If you’re experiencing compressed audio when connecting to a bluetooth headset on your Mac, you can change a setting to improve the quality:
- Option (alt) click the bluetooth icon in the menu bar and select Open Bluetooth Explorer.
- When Bluetooth Explorer opens, select Utilities then Special Options from the menu bar.
- Finally increase the minimum bitpool to around 40 and the maximum bitpool to the maximum, 64. Tick the enable role switching option if it isn’t already enabled.
- Finally, quit Bluetooth Explorer to save the settings. You might need to turn bluetooth off and on for the changes to take effect.
This increases the bitrate of your A2DP bluetooth audio which lowers the compression of the sounds.
Alternatively you can do this quickly by pasting this command into terminal:
defaults write com.apple.BluetoothAudioAgent "Apple Bitpool Min (editable)" 45
Or run this app: Enhance Bluetooth Audio Quality.app
If you’re looking to get some bluetooth earphones, I highly recommend the Sony Ericsson MW-600 Bluetooth Stereo Headphones.