Bizarre Bluetooth problem
 

I've been happily using my excellent Arctic Sound P311 headphones with a Targus Bluetooth dongle plugged into my computer. While sometimes the adapter would stop responding, or I'd connect and get bad sound quality (I think because I would have open an application/web page that used sound), the setup worked most of the time.

However, 2 days ago I turned on my headphones and was greeted with bad sound quality, kind of similar to the distortion you get when music is played at volumes that are too loud for speakers to handle.

Reconnecting the headphones, pulling and reconnecting the adapter, and restarting the computer did nothing.

I tried a different pair of Bluetooth headphones, and had the same problem. I tried a different adapter, and the problem remained. I tried different USB ports, but no dice.

BUT, I can use both headphones with my Bluetooth-ready Creative M300 mp3 player with absolutely no problems, even while sitting in the same room as the computer. :doh:

My controllers, mouse and keyboard are wired. My cell phone is my only potential source of interference, but I've had that for months. The other floor of my building is empty. The problem seems suspiciously linked with the arrival of a new flatmate, but Bluetooth is disabled on his laptop, his cell phone is not Bluetooth ready, and his use of wireless PS3 controllers postdate the start of the problem. And again, my mp3 player seems to be completely unaffected.

Does anyone have an explanation or fix?

Thanks

Well, I'm an idiot. Each time I checked the sound quality, it was with VLC - and it took me 3 days to realize that I had the volume set to 190%. Sliding it back to 100% fixed the problem.

:88)

Don't you just hate over modulation.... glad you got it fixed! :O:

Sometimes the solution is so obvious and simple but it'll take ages before you've figured it out :88)

HunterICX