I recently moved to a new Windows 10 laptop and experience a number of problems with my Bose SoundLink II, Bluetooth headphones. Fortunately, after some playing around with drivers I was able to solve my problem and this post explains how…
The Problem
Poor sound quality – with the default drivers, the sound quality was poor and there was a considerable amount of audible noise being delivered to the headphones via the Bluetooth interface. The audio was very lo-fi and the frequency range was dramatically reduced. This resulted in a very thin, tinny sound.
Mic feedback loop – the Bose Soundlink headphones have a built-in mic, meaning that you can use it as a mic enabled headset for calls. With the default drivers which Windows was allocating to the headphones, I could hear a constant mic feedback loop whilst there was active audio output from the system. It was possible to hear yourself tapping on your keyboard through your headphones.
The Solution
- Connect your headphones to the laptop via Bluetooth.
- Open device manager (devmgmt.msc) as an administrator.
- Open the properties of the Bluetooth Audio device, go to the Driver tab:
My headphones are called ‘KeepYourVinyl’
4. Update Driver and Browse my computer for driver software. Pick from a list of available drivers on my computer.
5. Find and select ‘Microsoft Bluetooth A2dp Source’ and proceed with the installation.
Driver selection
6. Your audio device will likely stop working at this point and you will receive a dialog prompting you to reboot to complete the driver setup.
Full driver details
After a reboot, my headphones connected o the laptop and audio was as you would expect! Audio quality is now on par with that when connecting to an iPhone or Android device.