Bluetooth Audio on Arch Linux

Brian Sorahan

h1. Bluetooth Audio on Arch Linux p(meta). 07 Feb 2016 - Austin, TX h2. Background My wife and I got an "iLive IKB333s":http://iliveelectronics.com/products/bluetooth/wireless-bluetooth-under-cabinet-music-system.html under-cabinet bluetooth radio for Christmas this year and she said she wanted to be able to stream audio from our Arch Linux laptop in the living room to it. I decided to blog about what it was like to get this working because it's my first time using bluetooth on Linux, and because it was successful. h2. TL;DR The way I got this working was using "pulseaudio-bluetooth":https://www.archlinux.org/packages/?name=pulseaudio-bluetooth (since we want to stream audio from Spotify, which uses pulse), and set the default sink to the bluetooth sink. h2. Setting up bluetooth I had to steal the "USB dongle":http://www.amazon.com/JBtek-Raspberry-Bluetooth-4-0-adapter/dp/B00L08NCPQ/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top?ie=UTF8 that I bought for my raspberry pi to get bluetooth on my laptop (Toshiba Satellite L645). After this I installed all the packages recommended "here":https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/bluetooth and "here":https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Bluetooth_headset. I added myself to the lp group since the bluetooth daemon will only give out bnep0 devices to users who are in this group. After powering up the radio I set the source to Bluetooth, and hit the Pair button. A blue light on the device starts blinking until you pair with it from another device. Next I followed the "cli instructions":https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/bluetooth#Configuration_via_the_CLI to connect to the radio.

[brian@arch bluez-tools]$ hcitool scan
Scanning ...
	 00:15:00:00:03:D9	IKB333
[brian@arch bluez-tools]$ bluetoothctl
[NEW] Controller 00:1A:7D:DA:71:13 arch [default]
Drive
[NEW] Device DB:94:B9:E3:29:6B IKB333
[bluetooth]# scan on
Discovery started
[CHG] Controller 00:1A:7D:DA:71:13 Discovering: yes
[NEW] Device 00:15:00:00:03:D9 IKB333
[bluetooth]# scan off
[CHG] Device 00:15:00:00:03:D9 RSSI is nil
[CHG] Controller 00:1A:7D:DA:71:13 Discovering: no
Discovery stopped
[bluetooth]# pair 00:15:00:00:03:D9
Attempting to pair with 00:15:00:00:03:D9
[CHG] Device 00:15:00:00:03:D9 Connected: yes
[CHG] Device 00:15:00:00:03:D9 UUIDs: 0000110b-0000-1000-8000-00805f9b34fb
[CHG] Device 00:15:00:00:03:D9 UUIDs: 0000110c-0000-1000-8000-00805f9b34fb
[CHG] Device 00:15:00:00:03:D9 UUIDs: 0000110e-0000-1000-8000-00805f9b34fb
[CHG] Device 00:15:00:00:03:D9 Paired: yes
Pairing successful
[CHG] Device 00:15:00:00:03:D9 Connected: no
[bluetooth]# connect 00:15:00:00:03:D9
Attempting to connect to 00:15:00:00:03:D9
[CHG] Device 00:15:00:00:03:D9 Connected: yes
Connection successful
[IKB333]#

Next I set the default pulseaudio sink to the bluetooth device

[brian@arch ~]$ pacmd list-sinks
2 sink(s) available.
* index: 0
       name: <alsa_output.pci-0000_00_1b.0.analog-stereo>
       ...
index: 1
       name: <bluez_sink.00_15_00_00_03_D9>
       ...
[brian@arch ~]$ pacmd set-default-sink 1
[brian@arch ~]$ pacmd list-sinks
2 sink(s) available.
index: 0
       name: <alsa_output.pci-0000_00_1b.0.analog-stereo>
       ...
* index: 1
       name: <bluez_sink.00_15_00_00_03_D9>
       ...

Next all I had to do was start spotify, and voila! I was streaming great-sounding audio to the radio from my Arch laptop. h2. Conclusion As always, the "arch wiki":https://wiki.archlinux.org/ was _extremely_ helpful. Because arch maintainers create such good documentation, it was really painless to stream audio from my laptop to the bluetooth radio. I _have_ experienced loss of quality occasionally. Bringing the laptop closer to the radio fixes it, but I'd like to figure out what I can do to avoid this.

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