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Weird tech question...

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Started 1 year ago by aaminian
Latest reply from honavery

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aaminian
Short North
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I'm trying to pair a bluetooth speaker system (Philips Fidelio 8550) with my Macbook (about 2 years old). Pairing using the Macbook's on-board bluetooth works, but the signal is shit (i.e., horribly intermittent) even if the devices are less than a foot apart. On the other hand, when I pair my iPad to the speaker I've got near-perfect sound quality up to about 25ft.

So here's my question:

Can I bypass my Macbook's crappy bluetooth antenna by plugging a bluetooth dongle (which I'm sure has a much better range) into one of the Macbook's USB ports?

Posted 1 year ago #
honavery
Arizona
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Not super familiar with Mac OS, but you should be able to disable the internal Bluetooth antenna somewhere (the Windows equivalent would be device manager).

Posted 1 year ago #
Rockmastermike
CORNspiracy HQ
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OS X is built around BSD unix, so I know there is a way to do it at least at a very low level (during kernel boot) if you're willing to dig.

But that also means OS X can easily handle picking and choosing devices, so someone SHOULD have written a simple interface to do it...

Indeed... someone on the interbutts writes:

"There is a program that comes with the developer tools (on the os x install disk) called bluetooth explorer. You can choose which bluetooth adaptor you wish to use in the program under the Utilities/HCI Controller menu item. This allows you do disable the internal adaptor and use an external adaptor. I have tried it on 10.4 and it works great."

Very old information (from 2005), but have you tried that?

Posted 1 year ago #
honavery
Arizona
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Maybe this.

http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/how-to-change-bluetooth-preferences-in-mac-os-x-sn.html

Posted 1 year ago #

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