactl send-message /card/bluez_card.XX_XX_XX_XX_XX_XX/bluez list-codecs

You should also be able to find codec selection in pavucontrol 'Configuration' tab if pavucontrol is built correctly.

[Benoe (benoe77)]

My current output for this command is:

pactl send-message /card/bluez_card.XX_XX_XX_XX_XX_XX/bluez list-codecs
[{"name":"CVSD","description":"CVSD"},{"name":"mSBC","description":"mSBC"}]

Usually, my headset only visible at pactl list cards at the second connection attemtp and when it doeas connect I cannot change from AFP to A2DB from the settings menu.

[Igor V. Kovalenko (i-garrison)]

Whether your headset cannot be switched from HFP to A2DP is a separate issue anyway. You can try pairing and trusting the device again, also please check if you have pipewire audio enabled which could seldom take over bluetooth a2dp, and see if bluetoothd log has anything related.

[Benoe (benoe77)]

Thanks, it was indeed a separate issue. Needed to remove bluez-alsa-utils...
All is good now, would be great if one could change the codec through gnome-control-center. Pavucontrol method works.

[Igor V. Kovalenko (i-garrison)]

Changing codec via gnome-control-center would probably need a feature request to gnome-control-center to support new functionality in >=pulseaudio-15.0

[Benoe (benoe77)]

Something has already started here: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-control-center/-/issues/1325

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

So can we consider the issue fixed from the pulseaudio side in the current release? It's built with gstreamer and working as expected, gst-plugins-bad is a suggests, we can't depends on it because it's in universe

[BloodyIron (bloodyiron)]

Uh isn't the solution to "remove bluez-alsa-utils"... how is this "fixed" then? Are systems going to just be forcefully told to remove "bluez-alsa-utils" to get aptx working? I don't see the actual "fix" here...

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

We could perhaps add a conflict to force removal of bluez-alsa-utils but that package is in universe and not part of a normal installation so that shouldn't be an issue for most users