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What went wrong with wireless USB

oldvcr.blogspot.com

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Re: What went wrong with wireless USB

#191

Post by Dylan16807 »

redeeman wrote: post #180
brudgers wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is happening because it works the way that is most useful to most people. The number of people who want to use bluetooth earbuds with a different microphone is line noise in the consumer market. Implementing special requirements is always inconvenient for users because no B2C wants to risk bad the-microphone-didn’t-work reviews, customer returns, and support tickets. Nevermind coordinating with arbitrary USB micro…

it happens because bluetooth profile for audio+microphone uses different codecs and has less bandwidth, due to being used for realtime communication. the bluetooth audio streaming profile enables more codecs, but only playback, and allows significantly higher latency that you wouldnt accept on a call

> and allows significantly higher latency that you wouldnt accept on a call

That latency is also a millstone. We can do much better, but the standard lags and implementations lag even more.

Re: What went wrong with wireless USB

#192

Post by thaumasiotes »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #191
redeeman wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it happens because bluetooth profile for audio+microphone uses different codecs and has less bandwidth, due to being used for realtime communication. the bluetooth audio streaming profile enables more codecs, but only playback, and allows significantly higher latency that you wouldnt accept on a call

> and allows significantly higher latency that you wouldnt accept on a call That latency is also a millstone. We can do much better, but the standard lags and implementations lag even more.

My personal bluetooth ear clips do something much worse than adding latency - if they're not currently playing something, and a sound is supposed to come through, they omit the beginning of the sound while they get ready to become active or whatever it is they're doing.

Just delaying the sound and playing all of it would be a big improvement.

(Though that would fail badly for watching videos. That's something that uses 'headphones' mode anyway - why is latency OK there? It isn't.

My ear clips do add some latency, a noticeable amount, when I'm watching a video with mpv, and I adjust that by altering the A/V sync setting. They don't do the same thing when I'm watching something on youtube. I'd like to know what's going on there.)

Re: What went wrong with wireless USB

#193

Post by kjkjadksj »

morkalork wrote: post #141
thaumasiotes wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the wireless headset was the killer app [for Bluetooth] in its early days But the wireless headset is now a horrifying millstone making Bluetooth look like the world's stupidest trash fire. If you enable your microphone, you lose all audio from anything that doesn't want to use the microphone as the headset switches into "headset" mode and drops anything that wants to use "headphones" mode. There is no reason for t…

The absolute madness that is Bluetooth pairing between cars and cellphones is wild. If I get into my car and it decides to randomly pair with my wife's phone (who is inside the house) and I drive off, the whole infotainment system is locks up and dies until I get to my destination and turn off the car.

Mine connects and starts playing silently, and you need to press play and pause on the headunit to make it make sound. Every two months or so it fails to connect to the phone and needs a complete forget and repair to happen. Toyota unit and iphone.

Re: What went wrong with wireless USB

#194

Post by thaumasiotes »

jonesjohnson wrote: post #147
thaumasiotes wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the wireless headset was the killer app [for Bluetooth] in its early days But the wireless headset is now a horrifying millstone making Bluetooth look like the world's stupidest trash fire. If you enable your microphone, you lose all audio from anything that doesn't want to use the microphone as the headset switches into "headset" mode and drops anything that wants to use "headphones" mode. There is no reason for t…

obligatory xkcd: https://xkcd.com/2055/

Except this isn't a problem of trying to manage multiple connections. Bluetooth can't even handle maintaining a single connection between two devices.

Re: What went wrong with wireless USB

#195

Post by brudgers »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #160
brudgers wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is happening because it works the way that is most useful to most people. The number of people who want to use bluetooth earbuds with a different microphone is line noise in the consumer market. Implementing special requirements is always inconvenient for users because no B2C wants to risk bad the-microphone-didn’t-work reviews, customer returns, and support tickets. Nevermind coordinating with arbitrary USB micro…

> It is happening because it works the way that is most useful to most people. The number of people who want to use bluetooth earbuds with a different microphone is line noise in the consumer market. I don't think you have any idea what you're saying. The scenario I'm describing is when you want to use a bluetooth headset that includes a microphone. Using a different microphone is how you solve the problem.

I have never had a microphone problem with a bluetooth headset. They all always just work until something mechanical breaks through use.

If I had an issue, wired headphones seem a simpler solution than changing the bluetooth standard and more likely to work than wishing manufacturers changed their devices.

Re: What went wrong with wireless USB

#196

Post by msla »

classichasclass wrote: post #3
jauntywundrkind wrote: post #2

This was so cool to go over. It does seem to be missing a pretty significant era though? There's 802.11ad (2011) / 802.11ay (2021) / wigig. It's mainly known for video, and is used today for VR headsets. But there's a huge variety of 802.11ad docks out there that also have USB, mostly about a decade old now! Intel's tri-band 17265 (2015) was semi popular in the day as the supporting wifi+wigig+bt host adapter, works…

(author) Funny you should mention, because a couple other people also mentioned this to me after I posted it. Sadly, I don't have any of those devices here, but I added a footnote to the article about them.

Great post, but it's a bit disorienting. As I said in another post here:

> This is like a transmission from an alternate universe where the mice I used for decades didn't exist.

Re: What went wrong with wireless USB

#197

Post by nurettin »

bombela wrote: post #182
redeeman wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if you use pipewire it works fine both in plasma 5 and 6. but the audio quality in the sound + mic profile is very poor, the codec is only meant for speech

I am using pipe wire. The option to select the handset mode is gone! I can only select the various output codecs with my increasing quality. But not the mic & output mode. It's gone from the list...

Wow brings back memories when this used to be a problem on gnome like five years ago.

Re: What went wrong with wireless USB

#198

Post by ianburrell »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #28
londons_explore wrote: post #14

Imo, at this point nobody should be designing any wireless protocol that doesn't support full IP networking. Sure, your Bluetooth headphones only 1:1 connect to your phone... But if they could connect directly to your WiFi router they could keep playing music when your phone goes out of range... Or you could connect them to two phones... Or you could connect them to your TV to get sound from that... Basically, IP net…

You're not going to get low power consumption with IP. That's a problem for small battery powered devices.

Thread is low power like Zigbee even though it is IPv6 over the same radio. Implementing IP stack takes very little these days.

Re: What went wrong with wireless USB

#199

Post by ianburrell »

londons_explore wrote: post #14

Imo, at this point nobody should be designing any wireless protocol that doesn't support full IP networking. Sure, your Bluetooth headphones only 1:1 connect to your phone... But if they could connect directly to your WiFi router they could keep playing music when your phone goes out of range... Or you could connect them to two phones... Or you could connect them to your TV to get sound from that... Basically, IP net…

Which is interesting that nobody has made USB over IP. That over WiFi would be useful for high speed. That over Thread might replace low level Bluetooth.

Re: What went wrong with wireless USB

#200

Post by ianburrell »

stavros wrote: post #61
londons_explore wrote: post #14

Imo, at this point nobody should be designing any wireless protocol that doesn't support full IP networking. Sure, your Bluetooth headphones only 1:1 connect to your phone... But if they could connect directly to your WiFi router they could keep playing music when your phone goes out of range... Or you could connect them to two phones... Or you could connect them to your TV to get sound from that... Basically, IP net…

The main reason why I love Zigbee is that it doesn't support full IP networking. It's about broadcasting standard messages to all the devices, like a message queue, and that's fantastic for the use case. No firewalls to worry about, no external access, nothing, just all my devices automatically communicating with all other devices.

The downside is that need hub and its app to talk from phone to device. Matter using IP means phone can talk directly to device. Thread is separate network and needs bridge, but that can be simpler and generic. Thread/Matter use uncountable IPv6 space.
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