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Comment by ErneX | Hacker News Reader

Sound quality is worse when transmitting and receiving over Bluetooth, when I use the AirPods for calls on the MacBook I switch to the microphone on the MacBook, they will hear me better and I will hear them better since the AirPods will use all the bandwidth for outputting audio only.

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Are you sure this is a bandwidth issue?

I always assumed it was more about the position and size of the microphone.

They mean that the audio quality you hear on the AirPods is better if you only listen to audio compared to listening and using the microphone. I don’t know if that happens on Macs too, but it’s certainly true when using AirPods on Linux because you have to switch the profile when you want to use the microphone and then the audio is really compressed for playback.

Yeah, it's the same on Mac/iphone but better codecs. Still lossy but better than the Android experience

Better than the iPods on Android experience. If you do Android-on-Android, the experience is on par. See e.g. Samsung Super Wide Band for voice.

I bought the top rated Sony's on Android and it was awful. Glad to hear there's better options!

When making a call and using headset mic+earphones the audio mode/profile drops back to HFP instead of A2DP used for music. The quality difference is huge. By using the computer mic you can keep using A2DP with better quality for your voice capture and listening experience.

And many of the mics built into good webcams and laptops are superior, so long as you aren't somewhere like a café.

>Are you sure this is a bandwidth issue?

It's technically not a bandwidth issue, AFAIK, it is a "profile" issue. When listening to audio only you are using a different bluetooth profile than when you are using it for two way mic+speakers.

Try playing some music on your computer and then start a video call. Even before I jump into the meeting, as soon as I hit the Google meet site and it opens up the meeting "camera preview" page, the music quality goes straight into the toilet.

This also happens to my "puck" speaker+mic array that is connected via USB.

> This also happens to my "puck" speaker+mic array that is connected via USB.

Argh. Isn’t this direct evidence that it is not the “Bluetooth profile”? Since it’s directly connected via USB?

As I understand it the codec used in Bluetooth headsets is from 2003 and doesn't use the bit rate effectively compared to a newer codec. Sometimes a device will support a newer codec especially with the aptX branding, and even rarer will both devices support it!

This is certainly the opposite of my experience. The sound quality from someone speaking via their MacBook microphone is noticeably worse than someone speaking via their AirPods microphone.

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