Sometime ago I used this helpful tutorial: How can I use an external USB sound-card and set it as default? to set my external USB sound card as my default. This has been great for me as I use external sound cards in almost all of my projects.
However, for a project I'm currently working on I need to send audio out to a Bluetooth speaker. I can search for Bluetooth devices, find and pair them with my speaker, but I cannot make the final step of connecting to it. When I try I receive the message:
connection failed - use the audio menu to connect to this device
So, I go to the volume control in my panel. However, it is crossed out with a red cross. If I right-click to open Volume Control Settings, I cannot change the Audio Card or Channel to Operate options. I suspect this may all be due to the changes I made to default to my USB external sound card.
These changes included removing pulseaudio. I gather (from a comment on the tutorial I linked above) that doing this may disable Bluetooth connectivity. Here's what the commenter said:
uninstalling pulse audio causes Bluetooth headphones to not work. I had things working (ie recording over USB and playing over Bluetooth headphones) but then uninstalled pulseaudio and headphones are then not available as input devices anymore
I have tried reinstalling Pulseaudio and rebooting. The result was that the volume control icon in my panel was no longer crossed out, and I could access the drop-down menu to choose between available soundcards. However, the Bluetooth speaker was still not an option, and if I tried to connect to it after pairing I received the same error message. I subsequently removed pulseaudio again as it was (as before) frustrating my need to default to my USB external soundcard.
EDIT: I have also tried to connect via bluetoothctl, without pulseaudio. I can locate the speaker, pair with it, and trust it, but when I try the step of connecting I get this message:
Failed to connect: org.bluez.Error.Failed
I definitely still need to default to my USB external soundcard as without this my Pure Data patch defaults to the internal soundcard and the project won't work as I need it to upon booting. With Pulseaudio installed it will persist in defaulting to the internal soundcard.
- Can anyone provide me with some help?
- Can I do this without Pulseaudio? How?
