WH-1000XM3 bluetooth headphones auto-connect issues

[walken]

Hi,

I recently purchased some sony WH-1000XM3 headphones, which I want to use with my home computer running debian 10.

After initial pairing using blueman-manager, the headphones work fine:
- Playing videos in the browser, the sound goes to the headphones as expected;
- In blueman, the headphones audio profile is shown as "High Fidelity Playback (A2DP Sink)";
- I can change the audio profile to "Headset Head Unit (HSP/HFP)" If I want, which results in lower quality audio but with lower latency;
- I can then change the audio profile back to "High Fidelity Playback (A2DP Sink)" without issues.

So far so good. The above also works if I disconnect the headphones in blueman-manager and reconnect them using "Connect To Headset".

However, if I power off the headphones, and then power them back on, the headphones will automatically reconnect into a very broken configuration:
- The audio profile is set to "Headset Head Unit (HSP/HFP)"
- Playback does not work. Trying to play a video in firefox, the video just freezes as it can not set up the audio stream.
- I can hear some loud noises - apparently the headset microphone is looped back into the headset speakers.
- Trying to change the audio profile to "High Fidelity Playback (A2DP Sink)" fails - blueman-manager displays an error message "Failed to change profile to a2dp_sink"
In this state, the headphones are basically unusable. They can be returned to a working state by disconnecting the headphones in blueman-manager and reconnecting them using "Connect To Headset".

So, right now the issue is that every time I power on my headphones, they will automatically connect into the broken state, and I have to use blueman-manager to disconnect them and reconnect them into the working state. I would much prefer if I didn't have to do that, but none of the solutions I have found online (including the debian wiki BluetoothUser/a2dp page) have worked for me. I have also been unable to find any documentation of the settings that could be entered into the /etc/bluetooth files.

Anyone know what I should try next ?

[walken]

Also - if it's not easily doable to have the device auto-connect to the working state, the next best thing may be to disable auto-connect entirely. That way I could reconnect it a lot quicker using "Recent Connections / Headset on WH-1000XM3" under the blueman applet, instead of having to click Devices which pops out the blueman-manager window, then select WH-1000XM3, Disconnect, reconnect it again, and close the window. But, I'm not sure how to do that either - my understanding is that the reconnection is initiated by the headset rather than my computer ???

[walken]

I disabled auto-connect by doing the following:
- in blueman-manager, selected the headphones and clicked "Untrust" - that way the headphones can not auto-connect into the broken state
- Under View / Plugins, disabled the AuthAgent plugin - that way I don't get popup windows whenever the headphones try to auto-connect (it would be better if the popup had an "always deny" option, but this will do for now).

With these settings, I still have to manually connect the headphones using "Recent Connections / Headset on WH-1000XM3" in the blueman applet. Not perfect, but better than the default config.

[cityhunt]

Hello walken,


just a wild guess: give it a try with Wayland disabled.
I had similar issues with a Bluetooth Mouse (check the post I just posted).

Cheers

[walken]

I just double checked as I was not 100% sure, but I am not running Wayland.

[walken]

As for manually connecting, going through the applet or blueman-manager seems to be less reliable than running bluetoothctl connect 38:18:4C:xx:xx:xx . Man, I didn't expect bluetooth to be such a hassle in 2019.