poor audio quality on BT headphones with HSP[solved]

[Adel Ahmed]

Hello everyone,

I'm trying to use the microphone in my wh-ch520 headphones(which works fine on android) so I switch the audio profile using pavucontrol from A2DP to HSP-HFP codec(msbc or cvsd), when I do that I'm able to see the microphone on my headphones as an input device, but the audio quality takes a severe hit.
I'm using pipewire with the following flags:

[spica]

HSP/HFP (Headset Profile/Hands-Free Profile) indeed tends to offer inferior audio quality compared to A2DP (Advanced Audio Distribution Profile), and this discrepancy is inherent to their respective designs. A2DP generally offers better audio quality because it's optimized for streaming high-fidelity audio (but not realtime), whereas HSP prioritizes real-time voice communication and therefore sacrifices some audio quality for features like call stability and noise reduction. When you're enjoying music on your Android or iPhone, it leverages A2DP for optimal audio transmission. However, seamlessly transitioning to an incoming call triggers a switch to HSP without the listener typically noticing the shift in profiles. This switch ensures smooth communication for voice calls, though at the expense of audio fidelity, which is less crucial in such real-time conversational scenarios.

[Adel Ahmed]

hmm I guess I'll work on some scripts to switch automatically between the profiles.

thanks