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earmstr18

macrumors member
Original poster
Aug 16, 2020
38
11
In the last 3 days I've noticed the bluetooth connection with my Mac Pro has been laggy or just randomly disconnecting from any bluetooth headphones. Either Airpods or other brands.
Magic mouse is also laggy sometimes. It doesn't disconnect at all, but, very laggy at times.

I've got an updated bluetooth and wifi card that I did earlier this year in January. Has worked great ever since until now.
The only recent changes I've done to the computer is an rx6600xt. That's it.

Things I've tried to remedy the bluetooth problem.
Deep nvram reset.
Reinstall opencore and monterey.
Remove all bluetooth devices and re-add them.
Unchecked the bluetoothtool fix via opencore configurator. (I just did this as I wrote this.)

The problem still persists.
Happens on both windows and MacOS.

Wondering if anyone else has experienced this or if anyone knows other potential solutions
Thinking it's potentially a hardware issue and might need to replace the bluetooth card.
Thanks
 
Last edited:
In the last 3 days I've noticed the bluetooth connection with my Mac Pro has been laggy or just randomly disconnecting from any bluetooth headphones. Either Airpods or other brands.
Magic mouse is also laggy sometimes. It doesn't disconnect at all, but, very laggy at times.

I've got an updated bluetooth and wifi card that I did earlier this year in January. Has worked great ever since until now.
The only recent changes I've done to the computer is an rx6600xt. That's it.

Things I've tried to remedy the bluetooth problem.
Deep nvram reset.
Reinstall opencore and monterey.
Remove all bluetooth devices and re-add them.
Unchecked the bluetoothtool fix via opencore configurator. (I just did this as I wrote this.)

The problem still persists.
Happens on both windows and MacOS.

Wondering if anyone else has experienced this or if anyone knows other potential solutions
Thinking it's potentially a hardware issue and might need to replace the bluetooth card.
Thanks

have you tried restarting the bluetooth service to see if that changes things?

It should be a variant on:

Code:
sudo launchctl stop com.apple.bluetoothd; sudo launchctl start com.apple.bluetoothd

The GPU could be producing radio interference - do you have an external aerial for BT?
 
The bluetooth antenna is in the plastic bracket around the pci slots outlet.

So changing GPU can cause a change for BT.

A better monitor cable can make a difference. Also the routing of the cable can change things.

Best solution is an external antenna.
 
The bluetooth antenna is in the plastic bracket around the pci slots outlet.

So changing GPU can cause a change for BT.

A better monitor cable can make a difference. Also the routing of the cable can change things.

Best solution is an external antenna.
Gotcha, interesting, I wouldn't have thought that considering the 6600xt is smaller than the rx580 I had in there.
Guess I'll open it up and maybe re-route the cable until a longer external antenna arrives.

Appreciate ya
 
Gotcha, interesting, I wouldn't have thought that considering the 6600xt is smaller than the rx580 I had in there.
Guess I'll open it up and maybe re-route the cable until a longer external antenna arrives.

Appreciate ya

It's not the size, it might just be the electrical properties of it. I have two desklamps which when switched on, cause my mouse to power up and illuminate from two feet away, just by inducing a current in the mouse's (apparently poorly shielded) cable.
 
Gotcha, interesting, I wouldn't have thought that considering the 6600xt is smaller than the rx580 I had in there.
Guess I'll open it up and maybe re-route the cable until a longer external antenna arrives.

Appreciate ya
I had the first bluetooth issues (some years ago) exactly, when changing the GPU on my machine, don't remember what it was. I solved it with an USB dongle, right in the keyboard.

Nowadays I use the magic trackpad 2, connected with USB. Don't care about the cable as I rarely move the trackpad :) Plus zero issues with any OS or level of boot process.
 
It's not the size, it might just be the electrical properties of it. I have two desklamps which when switched on, cause my mouse to power up and illuminate from two feet away, just by inducing a current in the mouse's (apparently poorly shielded) cable.
I had the first bluetooth issues (some years ago) exactly, when changing the GPU on my machine, don't remember what it was. I solved it with an USB dongle, right in the keyboard.

Nowadays I use the magic trackpad 2, connected with USB. Don't care about the cable as I rarely move the trackpad :) Plus zero issues with any OS or level of boot process.
I ended up repositioning the factory BT antenna temporarily till an extender arrives.

A lot more effort than is probably worth, but I've got only a few days a week to get design work done, and couldn't stand the lagginess lol. Pulled it from the factory location underneath where all the display ports are located and moved it outside the case. Problem solved.
 
Well, that was short lived.
Repositioned the bluetooth antenna and everything worked fine the rest of the day.

Now, for some reason, AirPods with consistently disconnect and skip.
Something new I've noticed is whenever I load a Youtube video, the video will buffer, normally just plays immediately, there will be no sound when a video starts, and the AirPods will just disconnect shortly after.

Mouse, is no longer laggy, but will just disconnect consistently every 5-10 minutes.
 
Something frequently overlooked is that USB3 cables/devices are known to emit electromagnetic radiation right on the BT band. Maybe disconnect anything USB3 around and see if you have improvements.

I written about this here before, everytime my upstairs neighbor used his HP multifunctional, my MagicMouse would disconnect. I've changed everything in my homeoffice, installed external antennas for BT/Wi-Fi and tried every other trick on the book until I've learned that it was exactly when he used his scanner/printer that the issues with disconnection and lag happened, it was directly above me and I've only learned when happened one day very late at night and I've listened that he was scanning and printing.
 
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Can you disable 2,4 GHZ Wifi for a test run around the machine? Both share the same frequency band.
Messed around with that. Turned off my printer which runs on 2.4GHz
Also turned off the 2.4GHz functionality on my Starlink. This did not help.

Don't have any other bluetooth devices to test but the magic mouse has been fine the last two days. No issues with disconnecting or lagginess.

Main problem seems to be with my Airpods or other bluetooth headphones.
When playing music through iTunes they're fine. Occasionally a little choppiness but less than a second when it happens.

Seems to be exclusively when using the internet in some capacity. Whether loading a webpage, moving around viewing live data in shopify, or watching a Youtube video.

Some signal interference happens when I cover one of my ears while a headphone is in. Which is to be expected given potential interference from the GPU.

Something frequently overlooked is that USB3 cables/devices are known to emit electromagnetic radiation right on the BT band. Maybe disconnect anything USB3 around and see if you have improvements.

I written about this here before, everytime my upstairs neighbor used his HP multifunctional, my MagicMouse would disconnect. I've changed everything in my homeoffice, installed external antennas for BT/Wi-Fi and tried every other trick on the book until I've learned that it was exactly when he used his scanner/printer that the issues with disconnection and lag happened, it was directly above me and I've only learned when happened one day very late at night and I've listened that he was scanning and printing.

The only USB3 device I've got plugged in is a mouse. Which I've had plugged in since I've owned the Mac and has never caused issue. Good to know as I didn't know this.

I'm going to assume it's just a signal strength issue caused by the new GPU. New cable kit should be here next week and we'll see. The amount of weird stuff going on has just caused me to think it could also be a hardware issue. Suppose I'll find out once the new antenna is installed.

I appreciate all of the input and help.
 
In my experience, BT was always crap with these Mac Pros. I had an RX580, then RX6600XT as well (and an Inateck USB3 card). Like you, I upgraded the BT card.

In the end I positioned a high-gain antenna directly under the desk surface, connected with a 1m cable to a socket mounted in a PCIe slot cover. That worked well (with a full-size Apple Magic Keyboard).

Mind you, my mouse wasn't affected as I used an MX Master 3 via Logitech's own bulletproof Unifying dongle anyway.
 
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