Poor quality of music streaming over Bluetooth

[hardikp]

My wife and I both got the Samsung Fascinate about a week ago. My car has bluetooth for calls and streaming music and works flawlessly with my iPhone 3G. I was able to pair the Fascinate without any problems and the call quality over bluetooth is pretty good. Streaming music, however, is horrible. There is a constant crackling sound as if I am listening to a poor strength AM channel. This is quite odd because bluetooth is a digital standard and it is hard to imagine how analog-like noise gets added to the music. Here is the debug I have done so far but the problem persists:

- Played several songs to verify that it is not the song itself
- Played pandora and other streaming music
- Rebooted the phone
- Used the default media player as well as TuneWiki to rule out the music player
- Turned off wifi and GPS
- Stream music from my wife's phone to see if the issue is specific to my phone. Her phone does the same.

For completeness... the issue does not exist when using headphones or the phone speaker.

Has anyone else tried steaming music over bluetooth on this phone? Did it work for you?

Thanks in advance for you help.
HP

 

[jack22182]

I was able to pair the Fascinate without any problems and the call quality over bluetooth is pretty good. Streaming music, however, is horrible.

A few months back I got a Sony XPLOD car stereo system with Bluetooth. The first thing I did was pair my iPod Touch and try to play music without wires.

The audio quality was abysmal. I didn't have the cutouts and popping you describe but the frequency response and dynamic range were crap compared to both the iPod interface cable and the AUX line in. The difference to me was like comparing CD or iPod to FM radio.

I ended up deciding that the audio quality over Bluetooth was substandard and not really usable for me.

YMMV etc.

 

[ilovfriday]

It's an andorid bug; the horrible quality of android A2DP is just, well, horrible! Google should be ashamed for this problem since it's just a config setting. My old iPhone sounds great over bluetooth. For more details and for file your complaint go here:
Issue 9888 - android - Poor A2DP sound quality - Project Hosting on Google Code

 

[Froalskiner#WN]

crap...I was hoping I could get rid of my AUX cable...

 

[hardikp]

Thanks for the feedback guys. I am surprised google has missed something this obvious. Jack, I am no audiophile and certainly can't tell the difference between CD and mp3 quality, especially in a car. That just tells you how bad the quality is on my phone.

ilovfriday, thanks for the link. The description there seems to match exactly to what I hear. I voted for the issue but only 43 people have voted for it, so I don't imagine it's going to be fixed any time soon.

 

[ilovfriday]

BTW, I can confirm that the Droid X does not have this same problem... I had a chance to test one with by BT Headphones tonight. I am wondering if it's something that was fixed in Froyo or the DX has never had this issue....

 

[ilovfriday]

BTW, I can confirm that the Droid X does not have this same problem... I had a chance to test one with by BT Headphones tonight. I am wondering if it's something that was fixed in Froyo or the DX has never had this issue....

Looks like the vibrant has the same issue.
Re: Poor stereo Bluetooth audio quality - T-Mobile Community

 

[CP2]

I use the streaming bluetooth stereo every time I get in the car, and it works great for me most of the time.
I use it for Pandora, the stock music & video players, & youtube. The audio output actually sounds a lot better than it did on my old blackberry. It almost sounds like yours is stuck in phone audio, which is mono and sounds terrible because of the low bitrate.

Sent from my SCH-I500 using Tapatalk

 

[ilovfriday]

I use the streaming bluetooth stereo every time I get in the car, and it works great for me most of the time.
I use it for Pandora, the stock music & video players, & youtube. The audio output actually sounds a lot better than it did on my old blackberry. It almost sounds like yours is stuck in phone audio, which is mono and sounds terrible because of the low bitrate.

Sent from my SCH-I500 using Tapatalk

I have had a blackberry that sounded worse than this before, but for sure the fascinate still has a problem. This phone and several other fascinates I have tried in the store and friends phones and they all have this problem. I have friends that claim it sounds just as good as using wired headphones and it sounds like crap to me... Great for them, they don't have sensitive hearing like those of us complaining about this issue. Samsung even released a fix for this issue on the Korea version of the Galaxy S; I sure hope this comes to the US... I was about to jump ship to the DX but since I got my phone at best buy and they are selling the Fascinate for FREE today I get to go get all my money back. I can't justify spending $200 for the DX over this bluetooth issue, at least no now... Ask me again in a month.

 

[ilovfriday]

I have had a blackberry that sounded worse than this before, but for sure the fascinate still has a problem. This phone and several other fascinates I have tried in the store and friends phones and they all have this problem. I have friends that claim it sounds just as good as using wired headphones and it sounds like crap to me... Great for them, they don't have sensitive hearing like those of us complaining about this issue. Samsung even released a fix for this issue on the Korea version of the Galaxy S; I sure hope this comes to the US... I was about to jump ship to the DX but since I got my phone at best buy and they are selling the Fascinate for FREE today I get to go get all my money back. I can't justify spending $200 for the DX over this bluetooth issue, at least no now... Ask me again in a month.

Best Buy would not price match so I guess I am headed to the X when I get off work. I love the fascinate and it's form factor but the BT issue and Bing plus a few other quirks are enough to force my hand .

 

[curley]

I use it all the time in my car and the sound is just as good as the satellite radio.

Are you sure your settings are correct?

 

[fwdixon]

I have the Altec Lansing Backbeat 903 BT headset and the audio quality is excellent (although the range is not that great) fwiw.

 

[navoff]

I'm hearing impaired and my hearing aids have bluetooth connectivity which I use to connect to my phone. I tried to listen to music on a new Android phone (HTC Evo Shift 4G) and the sound is like a radio station that's just out of range so the signal keeps dropping out. There's no way I could ever listen to music that way. I have a cable I can use to connect non-bluetooth devices to my bluetooth receiver but the bluetooth signal takes precedence over the wired one so the sound is still horrible. The only way I could use the phone to listen to music is if I disconnect the bluetooth link between the phone and my bluetooth receiver. Then I'd have to constantly reconnect/disconnect depending on whether or not I wanted to listen to music or answer my phone.