Take a look at this great utility for your OSX Menu Bar: SoundMenu 1.5.1 (available at versiontracker.com ) -- is just a great must-have utility to save your sanity - and save extra steps trying to cope with Apple's Sound Preferences panes: This handy little menu item shows available audio out and input sources and makes switching them on the fly as easy as possible. Which is good because...



There's an awful lot of futzing involved with managing a Bluetooth headset or speaker. In this example, we've got a Sony DR-BT22 Bluetooth Wireless Stereo Headset. The microphone built into the headset choice is straightforward, there it is in the middle section under Line-In.

But note how the Sony headset output shows up TWICE in the upper section! It takes a simple switch from one to the other to quickly realize that the FIRST entry connects to the headset using HSP - Head-Set Protocol commonly used with mobile phones -- at a low-quality rather hiss-filled so-so sound using Bluetooth's standard voice codec. Fine for talking, but not for music.

The SECOND entry (which it doesn't indicate) is the much higher quality A2DP stereo streaming setting -- and when selected, the hiss fades away and glorious full-frequency response stereo audio comes across.