[ltp] Re: Best Wireless Headphone with Thinkpad and Linux?

[Daniel Pittman]

Jiang Qian <qian2@fas.harvard.edu> writes:
> On Mon, Sep 04, 2006 at 03:10:56PM +1000, Daniel Pittman wrote:
>> Jiang Qian <qian2@fas.harvard.edu> writes:
>> 
>> [...]
>> 
>> > I take this horror story to mean that I have slim chance of getting
>> > bluetooth stereo headphone to work under linux at all. Is that
>> > correct?
>> 
>> Probably.  a2dp support doesn't seem to be present in any recent
>> distributions which suggests that, basically, it is still to
>> experimental or unpopular to be easy to acquire.
>> 
>> If you don't care about stereo you can get SCO working happily today,
>> though, in at least the Ubuntu distribution.  Perhaps giving up stereo
>> is, for the moment, the lesser evil?
>
> What is SCO? Well since I use headphone to listen to the music, so the
> lesser evil is surely the wired stereo not the wireless mono.

Ah, sorry.  Since the discussion was of BlueTooth I presumed that folks
would know the various protocols involved.

SCO is the protocol used to carry audio between your BlueTooth headset
and mobile phone, or whatever.  It is a mono carrier, and designed
primarily for use with voice, but you can certainly play anything back
with it.

Ubuntu 6.06, at least, carries the 'bluez-btsco' tool, which is a
user-space audio driver for ALSA that binds a SCO device to an ALSA
device for playback and recording.


a2dp, on the other hand, is a newer BlueTooth protocol.  I don't know if
it is blessed by the BlueTooth SIG, or if it was simply an open
standard, but it is now the common BlueTooth protocol used to transport
stereo audio for music playback and the like.


So, if you really desperately want wireless audio, perhaps you can
settle for a device that supports SCO as well as a2dp, and drive it with
the SCO protocol for the moment.

That will give you wireless audio, but only in mono.  Once a2dp support
is more available (or you convince the drivers, if they exist, to build)
you can have the headphones working in stereo. 

>> > Is there any other stereo wireless headphone(no bluetooth, some older
>> > tech) working under linux at all, such as thos 900MHz headphone?  Why
>> > is this so difficult? I don't even need to have long range, just a
>> > couple of feet between my head and my thinkpad.
>> 
>> Well, anything that plugs into a stereo line level or headphone output
>> will be perfectly supported by Linux, because it will not be
>> distinguishable.
>> 
>> Here in Australia, at least, that sort of tool is relatively available
>> for uses such as "watching television in privacy" or whatever. 
>
> Could you be more specific? Are those things too bulky to carry around 
> with my laptop?

No, I can't be much more specific, because this isn't hardware I am
particularly familiar with on a personal level.  I know a couple of
people who use something like this, and they are semi-regularly
advertised, but I don't actually care myself.

As to bulky: that depends on the use, but I imagine that you can get a
portable version somewhere.  You can't be the first person to want this.

They would probably also show up in the region of those portable DVD
players that are popular these days.  I can well imagine people wanting
wireless sound for those...

>> You might consider investigating USB connected wireless headphones as
>> well.  While I have no experience with them it seems ... pointless for
>> the vendors to have disregarded the standard audio USB profile, in which
>> case it should "just work" with the standard drivers.
>> 
>> Of course, knowing USB device vendors, I expect that there are a dozen
>> incompatible wireless headphone "standards" because each vendor used
>> their own proprietary protocol to lock out the opposition or whatever.
> 
> I'd be most grateful if you can give me at least one model number, then 
> I can follow up through similar models. Thanks.

Again, not something that I have used myself.  I don't particularly want
wireless headphones. :)

Sorry, I know that isn't the most helpful response in the world, but it
didn't seem that anyone else was able to help much either.  I figured a
half helpful response with pointers to things you may not have thought
of was better than nothing. 

Regards,
        Daniel
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