Bluetooth keeps dropping: why it is always at the station
Contents4
At home the music plays without a single gap. On the platform the sound stutters every few seconds, and on the train it improves again. The headphones are not faulty, they have simply landed in a completely different environment.
Everyone transmits on the same band
Bluetooth uses 2.4 gigahertz. On the same band you find Wi-Fi routers, wireless mice, microwave ovens and the Bluetooth devices of everyone around you. On a busy platform that quickly means hundreds of transmitters. Bluetooth constantly hops frequencies to dodge interference, but when every channel is occupied, packets are lost, and that is exactly what you hear as stuttering.
Your body is an effective obstacle
Water absorbs 2.4 gigahertz waves very efficiently, and a human being is mostly water. With the phone in a back pocket and the earbuds in your ears, your torso sits right in the signal path. That explains why moving the phone to a front or jacket pocket often does the trick.
With true wireless earbuds there is a second effect: one bud relays to the other. If the link to the receiving side breaks, both go quiet.
What helps, in this order
- Move the phone forward. Chest or front trouser pocket instead of backpack and back pocket.
- Re-pair. Delete the connection on the phone, reset the earbuds, pair again. That fixes a surprising number of dropouts.
- Clear old devices from the list. Many headphones remember eight devices. Once the list is full, the connection jumps between the laptop in your bag and the phone.
- Turn multipoint off if you do not need the switching. That very feature causes the interruptions.
- Update the firmware through the maker's app. The fix is often exactly there.
The codec is a trade-off
Higher bitrates sound better but need more bandwidth and break down sooner. If your headphones offer LDAC or a similar high-resolution transmission, the app usually has a setting between sound quality and connection stability. For a commute, stability is the better choice; at home you can switch back.
And if the dropouts only started after months, a tired battery in the charging case can cause them too, see headphone battery not lasting. New models are in the audio section.