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Old 11-10-2014, 11:51 AM   #1
Electric Ring
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Default Bluetooth Audio and Reaper Strange Problem

So I got this set of Nakamichi bluetooth headphones for a low price, and figured I would try them:

http://www.nakamichi-usa.com/index.p...ooth-headphone

They work great with my IPhone 5S, and with my iMac, and they are relatively comfortable. I bought a plugable bluetooth 4.0 dongle for my XP machine at work:

http://plugable.com/products/usb-bt4le

So this relates to Reaper as follows. On either my iMac, or my XP machine, whenever I try to use Reaper and select the bluetooth headphones as the audio out, the audio sounds very compressed and band filtered. Sounds terrible. I have tried all of the various output options (DirectSound, WaveOut, etc.) this morning on my XP machine at work, changing bit depths, sample rates, buffering, and no change. I had a similar problem on the iMac, but I don't remember if I was able to solve it somehow, I think maybe some sequence of rebooting the headphones worked?

I was listening to something on Spotify, and as soon as I opened Reaper, the audio not only from Reaper, but streaming from my browser also sounded bad, like I said, no bass, bandpass filtered sounding, terribly wrong. Audio stops when Reaper is opened for a minute, then restarts. As soon as I start navigating the menus of Reaper, the sound changed to be crappy. It seems clear to me Reaper is somehow interfering with the computers audio functionality with a bluetooth device. Any project I play back in Reaper sounds terrible.

Now it is strange that reaper would be impacting other audio playing on the machine. I am stumped on this one. There are not a lot of controls on the Broadcom stack/plugable software for the bluetooth device. It works fine until I introduce Reaper into the mix. I am a few updates behind, currently at 4.59 on the XP machine, not sure what I am running on the iMac. I am going to upgrade to 4.75 and see what happens.

Any ideas? Is this a bug in Reaper?
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Old 11-10-2014, 11:58 AM   #2
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Originally Posted by Electric Ring View Post

Any ideas? Is this a bug in Reaper?
Depending on the BT device, it may show up with different versions in windows playback devices with those using different bandwidths. I use a blue orb mono BT device that I take into various rooms to test mixes. It's really convenient to test mixes in different rooms and in mono this way...

Point being it had the same issue until I switched it to use the highest bandwidth setting/version of the BT playback device; otherwise it streamed a very low-fi signal over the BT connection to save bandwidth. In my case the device driver exposed multiple versions for this reason.
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Old 11-10-2014, 12:20 PM   #3
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Point being it had the same issue until I switched it to use the highest bandwidth setting/version of the BT playback device
The headphones properties in the Sounds control has a "default format" setting, and it is set to 2 channel, 16bit, 48kHz. The selector is greyed out though, so I assume that means this setting is my only option. The other two advanced options are "allow applications to take exclusive control of this device" and "Give exclusive mode applications priority." I suspect that these last two check boxes are why Reaper is impacting other streaming audio. There is a also the Test button that plays back a test sample which sounds fine when Reaper is closed. Is there somewhere besides the "sound" panel where you changed a setting?

Upgrades to 4.75, no change. I will try rebooting everything and see if that does anything.
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Old 11-10-2014, 12:43 PM   #4
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Is there somewhere besides the "sound" panel where you changed a setting?
I actually don't know. I thought mine showed up as duplicate devices in windows and I had to choose the one with the higher bandwidth. I may also have not been using Reaper explicitly at the time and more likely a rendered mix now that I think about it. Sorry, it's been several months since I ran across the problem an fixed it so I don't remember all the details.
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Old 11-10-2014, 12:47 PM   #5
Electric Ring
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Originally Posted by karbomusic View Post
I actually don't know. I thought mine showed up as duplicate devices in windows and I had to choose the one with the higher bandwidth. I may also have not been using Reaper explicitly at the time and more likely a rendered mix now that I think about it. Sorry, it's been several months since I ran across the problem an fixed it so I don't remember all the details.
No worries, thanks for the fast reply.
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Old 08-13-2017, 06:02 AM   #6
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Default Blue tooth problem with reaper on Mac

Hi,


I have read your post it seems that there is a problem with blue tooth connection with reaper.

I have the same problem strange sound and filtered...

Some people that know how to resolve the problem ?


Kind regards,


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Old 08-15-2017, 01:17 AM   #7
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The problem is that you bluetooth headphones likely have a microphone, which can only be set to 8khz. So Reaper will default all sound to that.

In MacOS you can select set your computer to use the headphones as output and internal mic as input, and then use "System default devices" in Reaper, or you can create a compound audio device and select that.

There are still potential problems though, my headset only does 44.1 kHz so any tracks in 48 kHz get resampled when I use it...
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Old 01-08-2020, 06:03 AM   #8
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Did anyone find a solution?
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Old 01-08-2020, 10:31 AM   #9
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Did anyone find a solution?
I have not found a solution. If I need to listen to something on headphones in Reaper, I revert to a wired connection. I am not even using the same headphones anymore, but it does not seem to matter what bluetooth device you are using, the results are all the same.
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Old 01-08-2020, 11:08 AM   #10
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I have not found a solution. If I need to listen to something on headphones in Reaper, I revert to a wired connection. I am not even using the same headphones anymore, but it does not seem to matter what bluetooth device you are using, the results are all the same.
Interesting. Thanks. Luckily I have an aux plug somewhere I can use instead. Might even sound better that way.
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Old 01-08-2020, 12:55 PM   #11
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Originally Posted by Electric Ring View Post
Is this a bug in Reaper?
Reaper should not even need to know if the device is connected via a cable or via Bluetooth. This should be handled by the infrastructure (e.g. ASIO).

Nowadays, Windows audio only works decently using ASIO. (This might change when some day WASAPI is natively supported by hardware developers.)

As usually bluetooth devices don't come with ASIO drivers, trouble is around the corner.

-Michael
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Old 01-08-2020, 01:11 PM   #12
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Interesting. Thanks. Luckily I have an aux plug somewhere I can use instead. Might even sound better that way.
I would never use bluetooth, or headphones for that matter to do any critical listening, but it is convenient in some situations, and checking your work over bluetooth is not a terrible idea.
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Old 04-13-2020, 07:16 AM   #13
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Originally Posted by osiris View Post
The problem is that you bluetooth headphones likely have a microphone, which can only be set to 8khz. So Reaper will default all sound to that.

In MacOS you can select set your computer to use the headphones as output and internal mic as input, and then use "System default devices" in Reaper, or you can create a compound audio device and select that.

There are still potential problems though, my headset only does 44.1 kHz so any tracks in 48 kHz get resampled when I use it...
I don't know why you guys ignored Osiris. This absolutely fixed my problem. I am using a JBL wireless headset just because I am away from my studio during this Quarantine and wanted to just hear some song ideas I had previously laid down. The sound was TERRIBLE in the very same ways you all described, the problem was using the JBL device output in reaper. I use a Mac, so I went to Audio MIDI Setup window and created an Aggregate device with only the Speakers of my JBLs (turned off the microphone). You can make any specific output/input configuration including with more than one piece of equipment at once in this window, but for this case that was all that was necessary.

Go back in reaper, and select that Aggregate Device you made in the Device drop down menu.

In the Audio MIDI Setup window, you can see the sample rate of all speakers and microphones you have available.
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Old 04-13-2020, 11:19 AM   #14
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Synchronicity?

I just found out today you can even drive two BT headphones simultaneously:

https://www.macrumors.com/how-to/out...rs-headphones/
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Old 04-15-2020, 08:33 AM   #15
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Hey guys. Can I jump in on this please?
I use a Bose SoundLink Mini through bluetooth on my MacBook Pro.
I play movies through various Apps, music through iTunes and anything though any website (Youtube etc) ALL absolutely fine. As soon as I open Reaper it's distorted to hell. NOTHING ELSE. JUST Reaper.

Any advice?
Perhaps there's an internal master which is way UP in Reaper?
I have no idea. Help please.

Edited...Fixed :-) Preferences...Audio...Device...set Input to none, and ALLOW different input/output devices.

Last edited by Gandalf; 04-15-2020 at 08:51 AM.
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Old 04-16-2020, 07:50 PM   #16
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I use MEE Connect Hub transmitter connected to my audio out on my PC.
Reaper sounds fine since it's using the PC's sound card and not the headphones as an audio device.
The MEE Connect Hub allows for 2 headphone connections at the same time.
I have 3 headsets that automatically connect when I switch off the current one turn on one of the others.

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Last edited by lucas_LCS; 07-22-2022 at 04:54 AM. Reason: edited for clarity
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Old 05-11-2020, 05:44 PM   #17
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Thanks for this. Totally worked. Took me a bit to know exactly what you were describing as far as where to look, but got it!

Quote:
Originally Posted by TheKevinDasilva View Post
I don't know why you guys ignored Osiris. This absolutely fixed my problem. I am using a JBL wireless headset just because I am away from my studio during this Quarantine and wanted to just hear some song ideas I had previously laid down. The sound was TERRIBLE in the very same ways you all described, the problem was using the JBL device output in reaper. I use a Mac, so I went to Audio MIDI Setup window and created an Aggregate device with only the Speakers of my JBLs (turned off the microphone). You can make any specific output/input configuration including with more than one piece of equipment at once in this window, but for this case that was all that was necessary.

Go back in reaper, and select that Aggregate Device you made in the Device drop down menu.

In the Audio MIDI Setup window, you can see the sample rate of all speakers and microphones you have available.
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Old 05-11-2020, 09:24 PM   #18
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Originally Posted by TheKevinDasilva View Post
I don't know why you guys ignored Osiris.
Seems to be Mac-Only

-Michael
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Old 03-04-2022, 12:07 PM   #19
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Quote:
Originally Posted by osiris View Post
The problem is that you bluetooth headphones likely have a microphone, which can only be set to 8khz. So Reaper will default all sound to that.

In MacOS you can select set your computer to use the headphones as output and internal mic as input, and then use "System default devices" in Reaper, or you can create a compound audio device and select that.

There are still potential problems though, my headset only does 44.1 kHz so any tracks in 48 kHz get resampled when I use it...
⬆⬆ What he said! ⬆⬆

Worked perfectly for me on Mac OS. To further elaborate ...

My Bluetooth headset (which also has a mic) shows up as two audio devices under Reapers preferences.

When I look at my Mac's "Audio MIDI Setup" (see screenshots) I also see two devices. One is an input device set at 1ch, 16 bit, 16kHz (the mic). The other set at 2ch, 32 bit, 48kHz (the headphones) .

While I still have my Mac's "Audio MIDI Setup" open and visible, I change the Reaper audio device to use the bluetooth headphones. When I click "Apply" the headphones audio format automagically changes to 16 bit, 16kHz in the Mac's "Audio MIDI Setup." It appears to me that Reaper may suffer with EDC (extreme device confusion) and downgrades the bitrate of the headphones.

So, in the MacOS "Audio MIDI Setup," I change the headphone bit rate back to 32 bit, 48kHz, then I right-click on the "MacBook Pro Microphone" device and choose "Use this device for sound input." Finally, in Reapers Device preferences I choose "<default system devices>" and the problem is solved.

Hope this helps!
Chris




Last edited by u2tributeband; 03-04-2022 at 03:21 PM.
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Old 07-21-2022, 01:47 PM   #20
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Quote:
Originally Posted by mschnell View Post
Seems to be Mac-Only

-Michael
I would still quite like to know how to fix this issue in Windows.

I tried telling Reaper to use a different input device and use my Bluetooth earbuds as my output device, but it still reverted to 16khz in my case. Does anyone know how to fix this?

EDIT: just realized that the last date for this post was 8 years ago, don't see a reason not to reply to this thread however as there's no sense in starting a new one when I have the same problem as this one!
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Old 07-21-2022, 09:44 PM   #21
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Quote:
Originally Posted by PikaDominator View Post
I would still quite like to know how to fix this issue in Windows.
I solved it on windows with an MEE Connect Hub.
Quote:
Originally Posted by lucas_LCS View Post
I use MEE Connect Hub transmitter connected to my audio out on my PC.
Reaper sounds fine since it's using the PC's sound card and not the headphones as an audio device.
The MEE Connect Hub allows for 2 headphone connections at the same time.
I have 3 headsets that automatically connect when I switch off the current one turn on one of the others.

::
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Last edited by lucas_LCS; 07-22-2022 at 04:55 AM. Reason: edited for clarity
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Old 07-21-2022, 10:51 PM   #22
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Originally Posted by PikaDominator View Post
I would still quite like to know how to fix this issue in Windows.
Reaper does not even know that Bluetooth exists. And it should not. The OS and / or the ASIO system is responsible to provide decent drivers for user software to attach to. Same have the same API independent of the transport mechanism (internal hardware on CPU Bus, USB, network, Bluetooth, ...)
Hence the device is required to come with an ASIO driver to decently be usable in Windows with "normal" software such as a DAW.

BTW.: Bluetooth Headphones are not optimized for use with a DAW, but rather for just listening to music.

-Michael
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Old 12-28-2022, 04:25 PM   #23
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Default Bluetooth catastrophe with Reaper on Mac

Quote:
Originally Posted by u2tributeband View Post
⬆⬆ What he said! ⬆⬆
...
...So, in the MacOS "Audio MIDI Setup," I change the headphone bit rate back to 32 bit, 48kHz, then I right-click on the "MacBook Pro Microphone" device and choose "Use this device for sound input." Finally, in Reapers Device preferences I choose "<default system devices>" and the problem is solved.

Hope this helps!
Chris
Well actually it doesn't... all this is to no avail for me.

Actually Reaper crashes when the Mac is seeing a bluetooth listening device.
(this is a 2014 MacBookPro running Mojave).

I have some very nice gear which is on-stage IEM quality, and I love listening to all sorts of things and music on my mac using a bluetooth adapter. Great quality. And now I want to monitor some Reaper projects with it, and NO WAY !
Not only does the device (or any other BT monitoring device) not show up in Reapers' audio devices, but Reaper actually crashes.
The only way round the problem is to hard-wire it on the headphone output.

I do recognize that had it worked on BT there would probably be a latency issue, but I reckon I would have no trouble mixing an album in those conditions.
So I'm very disappointed as bluetooth seems to be a complete disaster with Reaper on Mac and I'm getting used to a wireless life.
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Old 12-29-2022, 12:55 AM   #24
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Originally Posted by Corto59 View Post
Actually Reaper crashes when the Mac is seeing a bluetooth listening device.
This is very weird, as Reaper does not know if or if not an audio device is connected via bluetooth or any other transport means.
-Michael
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Old 01-18-2023, 03:22 AM   #25
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Made a video tutorial to make it easier:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WoMDdltM9TM
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Old 01-20-2023, 03:27 PM   #26
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Hey Osiris Guitar man,
thankyou so much for this insight !
I have followed your instructions, and it works !
I understand that the simple fact of building aggregated devices in this way is allowing Reaper not to crash when in the presence of à bluetooth device, and probably also it is the fact that all my devices contain a microphone, and this apparently is what is wreaking havoc.
I am also very grateful to subscribe to your Youtube channel which has a wealth of good tips, even though your metal universe is at antipodes to mine... I like your style !
Thanks again man !

PS. For information, this breakthrough opens the way for me to use for mixing while away from home my fantastic Chinese earbuds, which are KZ-ZAS, with KZ-AZ09 Pro bluetooth adapters. "I'm happy" !

PPS. I am very ashamed to have just noticed that in fact you already gave the solution to this problem in your post in this thread back in 2017 ! But now it's much clearer.
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Last edited by Corto59; 01-20-2023 at 03:34 PM.
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