Sager 5791 and Bluetooth Stereo Headphones

[mainiac4laptops]

Can anyone tell me if it's real easy to use "stereo" bluetooth headphones not headtsets. I need some recommendations for gaming, music, movies, general use.

[robamb2002]

I've been researching bluetooth stereo headphones myself though I abandoned the effort when I found out that you need to spend over $120 to get a set that has even moderate reviews. fankly I don't sit far enough away from my laptop to justify getting a set just to have bluetooth. That and I have a bluetooth mouse which doen't respond until the software loads, If this was headphones windows startup and shutdown would still play on the speakers (not good while small children are sleeping nearby)

another note: I had set up my cell phone to sync with my laptop and found my mouse responce time dropped significantly, has anyone else run into problems using multiple bluetooth devices?

[mainiac4laptops]

It's a 2300 buck laptop, for me 120 seems cheap, I dunno. I hate being wired to my laptop. Please someone help me, this is a topic of narrow interest to those like me.

[Mazeura]

try newegg.com (http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2100370070+1093008221&name=Bluetooth)
(link is to blue tooth headphones, two of which are under 50$. The Logitech one has some good reviews on it.)

[mainiac4laptops]

Jabra BT620s, has anyone used this model with a laptop?

[kpauls]

Hi, I have used bluetooth audio for two years or so.

The first headset I used was the McAlly bluetooth headphones made for the iPod. It comes with a stereo jack transmitter but the headset actually uses bluetooth so the transmitter isn't needed.

The problems with the McAlly are that it does eat batteries, going thru 2xAAA in under 4 hours... so a single charge isn't enough to get me thru my workday. Also I eventually cracked the frame of my McAlly's after constant use and they became extremely uncomfortable to wear.

What's worse is that with inferior bluetooth drivers disconnecting the audio device requires you to re-assign the audio device and possibly restart applications that were running. Fortunately, the Sager laptop I got from XoticPC doesn't have this flaw!


You can use just about any headset for audio, but some of them will not work with high-quality audio. I'm using a Jabra BT125 at the moment for audio and mic and it works fairly well.

Unfortunately there aren't a whole lot of high quality BT headphones out there. If you want higher quality audio it looks like you should look for headsets supporting A2DP (AADP).

[mainiac4laptops]

Thanx I still am trolling for more info. I did and am aware of that standard and that aspect of my own laptops abilities.

[mainiac4laptops]

I'm now using Sony DR-BT22 bluetooth headphones and I am unable to get them to use the mp3 transmission, unfortunatley they are using the the "low-complexity" SBC method using the IVT BlueSoleil software. Can you, Justin, or anyone else tell me why I seem to be limited to this transmission method only? Is this a software isuue, is there better software out there?

[kpauls]

Well I recently picked up the JayBird JB-200 A2DP headphones.

Unfortunately using these phones and my Microsoft Wireless Laser Mouse 8000 at the same time results in slow mouse performance and dropped audio.

I'll be researching the NP9262's Bluetooth transciever (Cambridge Scilicon Radio Ltd. of some kind) and finding out what data rate each of these devices supports.

I'll probably start trying different BT transceivers I've picked up and see if any of them perform better.


It looks like Bluetooth 2.1 EDR (6 mbps) is the latest technology, but there are no 2.1 adapters out yet.

[kpauls]

So far I've tried my JB-200 / Microsoft Wireless Laser Mouse 8000 with the following BT dongles:

CompUSA 100 Meter USB Bluetooth Adapter (BT 2.0 Class 1 / USB 1.1) - USB\VID_0A12&PID_0001&REV_3164
* Result: moving mouse results in dropped audio

Microsoft Transceiver v 3.0 for Bluetooth - USB\VID_045E&PID_0708&REV_0054
* Failure: no working audio drivers

Sager NP9262 built-in Bluetooth "Generic Bluetooth Radio" - USB\VID_0A12&PID_0001&REV_3164
* Result: moving mouse results in dropped audio


I double-checked... yup the same CSR chip that CompUSA sold is the chip in our Sager. I think I'll assume for now that it's also a BT 2.0 100m device. But I've ordered 2 more BT dongles just to be sure that one of them works:

cirago BTA-6130 USB 2.0 Platinum Bluetooth 2.0 Class I EDR Adapter
* this one has Toshiba BT drivers that supposedly work in Vista-64

AZiO BTD603-132 USB 2.0 Bluetooth Adapter (Class 1 v. 2.0)
* this one is also EDR (2.0 and 3.0 mbps data rates), and uses the default drivers it seems


I'm not sure if the whole problem here is A2DP or the JayBird... it may be that non-A2DP sources have better reliability but poor latency.

[kpauls]

Good news.

I have experienced good results with this Cirago adapter:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833242002

The IMPORTANT part is that it includes Toshiba Bluetooth drivers that allow the user to specify the audio transmission quality. It seems that the JayBird defaults to high quality audio which when using almost any Bluetooth adapter seems to require exclusive use of the radio.

On low or standard quality both the mouse performance improves and audio dropouts are eliminated. The audio quality settings seem to introduce a modest amount of lag which I find acceptible for all applications.

Additionally using a Bluetooth 2.0 / USB 2.0 adapter (not BT2.0 / USB1.1) allows higher data thruput so that there is even better mouse performance at standard quality settings.



I may or may not have to replace my internal BT radio. The Toshiba drivers are saying something about a 30-day trial of the drivers. :(

If these drivers become disabled with my built-in adapter I'll have to figure something out, but it seems the NP9262 internal BT radio works fine as long as I select low quality audio.

The Cirago dongle seems to work better. So I'm reasoning that the NP9262's internal radio uses a low-speed USB (i.e. v1.1) interface and the increased bandwidth might help.

I'll have to bug Sager support some more to find out how to replace my internal BT radio.

[kpauls]

I have even better news today.

Bluesoleil (http://www.bluesoleil.com/) offers the best freaking BT driver stack I've used yet.

Automatic audio switching, no dead driver, and *somehow* the automatic device switching works with running applications (tested FireFox 3, will test games later). And no audio dropout with multiple devices using the same Sager NP9262 BT dongle.

The demo software is pretty annoying - download it if you want to make sure it works with your devices.

Also their ordering process is terribad - I think they manually process the PayPal orders. So you don't get your serial number until their Beijing offices are open.

[kpauls]

If you are using the Bluesoleil drivers make sure that you completely uninstall the CSR Bluetooth drivers.

I was experiencing some crashes during sleep transitions and sometimes during gaming until I removed the conflicting drivers.