PulseAudio can not load bluetooth module

I am having trouble connecting my Bluetooth speakers with a fresh 15.10 install (EDIT: applies to 16.04 as well). The speakers are connected however they are not listed as an available audio device.

I tried to load the Bluetooth module using:

sudo pactl load-module module-bluetooth-discover
Failure: Module initialization failed

The same speakers have worked perfectly on 14.04. Any ideas how I could properly load the module so I can use my speakers?

3 Answers

Solved by using SimFox3 answer in this thread.

Bug and possible solution: actually I found a bug in that make the headset unusable, it seems that the pulse audio module: module-bluetooth-discover works only if started after the X11 session is up. So I have a workaround.

Edit the file:

/etc/pulse/default.pa

and comment out (with an # at the beginning of the line) the following line:

#load-module module-bluetooth-discover

now edit the file:

/usr/bin/start-pulseaudio-x11

and after the lines:

 if [ x”$SESSION_MANAGER” != x ] ; then /usr/bin/pactl load-module module-x11-xsmp “display=$DISPLAY session_manager=$SESSION_MANAGER” > /dev/null fi

add the following line:

 /usr/bin/pactl load-module module-bluetooth-discover

This way the Pulse audio’s Bluetooth modules will not be downloaded at boot time but after x11 is started.

The solution in 16.10 is:

$ sudo apt install bluetooth pulseaudio-module-bluetooth

This answer was originally posted as an edit to the question.

Sometimes, it works after reboot, and such error appears later. In this case you can try the following, which works for me:

pactl unload-module module-bluetooth-discover
pactl load-module module-bluetooth-discover