PLEASE HELP - Bluetooth speaker troubleshoot

[drewjonn]

Mid 2015 (15")

Long story short, it has been troubled with my JBL Charge 2+ wireless since last week.

1. They connect to each other with no problem. Bluetooth icon on OSX shows it is connected and speaker indicator light beams showing it is connected.

2. However, the sound comes only from the laptop regardless being connected with my speaker. I checked the sound on system preferences and also choose my JBL as the output. Both of them also disconnected automatically after less than 30 seconds.

3. However, my MBP can connect well with other bluetooth device except this very one speaker. At the same time, the speaker connects to other gadgets with no problem. Leaves me to the belief that only the connection between these 2 is troubled.

4. I tried NVRAM reset, updating to the newer OS, and remove then reconnect both, NONE helped.

5. The weird part is, I brought both devices to the Apple store, the guy connected my Macbook and speaker and they worked right away, told me that it was just the sound setting. but it still didn't work despite both of the attempts.


I don't know if I should go to the Apple store again and see both of them connected with no problems, and bring them home to see the exact same issue. Can someone please help?

 

[Kissmyne]

IF they are working together perfectly at a different location, the most likely culprit is an interference issue.. how do you connect to the internet? Do you use 2.4ghz bands or 5ghz bands?

Have you taken a look at this article? https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201542

 

[drewjonn]

IF they are working together perfectly at a different location, the most likely culprit is an interference issue.. how do you connect to the internet? Do you use 2.4ghz bands or 5ghz bands?

Have you taken a look at this article? https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201542

Hi,

Thanks for replying. It is the 5ghz band. but if interferences as mentioned by the article are the reasons, then it shouldn't have been able to work with other devices though. Any other suggestions?

 

[chown33]

First, how far away from your wifi router is your computer? How far away from the BT speaker? How far away from the wifi router is the BT speaker? Also, if there's anything between the components, like walls, floors, metal doors, etc. please list them. Please identify exactly which BT speaker you're using.


Second, make sure your wifi router isn't operating on the 2.4 GHz band at all. Most routers will operate there by default, and 5 GHz must be manuall turned on. The thing is, you must then turn off the 2.4 GHz band if you want to reduce BT interference, because BT only operates on 2.4GHz.

You can do a scan of all wifi access points operating with an SSID using Wireless Diagnostics built into macOS. See here:
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202663

Follow the instructions to open the Diagnostics app. Then scroll down the page to the "Use other diagnostics utilities" and read how to perform a Scan. This should list every visible access point. If your router is operating on 2.4GHz, it should show up there. This means you should turn off the 2.4GHz radio in your router's config screen. How to do that depends on the exact router model you have.


Third, an exhaustive approach is to turn off everything you have that uses any form of wireless (wifi, BT, etc.). This will break your internet connection, but that's fine for now.

After everything is turned off, turn on only the computer and the BT speaker. Connect them. Test them. You mentioned that the connection will drop after 30 secs, so confirm that the connection stays active for longer (say, 5 minutes). If the connection is lost, then run Wireless Diagnostics again (see above) and take note of the RSSI (signal strength) of every wifi access point listed. Post the info here.

If the BT speaker connection works for the whole 5 minutes, then while audio continues to play over the BT speaker, turn on your other wireless devices one by one. Because wireless connections may take several minutes to re-initialize, do not turn on devices at a rate faster than one every 5 minutes. The BT speaker should stay working the whole time. If you turn on a wireless device and the BT speaker stops working, then you've identified the likely culprit device.

If you get through all devices and the BT stays working, then turn off the BT speaker, turn it back on, and try to re-establish the BT connection. If it drops after 30 secs, then go back to all wireless devices off, and do this each time a wireless device is turned on:

Turn on wireless device.
Turn off BT speaker.
Turn on BT speaker.
Reconnect BT speaker to computer.
Play audio for at least 5 minutes.​

Fourth, the connection to the BT speaker may fail even with all other wireless devices turned off. In that case, the computer may have a loose BT antenna connector, or an intermittent BT antenna cable. Symptoms may be intermittent connection loss, or it only works when devices are close together, or it only works when there's no other wireless devices nearby.

A faulty antenna connector or cable usually means a visit to repair.