bluealsa and bluealsa-aplay sound is non constant

[flatmax]

I'm using the system as a way to play audio from my phone to a Pi with an I2S sound card.

Bluez5 is setup and I have the following commands for bluez-alsa :

• bluealsa -i hci0 -p a2dp-sink
• bluealsa-aplay -d hw:0 -v 00:00:00:00:00:00
  Selected configuration:
  HCI device: hci0
  PCM device: hw:0
  PCM buffer time: 500000 us
  PCM period time: 100000 us
  Bluetooth device(s): ANY
  Profile: A2DP

My android phone connects and the audio is routed to the Pi. I can hear the audio coming through in patches from the phone, however long gaps between. It is stereo.

You can listen here :
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1922x6iXofnortUnxkr511fsLj8-GjROn/view?usp=sharing

The audio sounds like playback is much too fast.

I have tried using the plughw:0 device, but get the same problem.

[flatmax]

I've also done a test with altering the buffer and period time :

bluealsa-aplay -d hw:0 --profile-a2dp --pcm-period-time=100 --pcm-buffer-time
=200 -v 00:00:00:00:00:00

Still sounds patchy ...

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1PRboBiSfkXn7xHEXbU5e_cuOYtjHkz4u/view?usp=sharing

[flatmax]

I tested with a USB bluetooth dongle. It works well.

Turns out the problem is with the Pi3 inbuilt bluetooth hardware. I have tried turning wifi off and playing with flow control - but nothing comes of it.

Anyone who has setup the Pi3 using buildroot (not raspbian) with suggestions are welcome.

[mbrebion]

I've encountered similar problems with Bluetooth streaming from devices to RPIs 3B and 3 zero (I use a hifiberry sound card for decent audio).
I've found two working solutions :

• Using a Bluetooth dongle (and disconnect the onboard Bluetooth)
• disconnecting Wifi as soon as Bluetooth stream is coming. This works well but implies ssh disconnections and so on

Apparently, newer RPIs do not suffer from this problem

[borine]

This appears to be an issue with RPi firmware and/or UART config. It is very likely fixed by updating firmware and OS. I think it is not a bluez-alsa issue.