Have installed Plugable Bluetooth USB Adapter on Windows 7 Pro (64 bit) PC. Downloaded and installed drivers as per Quick Start Guide from plugable.com/products/USB-BT4LE. Can connect bluetooth devices OK (mouse, k/b, Sennheiser PXC310BT headphones etc) but can only control volume from the headphones. Unable to use control functions (e.g. stop/play/next-previous track etc). These are all OK when I connect headphones to other devices (eg HTC M8 phone, Surface 3 Pro, iPad 4 etc). Any ideas?
Thanks
Hi Jeff,
Thank you for contacting us about your headset. I’m sorry it isn’t working for you.
The control functions use the same protocol in Bluetooth as the volume control. It should work if the drivers from the website installed correctly.
We have a troubleshooting tool that can help in cases like this. Could you go to this web page and follow the instructions there?
http://plugable.com/support/plugdebug
This will help me understand what the issue might be.
Thank you,
David
Plugable Support
Tx. Have sent zip file to support@plugable.com.
Have some more info as well. My original post was as a result of not being able to control playback from the headphones when using iTunes (i.e. can control volume only). Since the post I’ve tried some other music players and found that I get the same result with Windows Media Player and Windows Media Center but with Amazon Music Player all works fine!
Hi Jeff,
It did some research on this issue, and asked Bernie, Plugable’s founder and the development manager of the original Microsoft Bluetooth software, about it.
We ask users to install the Broadcom Bluetooth software, called WIDCOMM, in Windows 7, because it supports most uses much better than the native Windows 7 Bluetooth software. However, it looks like the interfaces between the software (called a Bluetooth stack) and applications are different in some respects between the WIDCOMM and Windows 7, and you have encountered one of those differences.
It seems some applications like iTunes and Windows Media Player are expecting a different interface to the audio/visual control protocol than the one WIDCOMM provides, while Amazon prefers the one you have installed. However, if we switch back to the Windows 7 stack, there are likely to be other issues affecting playback.
Issues like these have been resolved by the much better Bluetooth stack in Windows 8. On Windows 8, we recommend users to stay with the native stack instead of installing WIDCOMM. Your other devices, like the iPhone, iPad, and Surface all have more recent Bluetooth stacks that also don’t have this problem.
So unfortunately, this looks like something that can’t be fixed without likely causing other problems. If this is a deal-breaker for you, please feel free to return the adapter through Amazon’s 30-day return policy.
I’m sorry I could offer a more positive solution.
David
Thanks for this David - good explanation of the problem which is much appreciated. I’ll live with the limitations!
Jeff
You are welcome! Let me know if you have any other questions.
David