Bug#989826: bluez: Cannot connect more than one device A2DP sink at a time

[FPacifica]

Package: bluez
Version: 5.55-3
Severity: normal

Dear Maintainer,

In Debian Bullseye it is not possible to simultaneously connect more than one
bluetooth audio device A2DP sink.

For example, if I connect the A2DP sink of a Bluetooth speaker device and
then connect Bluetooth earbuds which have an A2DP sink and also a low-fi
voice communications sink, the earbud A2DP sink will not be available.

In order to use the earbud devices A2DP sink it is necessary to first
disconnect the Bluetooth speaker device.

What should happen: It should be possible to connect multiple Bluetooth
audio devices and use their A2DP sinks.



-- System Information:
Debian Release: 11.0
APT prefers testing-security
APT policy: (500, 'testing-security'), (500, 'testing')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: i386

Kernel: Linux 5.10.0-6-amd64 (SMP w/12 CPU threads)
Kernel taint flags: TAINT_OOT_MODULE, TAINT_UNSIGNED_MODULE
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE not set
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /usr/bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)
LSM: AppArmor: enabled

Versions of packages bluez depends on:
ii dbus 1.12.20-2
ii init-system-helpers 1.60
ii kmod 28-1
ii libasound2 1.2.4-1.1
ii libc6 2.31-12
ii libdbus-1-3 1.12.20-2
ii libdw1 0.183-1
ii libglib2.0-0 2.66.8-1
ii libreadline8 8.1-1
ii libudev1 247.3-5
ii lsb-base 11.1.0
ii udev 247.3-5

bluez recommends no packages.

Versions of packages bluez suggests:
ii pulseaudio-module-bluetooth 14.2-2

-- no debconf information

[Vincent Lefevre]

Control: found -1 5.55-3.1

On 2021-06-14 01:15:33 -0700, FPacifica wrote:
> In Debian Bullseye it is not possible to simultaneously connect more
> than one bluetooth audio device A2DP sink.

Same issue. If the second device provides only an A2DP sink, the
Bluetooth connection fails. If it provides another sink (e.g. HSP/HFP
for headphones), then the Bluetooth connection succeeds, but the A2DP
sink is unavailable.

I understand that it is not possible to enable several A2DP sinks at
the same time, but it should be possible to change the selection from
pulseaudio without having to disconnect/reconnect the devices.

--
Vincent Lefèvre <vin...@vinc17.net> - Web: <https://www.vinc17.net/>
100% accessible validated (X)HTML - Blog: <https://www.vinc17.net/blog/>
Work: CR INRIA - computer arithmetic / AriC project (LIP, ENS-Lyon)

[Vincent Lefevre]

I think that this is actually a pulseaudio / pulseaudio-module-bluetooth
bug: after the upgrade to pulseaudio 15.0+dfsg1-2 (without changing the
bluez version), I can have 2 A2DP Sink profiles at the same time.