Beoplay H8 Microphone on MacBook

3 replies
K(
Offline
kimmenbert (archived2)
Bronze
Posted October 3, 2016 at 19:24 GMT
#2070125

Hi,

Just got a pair of Beoplay H8 and I intended to use them for some skype calls, aswell as listening to music from my MacBook.

It works great when listening to music. But once i activate the microphone and go into Skype or some other application that uses the microphone it´s just terrible.

There is a robot like sound, and some other noice. I can hear everything happening on the outside of the headset better, trough the microphone. People on the other end of the call can also hear every sound that comes from the speakers on the H8.

Is this a common issue? Something not supported with MacOS Sierra?

Is anyone else experiencing this?

K(
Offline
kindamanic (archived2)
Bronze
Posted February 27, 2017 at 10:40 GMT
#2070126

I'm experiencing the same here. This is probably normal behavior, as your MacBook switches the audio codec when the microphone is activated. You can see this for yourself: press the bluetooth icon in the status bar while holding the Option key, click on your Beoplay H8 in the list of connected devices and you'll see extended service info, like RSSI and the currently used codec. When playing music (e.g. with iTunes), the codec should be AptX, while when the microphone is used, the codec will probably switch to SCO. SCO is a low-quality codec, but I guess it is used in headset mode (Skype etc.) due to bandwidth limitations.

On a side note, you can also switch  between input devices (press the sound icon in status bar -> Sound preferences -> Input). I have found the internal microphone on my MacBook Pro 2016 to deliver much better quality than the H8 (you can check this by calling Skype Test Call and comparing the records of your own voice).

Cheers,

-Ilya

K(
Offline
kindamanic (archived2)
Bronze
Posted February 27, 2017 at 10:40 GMT
#2070127

I'm experiencing the same here. This is probably normal behavior, as your MacBook switches the audio codec when the microphone is activated. You can see this for yourself: press the bluetooth icon in the status bar while holding the Option key, click on your Beoplay H8 in the list of connected devices and you'll see extended service info, like RSSI and the currently used codec. When playing music (e.g. with iTunes), the codec should be AptX, while when the microphone is used, the codec will probably switch to SCO. SCO is a low-quality codec, but I guess it is used in headset mode (Skype etc.) due to bandwidth limitations.

On a side note, you can also switch  between input devices (press the sound icon in status bar -> Sound preferences -> Input). I have found the internal microphone on my MacBook Pro 2016 to deliver much better quality than the H8 (you can check this by calling Skype Test Call and comparing the records of your own voice).

Cheers,

-Ilya

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