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Fixing the volume on my Bluetooth earbuds

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Re: Fixing the volume on my Bluetooth earbuds

#61

Post by thaumasiotes »

Vicinity9635 wrote: post #4

Man I wish someone would do this for my bluetooth sleep mask. It's pretty great except for one thing: When the battery is low or it's going to power off it announces it to you at full volume. On a sleep mask.

My bluetooth ear clips have the following behavior when they want to give a low battery warning:

1. They shut down whatever audio is currently playing.

2. They take a dramatic pause.

3. They announce "BATTERY LOW. PLEASE CHARGE NOW."

4. They take one more dramatic pause.

5. Normal functioning resumes and you attempt to pick up on the thread of whatever the person you were talking to was saying for the past several seconds. This doesn't work well.

This announcement is, quite obviously, much worse than doing nothing at all. The worst case scenario, if a warning is just not given, is that my sound cuts out and I miss whatever someone was saying. But that is precisely the effect that the ear clips intentionally generate on an accelerated schedule!

There is no reason not to just add the warning into the existing audio stream. It should be an unobtrusive beep pattern or similar. That would take less than one second while not actively causing the same problem it's hoping it might potentially prevent.

(Speaking of awful bluetooth behavior that has no conceivable reason to exist, I lose all my normal computer audio whenever I'm using voice chat. Why? Well, voice chat takes input from my microphone, which switches the bluetooth device into "headset" mode. Headset mode converts stereo audio to mono and it is the only audio output you're allowed to use while you're providing audio input, or might potentially provide audio input.

Any applications that don't take audio input continue to try to play their audio to a bluetooth headphones device, which no longer exists, so they all lose the ability to make sounds.

Why is there more than one mode for the device to be in? Why would I want to lose functionality as a side effect of talking to my family? What's so difficult about playing different audio signals to each ear at the same time that the microphone could potentially become active? Non-bluetooth devices handle this and it's not even considered a notable feature. "The microphone doesn't shut down the headphones while you're using it." Why would it?)

Re: Fixing the volume on my Bluetooth earbuds

#62

Post by Fnoord »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #61
Vicinity9635 wrote: post #4

Man I wish someone would do this for my bluetooth sleep mask. It's pretty great except for one thing: When the battery is low or it's going to power off it announces it to you at full volume. On a sleep mask.

My bluetooth ear clips have the following behavior when they want to give a low battery warning: 1. They shut down whatever audio is currently playing. 2. They take a dramatic pause. 3. They announce "BATTERY LOW. PLEASE CHARGE NOW." 4. They take one more dramatic pause. 5. Normal functioning resumes and you attempt to pick up on the thread of whatever the person you were talking to was saying for the past several se…

> This announcement is, quite obviously, much worse than doing nothing at all. The worst case scenario, if a warning is just not given, is that my sound cuts out and I miss whatever someone was saying. But that is precisely the effect that the ear clips intentionally generate on an accelerated schedule!

There is a very good reason to announce it with fanfare: completely depleted batteries can get permanently damaged.

It also allows the user to plan better around the downtime. I'm actually able to continue with zero downtime on me in-ears because I detach one of them and power it up while the other one gets depleted further.

With my over-ears I'm unable to do that but they last many hours more. Which is logical as they're more bulky, have a larger battery, and don't have a case containing a battery.

> Speaking of awful bluetooth behavior that has no conceivable reason to exist, I lose all my normal computer audio whenever I'm using voice chat. Why? Well, voice chat takes input from my microphone, which switches the bluetooth device into "headset" mode. Headset mode converts stereo audio to mono and it is the only audio output you're allowed to use while you're providing audio input, or might potentially provide audio input.

True, this is silly, this also happens when you phone. But I actually don't want high quality sound when someone speaks. I've had people's background noise during gaming; not my preference. The irony is that with ANC, there's mics active all the time as noise cancelling depends on that.

Re: Fixing the volume on my Bluetooth earbuds

#63

Post by Fnoord »

astura wrote: post #14
twelvechairs wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does it do? Why do you want a bluetooth connection when you are trying to sleep?

Plenty of people use audio to fall asleep - be it relaxing music, white noise, nature sounds, podcasts, talk radio, boring speeches, or whateverelse. Not everyone likes the same sleeping audio as others sleeping in the same room.

The application such as Spotify could have a timer. The headphones apparently don't, nor do they have an auto go off when battery is depleted, or a way to more silently announce battery is low.

Re: Fixing the volume on my Bluetooth earbuds

#64

Post by Fnoord »

iforgotpassword wrote: post #56
thedanbob wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How could anyone think such a "feature" was a good idea? I try to be charitable but that's got to be the result of either absurd incompetence or intentional maliciousness.

There is a VDSL modem/router/wifi/Powerline combo device by the Deutsche Telekom called "Speedport neo". It's actually totally functional andwl pretty cheap, at least a few years ago it was almost a steal on some websites. The super awesome feature it had was that it contained a speaker that would play the Telekom jingle every time the connection was established. This cannot be disabled and would happen at night too.…

> or used it on some other provider that still had the forced disconnect every 24 hours

German providers disconnecting customers every night is a ridiculous feature in itself. It is condescending towards customers who require to use their internet connection at night, for example because they work at night. It could lead to always-on features being broken, backups not working, and I've had countless of times where I was gaming with a German who gets DC'ed which does not work at all in competitive gaming.

In The Netherlands, yes sometimes the connection is broken at night. Sometimes, for a longer period of time. But this is because of software or hardware maintenance, and then doing such during the night makes sense as it provides the least downtime. I get that. But there is no discernible reason German providers need to disconnect every 24 hours.

Re: Fixing the volume on my Bluetooth earbuds

#68

Post by iforgotpassword »

Fnoord wrote: post #64
iforgotpassword wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a VDSL modem/router/wifi/Powerline combo device by the Deutsche Telekom called "Speedport neo". It's actually totally functional andwl pretty cheap, at least a few years ago it was almost a steal on some websites. The super awesome feature it had was that it contained a speaker that would play the Telekom jingle every time the connection was established. This cannot be disabled and would happen at night too.…

> or used it on some other provider that still had the forced disconnect every 24 hours German providers disconnecting customers every night is a ridiculous feature in itself. It is condescending towards customers who require to use their internet connection at night, for example because they work at night. It could lead to always-on features being broken, backups not working, and I've had countless of times where I…

> German providers disconnecting customers every night is a ridiculous feature in itself.

It wasn't actually strictly at night, but just exactly 24h after the connection was established. But the problem was that even if you reconnected manually at a convenient time, every now and then you'd have a connection issue at a random time, and then it would keep happening at that exact time until you manually changed it again.

I'm not aware of an authoritative source for why this was the case, but most likely there must've been a technical reason like accounting, and then they just kept it around. Mind you, this only affected DSL, which at first was (apart from small regional exceptions) offered by the Telekom exclusively, and later on when resellers appeard, they had no influence on this behavior as it happened on a level where they had no access to. After a while you got consumer routers which let you choose an exact time where it would force a reconnect, so you'd at least be sure when it happened.

Ironically, when the Telekom introduced VoIP, they finally got rid of the dreaded daily disconnect, but some of the resellers kept it, like the one I'm on (cause it's cheap and otherwise rock solid). I just set it to 6 in the morning and scheduled all my backup scripts with this in mind.

While I'd have given an arm and a leg in the days of edonkey2000 for a static IP, nowadays I see the changing address as a privacy feature.

Re: Fixing the volume on my Bluetooth earbuds

#69

Post by stavros »

Fnoord wrote: post #62
thaumasiotes wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My bluetooth ear clips have the following behavior when they want to give a low battery warning: 1. They shut down whatever audio is currently playing. 2. They take a dramatic pause. 3. They announce "BATTERY LOW. PLEASE CHARGE NOW." 4. They take one more dramatic pause. 5. Normal functioning resumes and you attempt to pick up on the thread of whatever the person you were talking to was saying for the past several se…

> This announcement is, quite obviously, much worse than doing nothing at all. The worst case scenario, if a warning is just not given, is that my sound cuts out and I miss whatever someone was saying. But that is precisely the effect that the ear clips intentionally generate on an accelerated schedule! There is a very good reason to announce it with fanfare: completely depleted batteries can get permanently damaged.…

> completely depleted batteries can get permanently damaged

This never happens, though. Every device nowadays has a controller that doesn't let the batteries deplete to a dangerous level.

Re: Fixing the volume on my Bluetooth earbuds

#70

Post by Fnoord »

stavros wrote: post #69
Fnoord wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This announcement is, quite obviously, much worse than doing nothing at all. The worst case scenario, if a warning is just not given, is that my sound cuts out and I miss whatever someone was saying. But that is precisely the effect that the ear clips intentionally generate on an accelerated schedule! There is a very good reason to announce it with fanfare: completely depleted batteries can get permanently damaged.…

> completely depleted batteries can get permanently damaged This never happens, though. Every device nowadays has a controller that doesn't let the batteries deplete to a dangerous level.

My WF1000XM4 had a bug where this occurred.
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