Apple MacBooks and many desktop Macs have built-in microphones. However, you can also connect headsets and other mics via USB, a 3.5mm audio jack, or Bluetooth. Here’s how to fix a microphone that’s not working on your Mac. Make sure the headset is turned on and in range. Make sure the headset is connected with your Mac. Choose Apple menu System Preferences, then click Bluetooth. Check to see if your headset is in the list of devices. Open Bluetooth preferences for me. If your headset isn’t in the list, try connecting with it. That's where the bluetooth headsets come in. Believe it or not, those dorky little things stuck in everybody's ears these days can also be used with your Mac. And, since they're hands-free, you can do other stuff while you talk to your buddies!
The lack of support for Bluetooth stereo headsets was a staple of every forum thread after the introduction of every new iPhone hardware or firmware for years—until it finally materialized. Then nothing much was heard about the subject ever again. So, when I ordered my Sennheiser MM450 Bluetooth headset/headphones with noise cancelation, I didn't really know what to expect. After a few months of use, however, I'm now ready to share all the sordid details. This post is first and foremost meant to provide insight into the world of Bluetooth stereo audio on the Mac and the iPhone, even though I only tested with the MM450. I have some remarks about the headset itself at the end.
The way Bluetooth manages to work between computers, keyboards, mice, headsets, cell phones, and many other devices is through profiles. A profile determines how two devices talk to each other. Two devices must both support the desired profile for a function to work—the same way a browser and a Web server must both speak HTTP.
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A common audio-related profile is the headset profile (HSP). HSP allows for two-way telephony-quality audio communication between a cell phone and a headset, along with some limited controls, such as taking a call and ending it. The hands-free profile (HFP) does the same thing for Bluetooth car kits. The Mac has supported this for a long time, and the original iPhone also supported HSP/HFP. But because the audio is mono and sampled at 8kHz, the quality is barely sufficient for phone calls. You certainly don't want to listen to music this way.
For music, there is the Advanced Audio Distribution Profile, A2DP. Unlike HSP/HST, A2DP can only send audio in one direction: from the computer (or phone) to the headset, though it supports full 44.1/48kHz quality in glorious stereo. Unfortunately, Bluetooth would be somewhat out of its depth transferring full CD-quality digital audio uncompressed, so A2DP allows a variety of audio compression codecs.
In theory, it's possible to simply send already compressed AAC or MP3 audio to the headset, which then decompresses it and plays it back. In practice, few A2DP implementations support anything other than the mandatory SBC codec. This means that the sending device must (re)compress the audio before it's sent to the headset.
Last but not least, there's the Audio/Video Remote Control Profile (AVRCP). This profile allows the headset to send back playback control commands (next/previous track and the like) to the audio source. When Apple initially added A2DP to the iPhone, the company left out AVRCP. In fact, it's still missing from some older iPhones, even though the iPhone 4 and Macs running Snow Leopard support it.
Pairing
Back to the Sennheiser MM450. Like any Bluetooth device, it needs to be paired before it can be used. This is a simple matter of keeping a button pushed on the headset until some lights start to flash, waiting for it to show up on the Mac or the iPhone, and then selecting the MM450 from the list of discovered Bluetooth devices. On the iPhone, that's all there is to it; the Bluetooth headset is used for audio until you manually select the speaker.
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On the Mac, things are a bit more complicated: two audio output devices and one audio input device are now added to the system. The easiest way to select one for use is by alt-clicking the loudspeaker icon in the menu bar if you've set it up to appear there in the Sound pref pane. Of course you can also change audio in- and outputs through the System Preferences. In some cases the output devices are labeled Stereo and Mono, sometimes this helpful information is left out. Choosing mono means that the HSP profile is used, making the computer's audio sound really crappy.
But you do get to use the headset's microphone this way, so it's somewhat useful for Skype calls and the like. However, Skype supports 16kHz audio, so you may want to use another microphone or headset.
This is a short audio clip (in WAV format) recorded at 8kHz over Bluetooth using the HSP profile. And this is a clip recorded at 48 kHz using a wired headset through a MacBook's audio in/out port.
If you choose stereo, the Mac sends all its audio output to the headset using the A2DP profile. As mentioned above, this audio is (re)compressed. However, there is quite a bit of quality difference in the way different devices and software versions do this. Under Mac OS 10.5 Leopard, the quality is good, but not excellent. Under Mac OS 10.6 Snow Leopard, it's a lot better. And on the iPhone 4, it's better still—as far as my untrained ears can tell. Obviously, anyone looking for the audiophile experience is going to steer well clear of Bluetooth, but I was hard pressed to hear any difference with wired audio when listening casually to my MP3/AAC library.
On the computer, you can influence the amount of compression the SBC codec applies by modifying the editable Bluetooth compression variables listed here:
Do this by issuing defaults write <variable> = <value>. Don't forget the quotation marks in the variable names. However, when I cranked up the bitpool settings too far, the headset wouldn't produce any audio anymore.
Overall performance
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I was impressed with the solid reception and distance the Bluetooth audio works over. It easily goes through one wall, and when Bluetooth has to compete with WiFi (both use the 2.4GHz band), WiFi loses out and slows down—Bluetooth typically remains solid. The only circumstances under which the audio would break up (and even then usually not that much) is when my iPhone would get caught between me and some solid object, or when I would walk across an open field in front of my house. With my iPhone in my left pocket and the MM450's electronics on the right side, apparently there need to be some objects in the vicinity for the Bluetooth signal to bounce off of to circumnavigate my body.
The solid reception lasted until I had been using the MM450 for about a month. One morning, the audio kept dropping out—badly. This kept up when I left the house, so apparently it wasn't the neighbors transferring big files over WiFi or nuking some popcorn in a badly shielded microwave. Nothing I could think of would clear up the problem. Fortunately, the MM450, like most Bluetooth headphones, comes with an optional cable for use in airplanes. The next day things were back to normal. This keeps happening about one day a month. The fact that it's impossible to debug the problem is unbelievably frustrating.
Adobe acrobat pro x for mac. Other things I have learned: first, the volume on the headset and that on the computer are independent and work in multiplicative fashion. So, you can use either to turn down the volume, but you only get the maximum volume by turning up both.
What I do is keep my iPhone volume set to maximum—fortunately it remembers the volume separately for each output—and use the MM450 buttons to select a pleasant playback volume. On the Mac, I set the Mac's volume to around two-thirds, which makes the volume with and without the cable the same. Connected to the Mac, after an hour, the headset turns itself off to save power. Not so with the iPhone, which keeps the headset awake until it runs out of power.
Activating Voice Control on the iPhone happens via the Bluetooth button (not the main play/pause button!), but I always forget whether it needs a short or a long press, so I often end up redialing the last dialed number. Voice Control is a bit slower than normal because the Bluetooth connection first has to be switched to HSP mode so the microphone can be used. The headset insists on reconnecting to the last connected device when it's turned on; making it connect to another device requires a few extra steps—it's not quite as simple as unplugging a cable from your iPhone and plugging it into your computer.
On the Mac, there is a very noticeable audio lag. This is very obvious when changing the volume using the volume keys on the keyboard: the feedback clicks are noticeably delayed. Forget about playing back video; the synchronization between the audio and video is off by a lot. This is strange, as the SBC codec is supposed to be optimized for low latency.
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The iPhone does much better with video—I've been able to watch video where the audio/video sync seemed fine, and other times it was off, but just by a little. Maybe the fact that lips are so much smaller on the iPhone screen also helps.
Finally, a few words on the Sennheiser MM450. Although I was impressed by the Bluetooth audio quality, the MM450 is bested in audio quality by much cheaper headphones. The electronics create a little noise in the right ear and turning up the volume too much makes the headset resonate. I was disappointed at first by the noise canceling feature: it didn't seem to cancel that much noise.
After using the MM450 for two months walking to work past a busy road, I did the same using regular headphones and I really noticed the difference. Although you still hear pretty much everything with the MM450's noise canceling active, you can easily listen to audio without cranking the volume up much, if at all. With the regular headphones, I need to set the volume to painful levels to follow what's being said in a podcast I'm listening to. The noise canceling does take the edge off with traffic or plane noise, but it doesn't do much for voices.
I was surprised to see that keeping Bluetooth on the iPhone 4 didn't impact battery life perceptibly, at least not compared to the battery life when trying to blast 3G through the steel and concrete cave that is my office. Using the headset wirelessly also doesn't seem to have a huge impact, although I've rarely done that for more than three hours a day.
Quicktime 7 for mac os x torrent. The big question is whether it's worth all the trouble. Having to charge another battery pretty much every day, being surprised by 'bad wireless' days, the poor audio quality in HSP mode, the video-killing lag, and the extra cost all scream 'No!'
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Still, getting rid of that wire is really nice. Walking into the kitchen while listening without even bothering to pocket my iPhone is good. And not seeing the iPhone fly through the air because the headphone cable got caught behind a doorknob once again is even better. Apparently, the answer is a qualified 'yes' after all.