Bluetooth and Chrome

[Kenrou]

Recently bought a pair of MPOW H12 IPO for the wife's laptop, and she says that it has issues with the sound, from what I can see Chrome is taking over the Bluetooth connection, that is, if she has any webpage with audio running (example YouTube) and pauses the video ALL other sound stops as well, other media players, games, even other tabs, all gets muted, and will restart audio fine if she unpauses. I've never seen this issue before, troubleshooter, changing default audio sources, unpicking the "allow applications to take exclusive control of this device", don't do anything... Works perfectly fine with mobiles and tablets, just desktop Chrome seems to do this... Thoughts and workarounds?

Mpow H12 IPO Active Noise Cancelling Headphones

Upgrade active noise canceling technology: Mpow Bluetooth headphones come with advanced active noise canceling technology effectively quells low-frequency noise in just one second, effectively reduces the airplane cabin noise, city traffic, or hubbub in a busy office, making you quietly enjoy...

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On a side note, when using on the laptop the headphones show 2 different sources, main one crystal clear sound, 2nd sounds like an old radio, but both work. All the apps/games I tried use the main source except Discord which flat out refuses it, no sounds pass through when I try to force it, but 2nd works fine... Again, WTH?



I haven't found any drivers for this device on the website, uses Windows standard from 2006/2019?

 

[Kenrou]

Shameless bump

 

[mackerel]

On a side note, when using on the laptop the headphones show 2 different sources, main one crystal clear sound, 2nd sounds like an old radio, but both work. All the apps/games I tried use the main source except Discord which flat out refuses it, no sounds pass through when I try to force it, but 2nd works fine... Again, WTH?

This is the easy one. Many Bluetooth audio devices have two operation modes. I'll call them music and communications (coms). Music mode uses a higher bandwidth connection and only works on receive (what wearer hears). Early implementations had high latency but newer codecs have reduced that where it isn't usually a problem any more, as long as both ends support the same codecs. Coms mode activates both receive and transmit (mic) but uses a lower bandwidth connection, with low latency. Sampling rate may be either 8k or 16k depending on various things. If there is a setting anywhere, wideband will give you 16k. Narrowband is 8k. If any application opens the mic, it will likely force the device into working in coms mode and receive will sound worse until mic is disconnected.

I don't know about the Chrome thing. Is it only YouTube that does it, or other sites? Bluetooth audio devices can have two way control functionality. App or OS could be sending control to the device.

 

[Kenrou]

You can see I don't really use Bluetooth

All websites do it, pause video/audio, all other sounds stop. Close the video/audio without pausing and she has to go to the sound settings which restarts the connection. Doesn't really make sense. Haven't tried other browsers.

 

[EarthDog]

Haven't tried other browsers

Wonder if this is Chrome being intrusive...

 

[Kenrou]

Wonder if this is Chrome being intrusive...

Well yes, it only happens with Chrome (so far), and only with Bluetooth, like I said, didn't try other browsers, she likes Chrome too much to change

 

[EarthDog]

That was a hint to try something else, K.

 

[Kenrou]

She won't try

 

[EarthDog]

She won't try

We can't fix that, bud.........but you can try to isolate and see if that's the problem or not.

W11 has been playing with my audio hardcore for the past couple of months. I run speakers through the 3.5mm and Arctis Nova Pro Wireless through the USB. Typically, there are multiple entries in "sound" and I select my device and all went well. Now, I have to select the device and go through the Steel Series app and set it to the headphones......it's........weird. Point is, like mack mentioned, sounds like it's using two different inputs.

 

[Kenrou]

I'll give a go at Edge and Firefox when she's not using it. I've tried going through Chrome's flags and didn't find anything audio related.

 

[Kenrou]

Also happens on Edge, Brave, Opera and Firefox... so this is a Bluetooth issue?