4 ms·

One can hope. I personally suspect Microsoft will argue that reverting certain system settings to defaults every update is SOP because they've been doing it el

One can hope. I personally suspect Microsoft will argue that reverting certain system settings to defaults every update is SOP because they've been doing it elsewhere. For example: sound settings. My physical Bose headphones show up as 2 different logical bluetooth headphones, one with sound that sucks, and one with sound that doesn't suck. Whenever Windows chooses the one with sound that sucks, I go into sound settings and disable it. This prevents sucky audio for a few months until an update lands, the sound settings get reverted, and the sucky audio returns. Ugh.

nitrogen 6y ago
Does your microphone work in the stereo hq audio case? On my headphones the mic only works in the crappy audio mode. Maybe they are trying to "fix" Cortana by un-disabling the bt interface that has a mic? Idk
- jjoonathan 6y ago
  Yes, that's why it happens, but it doesn't make it less obnoxious. It's obnoxious that Microsoft periodically breaks my audio and it's doubly obnoxious that some designer at Bose thought that trading away a physical button for this two-bluetooth-endpoint nonsense was a UX win (or, cynically, a portfolio win). The fact that I've been able to figure out what's going on and am therefore able to work around the problem with only minor inconvenience is neither here nor there. Most users with the same setup will not be in a position to understand or do anything about the problem. Microsoft will degrade their audio, and they will live with it. Same with Edge.
boardwaalk 6y ago
My speakers connected via HDMI and monitors w/ HDMI audio did something similar. It seemed like I got duplicate audio devices, depending on which port I used (DisplayPort or HDMI, via an adapter cable or not). The audio driver seemed to get so confused with this it just stopped working. I had to unprotect a deep registry entry and clear out my audio devices, at which time the relevant entries came back after a reboot. Any normal user would have been stuck with reinstalling. It’s quite amazing how many “edges” Windows still has. I’m very close to figuring out how I can have a Windows VM w/ graphics card passthrough just for games on top of Linux. It might have warts too, but at least I can fix it.
AshamedCaptain 6y ago
These are the A2DP (stereo audio, but no microphone) and HSP (sucky audio, but microphone) profiles. The system is supposed to switch automatically between them depending on whether microphone input is required. As of today I think no operating system performs this switch correctly. It's been broken in desktop Linux for a couple years now.
- md5wasp 6y ago
  This is why my "gamer" headphones can use both profiles simultaneously! The game/music/media audio comes through the headphone profile, and chat audio comes through the headset profile. There's even the ability to change the volume-per-logical-device (chatmix). Agree with you that I never got it working consistently in Linux. Just getting normal BT headphones to use A2DP rather than HSP was always a bit tricky. I've not dared try my gamer headphones...
- fartcannon 6y ago
  Perhaps in yours, but my Linux desktop always uses the proper sound settings, even though I switch constantly between bluetoith headphones and speakers. So maybe YMMV?
  - AshamedCaptain 6y ago
    It is definitely broken for years, search for hsphfpd vs ofono story. I.e. https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/pulseaudio/pulseaudio/-/issues/84 https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/pulseaudio/pulseaudio/-/issue... It used to work much better in the bluez4 era, about a decade ago, than it does now. Do note these are Bluetooth profiles. This is irrelevant to ouput device switching.

nitrogen 6y ago

Does your microphone work in the stereo hq audio case? On my headphones the mic only works in the crappy audio mode. Maybe they are trying to "fix" Cortana by un-disabling the bt interface that has a mic? Idk

jjoonathan 6y ago
Yes, that's why it happens, but it doesn't make it less obnoxious. It's obnoxious that Microsoft periodically breaks my audio and it's doubly obnoxious that some designer at Bose thought that trading away a physical button for this two-bluetooth-endpoint nonsense was a UX win (or, cynically, a portfolio win). The fact that I've been able to figure out what's going on and am therefore able to work around the problem with only minor inconvenience is neither here nor there. Most users with the same setup will not be in a position to understand or do anything about the problem. Microsoft will degrade their audio, and they will live with it. Same with Edge.

boardwaalk 6y ago

My speakers connected via HDMI and monitors w/ HDMI audio did something similar. It seemed like I got duplicate audio devices, depending on which port I used (DisplayPort or HDMI, via an adapter cable or not). The audio driver seemed to get so confused with this it just stopped working. I had to unprotect a deep registry entry and clear out my audio devices, at which time the relevant entries came back after a reboot. Any normal user would have been stuck with reinstalling. It’s quite amazing how many “edges” Windows still has. I’m very close to figuring out how I can have a Windows VM w/ graphics card passthrough just for games on top of Linux. It might have warts too, but at least I can fix it.

AshamedCaptain 6y ago

These are the A2DP (stereo audio, but no microphone) and HSP (sucky audio, but microphone) profiles. The system is supposed to switch automatically between them depending on whether microphone input is required. As of today I think no operating system performs this switch correctly. It's been broken in desktop Linux for a couple years now.

md5wasp 6y ago
This is why my "gamer" headphones can use both profiles simultaneously! The game/music/media audio comes through the headphone profile, and chat audio comes through the headset profile. There's even the ability to change the volume-per-logical-device (chatmix). Agree with you that I never got it working consistently in Linux. Just getting normal BT headphones to use A2DP rather than HSP was always a bit tricky. I've not dared try my gamer headphones...
fartcannon 6y ago
Perhaps in yours, but my Linux desktop always uses the proper sound settings, even though I switch constantly between bluetoith headphones and speakers. So maybe YMMV?
- AshamedCaptain 6y ago
  It is definitely broken for years, search for hsphfpd vs ofono story. I.e. https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/pulseaudio/pulseaudio/-/issues/84 https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/pulseaudio/pulseaudio/-/issue... It used to work much better in the bluez4 era, about a decade ago, than it does now. Do note these are Bluetooth profiles. This is irrelevant to ouput device switching.