Dell Bluetooth Crackling Muffled Sound (Terrible Sound Quality)

I have a vostro with the Dell 355 Module. I previously had one with the 350 (screen replacement).

Both of them have supplied terrible quality, muffled, crackly, popping sound to my Dell BH200 bluetooth stereo headphones.

Initially I suspected that it was the fault of the headphones, but after connecting them to my Samsung U600, they play music and calls flawlessly (I mean not amazing, not audiophile, but clean audio).

So it must be the Dell Bluetooth module.

Anyone else have any experience?

 

When you right click the Bluetooth tray icon and choose 'Quick Connect' is 'Stereo Audio' listed?

You should be connecting via this method and not 'Hands-free Audio'. You might have your pairing setup to 'automagically' connect to the wrong profile. 'Hands-free Audio' is mono, and for VOIP.

By going into your Bluetooth Places you can disable/enable which profiles your devices (in this case your headphones) automatically start.

Connecting to both profiles at the same time will likely not do your connection speeds (and therefore audio) any favours either. Neither will using Bluetooth for any other purpose (like moving files around) at the same time as transmitting audio to your headphones.

 

Same thing here. I have the Motorola S9 BT headphones, and the sound quality over A2DP with my Vostro 1400 is severely lacking. It cuts in and out all the time for me. Works great with my home PC and HTC Mogul PPC, but not the Vostro.

 

Yes I agree, the S9's will cut out. I had them and returned them when I ended up canceling my 1420 with a bad display. If I had keep the 1420, I probably would have keep the Motorola headset. But now that I have my new HP I have not reordered them.. the build in altec lansing speakers on my dv6500t are nice enough that I really don't care about wearing headsets now.

Maybe its just the dells that don't work well with BT headphones. I use a MS BT presenter notebook mouse with my HP and that is probably a more practical way to use BT. I think the radio signal is too weak for A2DP. Its just the way the FCC set it up. I have used my Sennheiser RS130 wireless headphones and that works. But that is much stronger at around 600 mhz and can be heard anywhere in my house.

 

Are there any decent firmware or driver upgrades that could maybe sort this out?

When I connect to them i activate both.

 

I checked the Dell website, and my Vostro has the most recent drivers from them. They use the new Widcomm drivers though, which are really just an expansion of the MS BT drivers. It's possible Widcomm have released newer drivers that Dell hasn't updated to their BT module yet, but would still work. I'm not certain, I haven't checked.