this post was submitted on 18 Sep 2024
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Steam Deck
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Does it not work? I sometimes use Bluetooth earbuds and they work great.
Interesting. In my experience when on any Linux distribution I have to decide if I want good Audio quality and not use the microphone of the headset or if I want to use a worse audio code but activate the microphone. I thought this still was a widespread issue, or did I miss something?
This is a Bluetooth issue, not Linux or Deck specific. When microphone is enabled on a headset, Bluetooth will switch to a different audio codec. That codec supports one output channel (microphone) and one input channel, so it will be mono audio. The sound quality is good enough for audio calls but not for anything else. The only thing you can do is to disable the microphone. Or, you can do what people have done for couple decades now: complain at Bluetooth Special Interest Group until they improve the standard.
Yes it is not Deck specific, but Linux specific. It works on Windows / Android /IOS. And contrary to any other Linux installation, the deck is a commercial product. As a commercial product I want modern Headsets to work properly as they do on other systems. Proper Audio I/O is necessary for any multiplayer game.
What headphones in particular are you using? Because with standard AD2P you're limited to mSBC at best, but maybe your device has some proprietary implementation.
You could try with a hardware dongle, but no guarantee that will work either.
At least in the long run it should be fixed by Bluetooth LE audio, but I'm not sure if the Deck properly supports it yet, and it requires new audio devices as well.
I'm a musician who is just getting started producing on Linux. I haven't had issues with audio aside from my audio interface not being compatible due to have software control for hardware which i hated anyways. Using a focuarite interface now and its been good. Pulseaudio has been pretty solid for a while now which is what the steamdeck uses from what i can see online.
Both my mic and headphones have worked great with all distros I've tried. That said, sometimes stuff just doesn't wanna play well with Linux, even if it seems like it should and im typically not using bluetooth devices on Linux for audio so im not as familiar with issues they may have.
You might try another set of headphones to see if its an issue with the headohones themselves. And or, try them with a different distro/pc because it may be a issue with the deck itself.
My problem is not headphone specific but Bluetooth specific. It boils down to one of these questions, where there are multiple of to find. My deck also does not provite an answer and I can hear the audio quality difference massively between A2DP and other Codecs.
What kind of Daw are you using on Linux btw? I only know of Bitwig with Linux support. And I still did not get around to giving that a proper try.
Ah ok so from what im hearing, because the kernal on the deck hasn't been updated with a codec that you prefer for these headphones, they sound worse. That sucks man. I would hope it wouldn't be the same case for other distros but if your headphones are newer that can make it more difficult to have compatibility. Takes a while for Linux to catch up on most stable distributions is my understanding.
And I use Reaper! Love Reaper a ton, clean and easy to use daw for $60 bucks (small business/personal use) I'm currently on Fedora 40.
I will take a look at reaper, thanks!
It uses Pipewire, but it has pretty close to full API compatibility with Pulseaudio (and Jack) so most applications will "just work" and you get lower and more stable latency in return.