Some notes for those who want to experiment. I've managed to eliminate most of my drop-outs.
Here are the specifics of my situation: Verizon Galaxy Note 4. Drop-outs began immediately after upgrade to Lollipop 5.01 from Kitkat 4.4. My Note 4 also went crazy because I had put some apps on the sdcard and apps were going crazy and overheating the phone. I did a factory reset and restored my data. The overheating and other problems ended, but I continued to have drops on bluetooth audio. I previously owned a Samsung Galaxy S3 last running Kitkat 4.4.2 and previously running versions of Jelly Bean. I used the same Sony blue tooth headphones and the same installed apps across all these phone/os combinations. Everything has been stock except I had to towelroot Kitkat on the S3 but only to access my sdcard. On all phones, I would experience drop-outs when:
1. Phone was placed next to the wireless adapter on a desktop computer or just near a notebook computer or near a wireless mouse or keyboard. (RF interference I assume)
2. A running microwave oven or other RF interference source was present nearby.
3. If I walked outside with the phone in my pocket and there were no walls or objects for the phone to bounce the bluetooth signal off of. I could always fix this problem by taking the phone out of my back pocket and giving it straight line-of-site to the headphone receiver.
4. When I separated the bluetooth headphones and phone by too much distance, especially if things like metal studs were between headphones and phone.
None of the above 4 items are what I consider to be the "stutter" or "drop" problem we're discussing. All of the above are related to wireless issues and every phone has those. I previously had two problems with drop-outs on my S3 and Note 4 before Lollipop:
1. Drop-outs initially when I plugged the phone into a computer's USB port.
2. Drop-outs when a background app download or update finished and the app was installed and then scanned by various software packages such as Clueful.
At this point, I'm mostly down to the above two drop-out problems. I still receive occasional mystery drops, but not a drop every 2-10 minutes almost all the time like it was before I started fiddling. Drop-outs are quite noticeable to me because I listen to mp3 audiobooks using the Maple app. Missing a few words is very annoying. I also had the same drop out problems with Spotify. I do not run the location service on my Note 4 and I do not connect the phone to my car stereo. Instead, I wear the Sony bluetooth headphones. Leaving the screen on DID fix my problem as almost everyone has reported here. However, after I fiddled with my phone, I no longer need to leave the screen on most of the time.
Sorry for that lengthy preamble, but this particular problem seems to manifest itself differently in different situations and with different uses. (Which, I think, argues for a CPU management or similar kernel-type issue.) Here is what I did and hopefully there isn't something I'm forgetting:
1. Turned off Lollipop's new lock screen notifications. Settings..Sound and Notification..While Locked..Do not show notifications. Initially I turned off everything lock screen related and slowly put the stuff back until I settled on the notifications as making a difference.
2. Turn on Developer options. Settings..About phone..Build number. Tap build number until enabled.
3. Turn off Lollipop's new feature that runs audio through USB. Developer options..Prevent USB Audio Routing This one seemed to make a difference sometimes.
4. Reboot. Don't skip this step.
I believe that took care of most of it for me, except for the occasional mystery problems. In the interests of full disclosure, I also started disabling background programs I didn't need. If it's a CPU management problem, theoretically, disabling background programs can help because these apps are always running in the background and can become active and eat cycles, possibly without kicking the cpu up a notch in speed. In general, your phone and your privacy will be happier without some of these. Here's how to disable background apps if you want to play with it:
1. Locate an app to disable. Clear running apps so they don't confuse you. Tap your phone's Task switcher (left) button. Close all. Then, go to Settings..Developer Options..Process Stats Look for apps running in the background that you really don't use. For example, I disabled the NFL app. Unless you are really desperate, don't disable anything you use and don't disable system apps.
2. Disable the app. Go to Settings..Applications..Application Manager..flick screen to left until "All" is showing toward the top of screen. Scroll down to the app you want to disable and tap. Click Disable button.
When disabling apps, I rebooted, checked to make sure they were gone from the background app list in Developer Options and then waited a day to see if I thought there was any difference. I never hit on anything where I said "That's the one." However, perhaps cumulatively with my other changes, disabling apps might have made part of the difference. If things hadn't stabilized about a week ago, the next app I was going after was Yahoo weather, which seemed to always be doing something including changing my lock screen wallpaper. My theory is the new lock screen is a part of the problem, but who knows for sure?
Good luck experimenting. Hope you find a fix and that my problems don't come back anytime soon.