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These are the A2DP (stereo audio, but no microphone) and HSP (sucky audio, but microphone) profiles. The system is supposed to switch automatically between them depending on whether microphone input is required.

As of today I think no operating system performs this switch correctly. It's been broken in desktop Linux for a couple years now.

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This is why my "gamer" headphones can use both profiles simultaneously! The game/music/media audio comes through the headphone profile, and chat audio comes through the headset profile. There's even the ability to change the volume-per-logical-device (chatmix).

Agree with you that I never got it working consistently in Linux. Just getting normal BT headphones to use A2DP rather than HSP was always a bit tricky. I've not dared try my gamer headphones...

Perhaps in yours, but my Linux desktop always uses the proper sound settings, even though I switch constantly between bluetoith headphones and speakers. So maybe YMMV?

It is definitely broken for years, search for hsphfpd vs ofono story. I.e. https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/pulseaudio/pulseaudio/-/issue...

It used to work much better in the bluez4 era, about a decade ago, than it does now.

Do note these are Bluetooth profiles. This is irrelevant to ouput device switching.

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