Hi,

Sorry to hear you are having issues with Bluetooth playback. From your description it sounds like a bug in the speaker SW. My guess is that for some reason the speaker fails to detect that your phone is playing and then after 3 minutes it enters power saving mode where the amplifiers are powered off in order to lower standby power consumption.

What phone/device are you using for playback? Does this only happen right after pairing? Could a workaround be to not re-pair your device every time? It should only be necessary to do once. Then you should be able to just connect after that.

If you can provide some more details I will see if I can reproduce it and get it fixed. 

Having to press play twice is not something I have heard about. What app are you using for playback on your phone?  

Hi,

Sorry to hear you are having issues with Bluetooth playback. From your description it sounds like a bug in the speaker SW. My guess is that for some reason the speaker fails to detect that your phone is playing and then after 3 minutes it enters power saving mode where the amplifiers are powered off in order to lower standby power consumption.

What phone/device are you using for playback? Does this only happen right after pairing? Could a workaround be to not re-pair your device every time? It should only be necessary to do once. Then you should be able to just connect after that.

If you can provide some more details I will see if I can reproduce it and get it fixed. 

Having to press play twice is not something I have heard about. What app are you using for playback on your phone?  

Hi! The issue happens every time when I re-establish Bluetooth connection to the speaker (I'm not doing a full re-pair each time, haha).

I usually disconnect the speaker from my phone/PC when I'm not using it, but once I connect back to the speaker the first track I play gets muted after precisely 180 seconds. It only happens once as long as I don't disconnect/reconnect Bluetooth, after that I can play multiple entire albums for the rest of the day without further incident, but if I disconnect from the speaker and reconnect to it then the issue will happen again to the first track I play.

It's definitely not an issue with the Bluetooth connection, because according to my phone/PC the music is still playing, I just don't hear anything from the speaker after 180 seconds. It can be fixed simply by pausing/un-pausing playback on my phone. This specific issue happens on all apps I use to play music, including the built-in Music app on my iPhone, and it also happens when playing from my PC.

With regards to the issue I'm having where I have to press play twice, this only happens on my iPhone, and also across all apps. It doesn't happen on my Windows 10 PC though, strangely enough. But it also only happens on my Balance.

After having thought about this a little, could the speaker not having internet access be an issue?

I know my Balance is on the latest software version because I originally set it up on a Wi-Fi network with full internet access, but I've since moved it over to my isolated Wi-Fi network where it has zero internet access and now the B&O app says it can't detect the current software version of my Balance. And I remember when setting up my Balance for the second time it took roughly three minutes for the software update to time out before I could set the speaker up without an internet connection.

I somehow suspect that the speaker is still trying to connect to the internet and that's somehow interrupting playback on newly established Bluetooth connections.

Hi Anna, it sounds to me like a bug, but a few questions out of curiosity.

- same issue when connected to WLAN?

- if so, how about wired by Ethernet cable?

- B&O would also ask if it has been since the start or how long you’ve had it :).

- tried to connect to it via Bluetooth from another device like a tablet or another phone?

I use my Balances only wirelessly so I’ve never needed it but I will give it a try with BT as soon as I get some free time and alone time.

Csaba wrote:

Hi Anna, it sounds to me like a bug, but a few questions out of curiosity.

- same issue when connected to WLAN?

- if so, how about wired by Ethernet cable?

- B&O would also ask if it has been since the start or how long you’ve had it :).

- tried to connect to it via Bluetooth from another device like a tablet or another phone?

I use my Balances only wirelessly so I’ve never needed it but I will give it a try with BT as soon as I get some free time and alone time.

Ok, I seem to have been slow and didn’t refresh my screen :).

Please check that you are on the latest SW (1.8.10009.11619)

It could potentially be an issue with not being on Wi-Fi, however I doubt it. It should not require internet access to use it for bluetooth playback. Is your device a GVA version or is it without Google Assistant?

Without GVA. It was updated to that version before I disconnected it and factory reset it. After that I set it up on my isolated wireless network. It is connected via Wi-Fi (that’s how I use AirPlay), just that this network doesn’t have a connection to the greater internet. It’s strictly a private network with no NAT to the outside. If I try and check the version now it says it can’t detect the version because of lack of internet access, which in of itself is bizarre.

Just a quick update: I quickly created a route between my Balance and the rest of the internet, which allowed me to check the software version (why the Balance needs network access just to check its own internal software version is rather curious (it just shows as "Version 0.0.0" otherwise)) and can confirm that it's already on 1.8.10009.11619. This specific issue should be pretty easy for you to reproduce.

Anyhow, after I did this I removed the route and tried to play some stuff via Bluetooth and funnily enough I don't seem to be getting the same issue anymore. I still have to tap play twice from my iPhone to start any music playback, but so far at least the speaker doesn't seem to go into mute after 180 seconds when I start playing music after connecting to it.

Whether or not this is related to me allowing the Balance access to the internet briefly I have no idea, but I'll try again when I wake up the next day after the speaker has been idle for a bit. I noticed that this issue is more prevalent when I'm newly connected to the speaker after I have been disconnected from it for some time (so if I disconnect and immediately reconnect I don't get the same 180 second mute issue).

It really sounds like there some kind of "phone home" being attempted, and when the "call to home" fails the speaker stops.  If it were a generalized bug, then it seems like others would have reported it already.  The fact you're running on a private network probably makes you quite unique.

Wild speculation follows:  It could be some kind of license registration logic that B&O uses to inventory active devices (possibly for royalty calculations).  For whatever reason, this wasn't completed successfully during your initial setup when it did have full internet access.  The fact that it continues to work after the initial pause, to me, means that it's not really supposed to work this way, but is something that escaped testing because internet access was probably assumed.  If it was coded to require internet access, I would think it would fail, not just a pause.  If it continues to work, then I guess you can assume the "registration" completed and you will not be bothered unless you do a factory reset or a software upgrade messes things up.