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Bluetooth headset on MacBook Pro is not connecting...

E

elbirth

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Jan 19, 2006
1,154
0
North Carolina, US
I've been looking for a new set of headphones to use with my MacBook Pro as my current ones are starting to fall apart. I've decided to go wireless and just got the IoGear GBMH201 bluetooth headset.
I went through the setup process and paired it with my computer, but the blue Bluetooth light on the headset keeps flashing, showing that it's not connected (plus in my Bluetooth preferences it says it's not connected but it *is* paired.) I have the Apple Bluetooth keyboard (which I'm using now to type) and it works just fine... but the headset won't seem to connect.

I just tried IoGear's online live chat and that was a wasted effort... I'll paste the dialogue from that below, but does anyone have any suggestions?




------Online Help Chat---------
You are now chatting with: 'Iogear1'
Iogear1: Hello. Thank you for using IOGEAR Customer Advocacy Technical Support Live Chat. Please tell me your model number, operating system, and short description of the problem.
You: Hi, I'm using the GBMH201 bluetooth headset on a Mac running OS X 10.4.7. I am able to get the headset paired with my computer, but I can't get it to connect. The blue Bluetooth light keeps flashing instead of getting solid and connecting.
Iogear1: Did you pair the device with 0000 as the passkey?
You: Yes, it said it is successfully paired, but doesn't seem to connect.
Iogear1: is it a built in bluetooth adapter?
You: Yes, it's the built-in Bluetooth that comes on the computer
You: I have Bluetooth enabled and have my computer set as discoverable just in case. I have a Bluetooth keyboard that works fine with it.
Iogear1: Have you tried the headphones with a cell phone for testing?
You: My cell phone doesn't have bluetooth capability.... this computer is the only device I have available that has it
Iogear1: so you changed the passkey options when connecting to specific and entered 0000
You: Yes
Iogear1: It never goes solid blue light though?
Iogear1: Have you tried turning the unit off and back on or rebooting the computer? If that doesn't work the unit itself might be defective
Iogear1: You may want to try and locate another bluetooth enabled computer or phone to test the unit
You: No, it just continues flashing. I've tried restarting the headset several times but not the computer. I can try that, though since it works with my keyboard, I don't see that helping.
 
I can't offer any suggestions, but I can offer sympathy. I have a motorola HS820 (I think) bluetooth headset. I first got it to use with a windows system. It paired, connected and functioned perfectly on my parents XP home system, but on my XP pro system no such luck. It paired and connected, but just didn't work. Got in touch with Motorola and Belkin (I was using a Belkin dongle) but no luck. It is currently on loan to a colleague who likes playing around with this kind of stuff, and he can't get it to work on his XP pro or Win 2000 machines either.

Now, on my MBP, almost the same thing. it pairs and connects, the MBP bluetooth wizard finds and identifies it correctly. Yet when i try it in garageband ( using the software as a voice recorder to test the headset) it will only connect for a few seconds and the audio is very broken, then the headset loses connection.


Basically I have given up on it, and probably bluetooth headsets in general. Oh, and I've just remembered, my normal headset will not function correctly on the MBP either. The audio playback is ok i.e. i can listen to audio through them, but the microphone doesn't work. I know the microphone socket is ok as I have recorded cassettes into iTunes through the microphone socket, and a colleague has tested the headset on his windows XP machine, the mic functioned perfectly.

I am going to Hong Kopng in a few weeks so i will take everything with me and see if anyone in the Apple stores there can get these things to work.
 
the more I read around online, the more widespread it seems that bluetooth headsets don't like to play well with Macs...

I don't care if the microphone works on it or not (it's a detachable mic), I just want to be able to hear audio on them... and it won't even connect, which is what's so odd. During the setup process, my computer finds the headset with no problem and everything is smooth sailing... but once setup is complete, the light just sits there blinking indefinitely not connecting to the computer.
 
So I emailed Iogear support and finally got this response back from them....


-----
it is my understanding that the drivers built into the mac does not support the audio gateway
service.
i don't have a solution or a work arround, all i can recommend is for you to contact apple for
more information.
-----


I believe I've seen talk of plenty of people using bluetooth headphones... haven't I?
 
buy a logitech bluetooth headset. I have an old logitech bluetooth headset and it works perfectly with my macbookpro. I use it for teamspex which is a program like teamspeak but for macs.
 
There's a difference between a stereo headset and a mono headset. The Mac will pair and work with mono headsets. It will NOT work, but it will pair, with stereo headsets. The Mac's Bluetooth stack lacks the A2DP(? or something like that) protocol needed for stereo headsets.
 
Sesshi said:
There's a difference between a stereo headset and a mono headset. The Mac will pair and work with mono headsets. It will NOT work, but it will pair, with stereo headsets. The Mac's Bluetooth stack lacks the A2DP(? or something like that) protocol needed for stereo headsets.
Click to expand...
That's very interesting, thanks for the info. That would explain it then, because upon looking it up, these are in fact stereo headphones.


The Senator said:
buy a logitech bluetooth headset. I have an old logitech bluetooth headset and it works perfectly with my macbookpro. I use it for teamspex which is a program like teamspeak but for macs.
Click to expand...
I know you said it was old, but what headset are you using?
 
This may be too obvious, but I missed this one myself, but, after pairing in the Bluetooth preferences, did you go into the sound preferences and select your headset?

I have a stereo bluetooth headset (iMuffs), and they paired, but didn't play until I did that.
 
You know, that actually never occurred to me... I had a very tiny thought that maybe I had to do something on the computer to get it working, but kept thinking it should be like my bluetooth keyboard and "just work" when I turned it on and had it paired...


I just tried going into my sound preferences, but didn't pay attention to the fact that I was in the "Input" tab and clicked on the headphones since I saw them right when the screen came up. The light on the headset went solid, however, but the computer then lagged into the ground and I had to reboot.
Now I can't seem to turn the headset off.....after rebooting I went into the Output tab in sound prefs and chose the headset, but it lagged horribly again but after several mintues finally gave an error saying the device wasn't on, ready, or in range or something.

They seem stuck somehow and I can't get them to turn off, even though I deleted the profile from my bluetooth settings. So I guess I'll have to let the battery die or something... now I just have to figure out what happened to the charging cable so I can try again later
 
Well, the battery died on them and I found the charger... so I plugged them in to charge and tried re-pairing it and selecting it in the sound preferences and it worked!
Then after a minute or 2 iTunes froze up with the spinning beachball and I couldn't even force quit it. Eventually the whole machine just froze stiff and I had to hard-reboot. I've tried a couple more times, but now I don't get any audio from them at all and everything just freezes when I try switching to the headset in sound prefs.

I'm not sure what the deal is unless it's just that maybe they're messed up and aren't giving a good BT signal and it's freezing up trying to find it or something. In any regard, I guess I'll have to go on and send them back and maybe look for another pair that'll work but aren't really expensive
 
elbirth said:
That's very interesting, thanks for the info. That would explain it then, because upon looking it up, these are in fact stereo headphones.



I know you said it was old, but what headset are you using?
Click to expand...


I have the old logitech moible bluetooth headset, thats what it says on the box. I think it was the first one logitech ever made. It works great I highly recommend it
 
That's just a single-ear headset though isn't it? made for cell phones?
I want something that's primarily a set of headphones that covers both ears. I'm not so much worried about having a mic on it
 
Does anyone have any suggestions that don't have the wraparound design? My head is apparently larger than the intended user of these (I've had two of the logitech ones), so they tend to crack in the back.
 
From all that I can find the mac doesn't support the bluetooth protocol A2DP which is required for streaming stereo music over bluetooth. I have a Sony Erricson stereo headset that supports the "headset" mode and the stereo streaming mode and can only pair with it in the "headset" mode. This works fine for chatting online and such but the audio quality isn't there for listening to music.

When will the mac support A2DP? Is it just a software/driver issue, or does the current bluetooth hardware in my MacBook Pro not support it?

Thanks,

Jesse
 
I have the JayBird Freedom 3 bluetooth headset. I can pair and connect on my iPod but as soon as I pair it to my computer it won't connect. It'll say paired but I have no prompt to even give a passkey. Also when they are paired, I run a song on iTunes and It will jam up iTunes, but as soon as i turn them off iTunes works properly. I wish and hope that Mac would come up with a driver or work around so I can use them with my computer.
 
Attonine said:
I can't offer any suggestions, but I can offer sympathy. I have a motorola HS820 (I think) bluetooth headset. I first got it to use with a windows system. It paired, connected and functioned perfectly on my parents XP home system, but on my XP pro system no such luck. It paired and connected, but just didn't work. Got in touch with Motorola and Belkin (I was using a Belkin dongle) but no luck. It is currently on loan to a colleague who likes playing around with this kind of stuff, and he can't get it to work on his XP pro or Win 2000 machines either.

Now, on my MBP, almost the same thing. it pairs and connects, the MBP bluetooth wizard finds and identifies it correctly. Yet when i try it in garageband ( using the software as a voice recorder to test the headset) it will only connect for a few seconds and the audio is very broken, then the headset loses connection.


Basically I have given up on it, and probably bluetooth headsets in general. Oh, and I've just remembered, my normal headset will not function correctly on the MBP either. The audio playback is ok i.e. i can listen to audio through them, but the microphone doesn't work. I know the microphone socket is ok as I have recorded cassettes into iTunes through the microphone socket, and a colleague has tested the headset on his windows XP machine, the mic functioned perfectly.

I am going to Hong Kopng in a few weeks so i will take everything with me and see if anyone in the Apple stores there can get these things to work.
Click to expand...
:eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek: NO WAY
 
Sesshi said:
There's a difference between a stereo headset and a mono headset. The Mac will pair and work with mono headsets. It will NOT work, but it will pair, with stereo headsets. The Mac's Bluetooth stack lacks the A2DP(? or something like that) protocol needed for stereo headsets.
Click to expand...

That is incorrect.
Mountain lion supported bluetooth profiles:
http://support.apple.com/kb/PH10549

Lion supported bluetooth profiles:
http://support.apple.com/kb/PH3655

Both of them "support" it, but honestly OSX bluetooth support is terrible since Snow Leopard. There are several hundred posts on the apple discussion boards about the bluetooth stack being, really, REALLY bad. The thing that sucks is if you go to an Apple store, the fanboys drone on and on about how it has to be an issue with the bluetooth device, but when you show them otherwise they become patently unhelpful. :mad:

You can check this post here (there's a LOT to it, but several possible solutions - maybe something will help):
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3200456?start=0&tstart=0

One reported solution that has helped a LOT of people is ordering a super cheap made-in-Hong-Kong bluetooth dongle for 10$, because even the cheapest seems to function better than the radios included in recent macbooks and mac minis. Plus they support more bluetooth profiles.

Also, when you start pairing, after the mac says that it is "paired," go into bluetooth settings and make sure your PC is discoverable, then select the headset, click the gear and choose "update services". Some folks have found that working.

I feel for you - I have been struggling trying to get a 2.0 + EDR headset working for weeks on a mac mini so I can start taking a distance learning class.
 
Last edited:
anyone can't connect to bluetooth?

I get this message "There was an error connecting to your audio device. The encoded audio stream configuration was unacceptable to the remote device."

I have done everything to shutting down turning on to deleting .plist file to changing the numbers in terminal. I REALLY NEED MY HEADPHONES FOR PORNOS SO I DON'T WAKE ANYONE UP!
 
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