Planet of sound.

[reddragdiva]

I spent this afternoon attempting to get redcountess' Jabra BT250 Bluetooth headset to work with my laptop. I even downloaded and compiled btsco from source, but no go. I tried plugging the dongle into the G4, and it reliably crashed the system every time. I even downloaded 20 meg of drivers from D-Link for the Windows 98 virtual machine, and it could see the headset but wouldn't get or give sound. Finally, arkady came in with her trashed old headset, which one earphone is broken on but which has a damn plug on it.

So after dinner, I went into the lounge and set to work with a microphone, an Ogg someone had emailed me this morning and my first ever attempt to use Audacity knowing what I wanted to do even though I'd no idea how to do it and certainly wasn't going to read any help file. Two hours later: the result. Ogg Vorbis file (how to play these), 395KB. Announcer played by me, other voice by Chris French. Admire. Arkady laughed out loud first she heard it, so it's good enough. Expect more of these.

I have phone job interviews Wednesday morning and Thursday afternoon. So far so good.

Comments

[kineticfactory.livejournal.com]

You're getting into the Pixies post titles now?

Does your Mac have Bluetooth built in? If so, does that see the headset without a dongle?

[reddragdiva]

It was the only possible title. The G4 doesn't have Bluetooth built in, so it's particularly annoying that the DBT-120, which Apple actually recommends, crashes the machine under 10.4.5. Feh! Liz's Powerbook has Bluetooth built in and the headset works fine with it.

[hazyjayne.livejournal.com]

I have phone job interviews Wednesday morning and Thursday afternoon.

Good luck!

[kineticfactory.livejournal.com]

I picked up a cheap Bluetooth dongle (a small one, of the "BToes" brand) from Morgan on New Oxford St. in late 2004; it worked natively with my G3 iBook, without any additional software and with no problems. Mind you, I never tried running audio through it, only doing file transfers.

[reddragdiva]

It appears to be a function of the OS whether it recognises a headset as a headset. With the DBT-120 and the G4, when I say it crashes it, I mean the second I plug the dongle in!

[ajohnymous.livejournal.com]

It appears to be a function of the OS whether it recognises a headset as a headset.

On a PC, it's a function of the Bluetooth stack -- and what Bluetooth profiles are supported by that stack. For example, Windows XP has a built-in Microsoft Bluetooth stack that supports only basic profiles, like SPP, PAN, OBEX, and HCRP. Third party vendors -- like Widcomm, Bluesoleil, and Toshiba -- depending upon the stack version, offer more full featured Bluetooth stacks that support a more extensive collection of Bluetooth profiles including HS(headset), HF, A2DP(stereo audio), AVRC, etc.

Particularly annoying is the fact that 3rd party stacks are licensed and sold only with hardware -- so unless your Bluetooth hardware comes bundled with the version of a stack with the features you want/need, you are out of luck (without getting a hacked version). Essentially, this amounts to the equivalent of, say, if a given FTP program would only work with a given NIC and to buy the FTP program you want, you have to buy a particular NIC to get it.

I've run USB Bluetooth dongles and various Bluetooth stacks fine in virtual machines. However, if your environment doesn't include the proper Bluetooth hardware and software to support a Headset device and profile, your OS won't get additional Bluetooth audio devices. Also, once you have the additional Bluetooth audio devices, of course, you also have to configure the audio setting of your application to use the Bluetooth audio for input/recording and playback.