I’m sharing the progress found in Fedora’s Bugzilla; it seems to be related to versions 5.83+ only in the KDE environment:
anakinrpi 2025-09-27 17:29:00 UTC
I think this discussion forum thread is related to my error: Bluetooth Service needs to be restarted to work
Comment 14Fedora Update System 2025-09-28 01:03:35 UTC
FEDORA-2025-1c4ded4bf6 (bluez-5.84-2.fc43) has been pushed to the Fedora 43 stable repository.
If problem still persists, please make note of it in this bug report.
Comment 15Peter Robinson 2025-09-28 09:52:45 UTC
It’s worth noting that version 5.80 works correctly for me.
Please test the intervening builds to determine what the last working/first failed builds were, they can be retrieved from koji. To date you’re the only person who’s reported issues (and audio issues are reported basically the moment they regress) so there’s something quite specific in your setup.
Comment 16anakinrpi 2025-09-28 13:41:47 UTC
Hello, thanks for the response!
Version 5.80-1.fc42 works fine
Version 5.81-2.fc42 works fine
Version 5.83-1.fc42 errors start when connecting the device at system startup
Version 5.83-2.fc42 same problem
Version 5.84-1.fc42 same problem
Version 5.84-2.fc42 same problem
Regarding the audio quality issues, I’m testing whether it has to do with having been using the SBC-XQ codec, which the headphones might not fully support. I’m trying AAC, and so far I haven’t had any problems.
Comment 17Peter Robinson 2025-09-28 14:26:23 UTC
Regarding the audio quality issues, I’m testing whether it has to do with
having been using the SBC-XQ codec, which the headphones might not fully
support. I’m trying AAC, and so far I haven’t had any problems.
That would be a different bug report with pipewire, as bluez doesn’t deal directly with the audio streams, but reading up SBC-XQ looks to be somewhat of a hack [1] anyway so you may be better off with AAC.
[1] Audio quality of SBC XQ Bluetooth audio codec - Articles - SoundExpert
Comment 18Peter Robinson 2025-09-28 14:35:04 UTC
(In reply to anakinrpi from comment #13)
I think this discussion forum thread is related to my error:
https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/bluetooth-service-needs-to-be-
restarted-to-work/156298
And reading through that thread shows it seems to only be happening on KDE and not other desktop environments, which likely explains why I’ve not seen it reported until now, now the question is what KDE does differently to the A2DP that GNOME and other desktops don’t that makes bluez misbehave.
Comment 19Peter Robinson 2025-09-29 09:22:31 UTC
So yesterday digging through a few posts on the forum from June when 5.83 landed there’s at least a few that mention issues when used with KDE:
So it looks like some change in bluez that affects KDE in particular but isn’t necessarily seen by gnome or other desktop users.