Bluetooth Sound on Ubuntu

Play some music or put on a movie. Anything for sound to come out the computer speakers.

Open Bluetooth Manager

Open a CLI terminal and type $ blueman-manager. Turn on your bluetooth headphones or wireless speakers in pairing mode. Click Search on panel.

Watch for your device to appear. Is it the correct device? Right-click directly on the device and click connect.

If all goes well..

You see pop-ups telling you that you are connected. Sound comes out your bluetooth from the song or movie you were playing on the computer.

Locate the little picture of a speaker in the corner of the screen. Click and go to output sound device selection.

Audio mixer...

Click Audio mixer... and we'll look at a series of control panels that affect our sound Output Devices. Pulse audio control or $ pavucontrol.

Playback tab. Notice there are volume and mute controls.

Configuration tab. We can select different codec qualities.

Something's wrong

Back to the Bluetooth Devices manager. Is the Bluetooth system turned on?

Make sure there's a check mark for Audio and input profiles.

Add Software

Use your package manager to add pulseaudio-module-bluetooth. It adds a Bluetooth module to your computer sound system.

Websearch for these softwares and you can learn about computer sound support.

Add bluez and bluez-tools.

Install bluez-firmware for dongles from Broadcom Corporation. They make circuits that are inside your computer or plugged in to your IO ports.

Firmware is a software program that is built in to a hardware device. Broadcom and Realtek both make many quality products, your computer needs driver programs to use some of them.

Restarts

After installing software you should restart the computer and try connection from the start. Once you have sound coming through Bluetooth you no longer have to continue.

Do you want Bluetooth to start every time you turn on the computer? It burns battery. Do you want headphones to connect to sound automatically?

Check Hardware

Back to the Bluetooth Devices manager. Is Bluetooth turned on? Do Adapter Preferences show a Bluetooth Adapter? Hidden is a good setting for security.

Right-click info. You want to know more about the manufacturer name.

Remove. Start again. Pair, trust, connect as separate steps.

Watch for popups and prompts from the computer. It can fix the problem and you just don't see the message.

Add Firmware

Back to the package manager and begin package searches for the manufacturer names that we have seen. Broadcom and Realtek are two big ones. Intel also makes computer chipsets.

If you really wish to continue working with a problematic device you should use Linux tools such as lsusb, lspci, dmesg, etc. Or just read the device number off the label. The manufacturer may have a driver download tarball for you to install.

Try another Bluetooth adaptor dongle or sound device. Not all consumer electronics devices are compatible.