I don’t know about you, but I’m always looking for ways to remove as many wires from my PC setup as possible. That often means going wireless, and while some systems rely on their own dongles to power their wireless connections, others use the tried-and-true technology of Bluetooth. However, on Windows 11, there’s an issue: Some Bluetooth devices suddenly see a drop in quality when the user activates voice chat.
Microsoft recently shared a post discussing this particular problem, even going so far as to highlight an incident similar to the one I noted above, where a player is enjoying “Forza Horizon 5,” but when they join a voice chat with their friend, the quality of the sound produced by their Bluetooth headset suddenly drops. This is just one of a few issues plaguing Windows 11 right now, as some users reported the latest Windows 11 update killed their SSDs.
Up until now, Windows 11 users had little choice other than to put up with this issue, which Microsoft has pinned the blame for on Bluetooth Classic Audio. But why is that? Well, the company says that the sudden drop in quality is happening because of how the technology works.
How Microsoft is fixing Bluetooth audio
Microsoft says that the change in quality that you experience when using Bluetooth Classic Audio is because of how the system utilizes two different profiles. One profile, called the Advanced Audio Distribution Profile (A2DP) provides high quality audio. However, it doesn’t allow you to use a microphone. Instead, you need to rely on another profile called the Hands-Free Profile (HFP). HFP allows you to use a microphone and listen to audio, but it does so by playing back audio in mono with a drop in quality compared to A2DP.
In order to address this issue and improve audio quality across the board, the company is introducing super wideband stereo support on Windows 11. This allows game audio to continue playing at the higher quality stereo levels found in A2DP by replacing that profile entirely with a new one called the Telephony and Media Profile (TMAP).
This change is essentially an update to the Bluetooth LE Audio already found in Windows 11, and Microsoft says it compresses the audio more effectively, allowing it to retain more of its original quality while still letting you use a microphone. Of course, you’ll need an LE Audio compatible headset, as well as the latest update for Windows 11, though availability may differ based on when your computer’s manufacturer releases driver updates for LE Audio.
