Get rid of 0.5s latency when playing audio over Bluetooth with A2DP

Question

As described in the title I experience a half a second delay when playing audio over Bluetooth with A2DP.
This makes watching movies not possible as the sound is not synchronised with the video.

I'm not sure if the delay is caused by the Bluetooth standard, the A2PD protocol, the A2DP implementation on Ubuntu 12.04, or the Belkin Z73 Bluetooth Receiver.

Anyways, is this a normal lag? Is there a way to play audio over Bluetooth without any noticeable latency?

Answer 1

No, this is not normal but I've had a similar problem occasionally with my Altec Lansing iMT525 Bluetooth Speakers. Something similar in concept to Sri's answer almost always works for me, and I need to do it only once per connect.

Auto-switching Bluetooth profiles to re-initialize PulseAudio

If you're looking for a culprit, I'd look at Ubuntu's sound system, PulseAudio first, and then your Bluetooth receiver. Try this:

• First, delete and re-pair your Bluetooth device.

• Then, copy and paste the below into a .sh file in your home directory, say /home/brillout/pabluezswitch.sh:

  #!/bin/bash
  bluezcard=$(pactl list cards short | awk '/bluez/{print $2}')
  pactl set-card-profile "$bluezcard" a2dp
  pactl set-card-profile "$bluezcard" hsp
  pactl set-card-profile "$bluezcard" a2dp
  

• Make the file executable by opening a terminal and typing chmod +x ~/pabluezswitch.sh

• Go to Settings...Keyboard...Shortcuts, and create a custom shortcut; name it whatever you want, with the command as /home/$USER/pabluezswitch.sh (substitute with the appropriate path). Click Apply, and then click on the right where it says Disabled to set up a keyboard shortcut to execute the script.

What this does is force the PulseAudio system to resynchronize the audio being sent to your headset/speakers by switching profiles from ad2p -> hsp -> a2dp, thus hopefully getting rid of any latency.

---

Whenever you connect and notice the lag, you should press the keyboard shortcut chosen above to attempt to fix the latency -- hopefully it works for you!

Answer 2

• Install pavucontrol: sudo apt install pavucontrol
• Run pavucontrol from the menu
• Go to Output Devices
• Under the Bluetooth Device, open the Advanced menu
  • There you can set the latency offset to the value in millisecond (plus or minus). To make sure of the value you need to put start with any value e.g., 250.00 ms.
  • Play any "audio sync test" from YouTube and set the playback speed to 0.25 (make it slower) and from there you can start noticing if the value is correct or needs to be increased or decreased.

Answer 3

I tried a lot of approaches to this problem, but nothing could fix it. Then I stumbled upon set-port-latency-offset

If you are using pulseaudio do :

pactl list cards short | egrep -o bluez.*[[:space:]]

This will give you the bluetooth interface. Now set the latency accordingly :

pactl set-port-latency-offset <INTERFACE> speaker-output 100000

I am using 100000 microseconds which works fine for me.

Answer 4

The top reply here works, but not for every Bluetooth audio device. Some devices have different profile names than what that poster has with his Bluetooth speakers. For instance, in the following code, which was originally posted by that person, it apparently has profiles named a2dp and hsp. Neither of these are available with my LG Tones, for example, but they are with other devices like my Sony headset.

#!/bin/bash

BLUEZCARD=$(pactl list cards short | egrep -o bluez.*[[:space:]])
pactl set-card-profile $BLUEZCARD a2dp
pactl set-card-profile $BLUEZCARD hsp
pactl set-card-profile $BLUEZCARD a2dp

That code will work for most bluetooth devices it appears, but to get this working correctly for those devices that don't have the a2dp profile or the hsp profile, type in:

pactl list | grep -Pzo '.*bluez_card(.*\n)*'

This will return everything after where it finds a bluetooth device. For instance, with the LG Tone Ultra headset, I get this:

Name: bluez_card.B8_AD_3E_**_**_**
    Driver: module-bluez5-device.c
    Owner Module: 36
    Properties:
        device.description = "LG HBS810"
        device.string = "B8:AD:3E:**:**:**"
        device.api = "bluez"
        device.class = "sound"
        device.bus = "bluetooth"
        device.form_factor = "headset"
        bluez.path = "/org/bluez/hci0/dev_B8_AD_3E_**_**_**"
        bluez.class = "0x240404"
        bluez.alias = "LG HBS810"
        device.icon_name = "audio-headset-bluetooth"
        device.intended_roles = "phone"
    Profiles:
        a2dp_sink: High Fidelity Playback (A2DP Sink) (sinks: 1, sources: 0, priority: 10, available: yes)
        headset_head_unit: Headset Head Unit (HSP/HFP) (sinks: 1, sources: 1, priority: 20, available: yes)
        off: Off (sinks: 0, sources: 0, priority: 0, available: yes)
    Active Profile: a2dp_sink
    Ports:
        headset-output: Headset (priority: 0, latency offset: 0 usec)
            Part of profile(s): a2dp_sink, headset_head_unit
        headset-input: Headset (priority: 0, latency offset: 0 usec)
            Part of profile(s): headset_head_unit

We are interested in the profiles section. In this section, we see three profiles, which are a2dp_sink, headset_head_unit, and off. The two profiles we need should have in them (A2DP Sink) and (HSP/HFP). In this case, they are a2dp_sink for the a2dp profile, and headsethead_unit for the hsp profile. Notice this is different than the original poster's a2dp and hsp.

Now, with the above code, we will modify it and put it into a file. I called the file bluezswitch.sh.

Change to the directory you want to put the file. It can be anywhere.

touch bluezswitch.sh

Then

nano bluezswitch.sh

Copy and paste the code at the very top of this comment and replace the a2dp and hsp with the values you got when you ran the above command, and paste it in that file. For instance, this is what my file looked like for my LG Tones.

#!/bin/bash

BLUEZCARD=$(pactl list cards short | egrep -o bluez.*[[:space:]])
pactl set-card-profile $BLUEZCARD a2dp_sink
pactl set-card-profile $BLUEZCARD headset_head_unit
pactl set-card-profile $BLUEZCARD a2dp_sink

Now, ctrl-x then y to save the file and exit nano, and then make the file executable:

chmod +x bluezswitch.sh

Then follow up by setting a keyboard shortcut as has been explained.

Go to Settings...Keyboard...Shortcuts, and create a custom shortcut; name it whatever you want, with the command as /home/$USER/bluezswitch.sh (substitute appropriate username in path!). Click Apply, and then click on the right where it says Disabled to set up a keyboard shortcut to execute the script.

That should be all there is to it. This should work for all those that it didn't work for before.

Answer 5

I get similar problem occasionally, irrespective of the player used. Mine is a Nokia BH-503 Bluetooth Stereo Headphone with MSI CR400 laptop and Ubuntu 11.10. I happened to come across a workaround which you can try.

• Start the video playback.
• Go to Sound Settings > Hardware.
• Select the Bluetooth device.
• Then in Settings for the Selected Device drop-down, switch to Telephony Duplex (HSP/HFP) profile, then switch back to High Fidelity Playback (A2DP).

Answer 6

Adaptive differential pulse code modulation involves a look-ahead type compressing algorithm where information cannot be transmitted before the encoder has had a chance to examine several bytes of forthcoming info. Hence, data has to stack up in the encoder, and there is an inherent time shift between the streams entering and leaving the encoder. Long ago, I did a study of data network delays to determine the feasibility of voice-over-data telephony (what is now VoIP). I think I concluded that ADPCM-style compression/encoding would introduce too much delay. I think to overcome this Bluetooth-delay problem, one might need a non-compressing type of audio encoding which should have lower latency.

Answer 7

Here's what solved it for me: $ sudo apt-get install phonon-backend-vlc and make sure it's the preferred backend, in KDE go to [System Settings][Multimedia][Audio and video settings][Backend] and use the [Prefer button]

Answer 8

On VLC media player, Go to Tools Track synchronization Synchronize tab Under audio/ video audio track synchronize, use a negative value like about -0.67 and the lag will be compensated for fully. You have to manually do this every time you open a new file. Chris

Answer 9

Similarly to Timm's answer, I did not have the profiles of the accepted answer either. Setting the HSP gave an error code.

I ended up using the following, almost identical, script.

#!/bin/bash
BLUEZCARD=`pactl list cards short | egrep -o bluez.*[[:space:]]`
pactl set-card-profile $BLUEZCARD a2dp_sink
pactl set-card-profile $BLUEZCARD off
pactl set-card-profile $BLUEZCARD a2dp_sink

Answer 10

Seem like this issue is still relevant after all those years.

Based on Arindam Mani Das's answer and Billy Farrington's comment I created the following shell script:

#!/bin/bash
export BLUEZCARD=`pactl list cards short | egrep -o bluez.*[[:space:]]`
pactl set-card-profile $BLUEZCARD a2dp_sink
pactl set-port-latency-offset $BLUEZCARD headphone-output 100000

I am using 100000 microseconds as Arindam recommended and it also works fine for me.

Answer 11

individuals who are having this problem Please view this website: http://projectzeorymer.wordpress.com/2011/09/01/ubuntu-how-to-connect-nokia-bh-503-bluetooth-headset-to-your-pc/ to see a pic of what you need to download.

Download the bluetooth manager and use it to manipulate the settings of the headset. Set the sound settings to High Fidelity Playback (A2DP) and then go in sound settings.

Answer 12

Based on two other answers (1, 2), here's a version with some minor tweaks:

#!/usr/bin/env bash

set -o errexit -o noclobber -o nounset -o pipefail

bluez_card="$(pactl list cards short | grep --only-matching 'bluez_card[^[:space:]]*')"
pactl set-card-profile "$bluez_card" a2dp_sink
pactl set-card-profile "$bluez_card" headset_head_unit
pactl set-card-profile "$bluez_card" a2dp_sink

Changes from the other solutions:

• Portable shebang line
• Standard safety options
• Lowercase variable
• Regex which only matches the card name, not the space after it
• More Quotes™

Audio/video sync test

Answer 13

For me fallowing worked:

Install pavucontrol is you haven't already.

$ pavucontrol

• go to Configuration tab
• Look for your bluetooth device and play with Codec drop down menu.

for me switching from anything but LDAC(High Quality) works great. Good bye laggy sound :)

Using sony wh-1000xm3