Why Is the Sound Distorted or Low-Quality When Connected to the Plugable Bluetooth Adapter?
If you encounter issues with sound quality when connected through the Plugable Bluetooth adapter, it is usually caused by the audio device being connected in headset mode. In Windows, the headset profile is automatically triggered any time that the microphone is requested by an application.
Headset mode can automatically trigger in certain software applications that use your Bluetooth audio device input and output. This often occurs in applications like Zoom, Discord, or any other software that can record and playback audio at the same time.
Why the Headset Profile Reduces Sound Quality
Bluetooth has two primary profiles for handling audio: the Headset Profile (HSP) and the Advanced Audio Distribution Profile (A2DP). A2DP is the profile most often used for listening to music in stereo at high quality. HSP allows for microphone input from a Bluetooth device at the expense of reducing audio quality and limiting sound output from the PC to monaural audio rather than stereo.
If the headset profile is active, the audio will usually sound compressed and lack punchiness. This headset profile trigger can happen if you are in the Windows sound properties viewing recording devices, or if a communication application like Google Meets or Discord is set to use the microphone on a Bluetooth audio device.
How to Resolve Distorted Audio
To prevent the headset profile from activating and degrading your sound quality, you will want to make sure of the following configuration settings:
Your Bluetooth audio device is not set as the default recording device in the audio configuration panel of Windows.
The audio configuration panel is closed when testing the audio quality.
Your applications are not set to use the Bluetooth audio device for recording.
This tends to happen when the audio device is the only connected audio input and output device. One common solution is to have a separate microphone for audio input and for your audio device to remain in Advanced Audio Distribution Profile (A2DP) mode.
If you continue to experience issues with your Plugable Bluetooth adapter or Plugable Bluetooth audio device, please reach out to support at support@plugable.com for assistance.
