Bluetooth headphones

[marshallbanana]

Edit: This post has be obsolescenced by the second post in this thread so you can skip straight to that.



I decided earlier tonight to have another shot at making my bluetooth headphones work with kubuntu. Well I have gotten much further than on previous attempts, this time I managed to pair the headphones with the laptop by a very round about method (with my headphones in pairing mode I went kbluetooth>configuration>input devices, by adding them as an input device (not exactly sensible given they are headphones) I managed to finally convince kbluetooth to prompt me to pair them, which I did). So I am now halfway there. And then comes the second half...

Now that they are paired the trick seems to be using a package called btsco (Adept description of bluez-btsco: A tool to that provides a way to use a bluetooth headset with Linux. It works well enough now to get voice-quality audio to and from most headsets). So having installed it* and then running

sudo modprobe snd-bt-sco
I then, following a guide (http://www.linux.ie/articles/bluetoothheadset.php), tried the code:
btsco -v 00:13:A9:D4:2C:37
(that number is the MAC address of my headphones, as reported by both kbluetooth and by 'hcitool scan'). However this generates the following

marshallbanana@MPU:~$ btsco -v 00:13:A9:D4:2C:37
btsco v0.42
Device is 1:0
Voice setting: 0x0060
Can't connect RFCOMM channel: Connection refused


Does anyone have any idea what the problem is here?
One possibility I've thought of is that it need the pin, however the device is already paired and so this shouldn't be the case. Also there is no option within btsco to do this (looked at btsco --help) so it seems highly unlikely.

Note: had it worked the desired output would look something more like

btsco v0.42
Device is 1:0
Voice setting: 0x0060
RFCOMM channel 2 connected
Using interface hci0

*: Just in case someone tries using this as a guide I should note that at this point I also installed the packages bluez-hcidump, alsa-tools and alsa-utils however I'm not sure whether these are actually needed. I was just trying everything I could at this point.

[marshallbanana]

Just found on the bluez website that apparently since bluez-utils 3.16 (current in kubuntu is 3.19) using btsco is unnecessary. Instead their howto (http://wiki.bluez.org/wiki/HOWTO/AudioDevices) is as follows:


bluez-utils-3.16 and newer:

Note: you will not need bluetooth-alsa, plugz, btsco or the like for audio to work. They are obsolete.

1. Make sure the audio service is installed and enabled (file /etc/bluetooth/audio.service should exist)
2. modify your ~/.asoundrc to contain

pcm.bluetooth {
type bluetooth
device 00:11:22:33:44:55
}

where 00:11:22:33:44:55 is the Bluetooth address of your headset (use for example hcitool scan to find it)
3. configure your audio application to use the alsa device "bluetooth". See Supported Players for some examples.
4. start playing :)


So I started on this. Did step one, however in step 2 I can find no such file (I assume it should be at /etc/bluetooth/.asoundrc but checked many other locations as well). Any thoughts?

[marshallbanana]

Okay, so I decided to go for a fudge on step 2 and created a text document /etc/bluetooth/.asoundrc with the contents mentioned for step 2 above, using my MAC address.

Now it's time for step 3. Apparently (http://wiki.bluez.org/wiki/HOWTO/AudioDevices#amarok) setting it up for amarok involves:

Amarok configuration -> Engine -> Select: "alsa"

then

replace "default" with "bluetooth" in either "mono" or "stereo" field

But alsa is not an option for engine and looking in adept there is no obvious candidate of what I need to install. Any ideas on this one?

[mchuskie]

~/.asoundrc means the file .asoundrc in your home directory (~).

[marshallbanana]

as in
/home/
or
/home/username/
I'm guessing the second but just want to be sure

[SheeEttin]

Yes, the second.