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Comment by hsbauauvhabzb | Hacker News Reader

I’ve got numerous gripes with AirPods under Linux - range doesn’t seem as good as my phone (I’ve tried multiple dongles etc), I wasn’t aware that you could connect to two devices but now I want that, when the microphone is enabled audio sounds absolutely trash. Oddly enough, the connect speed annoyed me but not as much as the other issues.

Are there any alternative headphones that solve all three of these well? I just want a headset that works.

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I can tell you I absolutely could not get my fancy Sony WH-1000XM5 to connect reliably for more than a few seconds to desktop Linux, so not those ones. (They work fine for Android)

Fwiw I have found recent distros with later versions of pipewire to be ‘better’. I also have one BT USB adapter which will establish a connection, but be totally non functional after the connection sound.

I have the same set and I've yet to have my computer (a ThinkPad T14 running Kubuntu 24.04) drop a connection, they work perfectly for hours at a time. Maybe depends on the Bluetooth chipset? But I've found Bluetooth in general to be much more reliable than it used to be with Linux these days.

If you find something that sounds high quality while the microphone is in use, please document your findings. I feel like there are no good options.

To be clear, the microphone sounds good, sound output is garbage.

Thanks for clarifying, I am seeing the same behaviour.

I think the codec changes once the microphone is enabled.

how much do you know about bluetooth device and codec profiles? ooh, boy, I envy you, you see, the bluetooth connection was never about the bluetooth at all...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Bluetooth_profiles

(absolutely there is some codec that apple licenses that you as a linux user don't and don't get etc, this is some profile thing they're doing and honestly that's just the price of linux. Free as in free from HDMI 2.1 support. And fraunhofer, and Dolby, and MPEG-LA licensing. Being willing to pay the $2 per device for the licenses has its perks.)

> absolutely there is some codec that apple licenses that you as a linux user don't and don't get

Such as?

Linux has had functioning AAC, MOV and MP4 drivers for almost a decade at this point. There are actually more codecs that Linux supports that Apple doesn't, like LDAC and APTx.

> Such as?

AAC-ELD is unsupported.

https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/pipewire/pipewire/-/issues/14...

> Linux has had functioning AAC, MOV and MP4 drivers for almost a decade at this point.

ok that’s nice but that’s not AAC-ELD. There’s no door prize for “part of the name is the same”, codecs and Bluetooth stream configurations are either supported or not.

It’s also not compatible with open-licensing either way, even though those licenses are commonly breached, ie it’s nonfree at best even if someone hacked together a toolchain, which was my point about the “free as in free from hdmi 2.1” part. Fraunhofer says you need to pay for a license even if you choose to pirate it anyway. Linux, by default, does not pay that for you (naturally).

Unless you're running a Guix system I don't see how open-license compatibility matters in the first place. I run my system, I install plenty of binaries and so does the majority of the Linux community.

> AAC-ELD is unsupported.

So is Airdrop. Pack up your crocodile tears and take them to a community that will do Apple's job for them. This is what you get for buying Apple products and insisting that the community reverse-engineers it to the quality of a documented and community-friendly platform. Blame Linux if you want.

> Fraunhofer says you need to pay for a license even if you choose to pirate it anyway.

Given that Linux supports DisplayPort alt-mode, this is kinda a nothingburger. Maybe my use-case is unique and contrarian, but I have never run into a situation with my laptop or desktop where I was gated from a usable experience because I didn't have HDMI 2.1. Hopefully nobody calls me out in the conference room for not showing my PowerPoint in HDR.

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