Bluetooth audio crackles and stutters when connecting my xbox controller

[safe flume]

Hi, I upgraded from 22.2 (or 22.1? I dont remember) to 22.3. I connect my mouse and headset (SBC codec) to bluetooth. As soon as I also connect my xbox controller, audio starts to crackle and stutter. It will happen softly every 10-20 seconds if I dont touch my controller, and more severely if I wiggle the thumbstick. It is really disruptive. This happens in games but also youtube videos, and was never a problem before the upgrade.

I tried to do some triage with Gemini, and it comes to the conclusion that due to a change in bluetooth protocol/communication, the xbox controller is forced into a high-speed polling mode that consumes significantly more Bluetooth "airtime" than in previous versions, drowning out my headset. And the controller is prioritised over audio.

I don't know what's true here, but as far as I could find this seems likely?
I would be greatful for further ideas on how to potentially solve this, short of downgrading, or even debug. And I would not prefer to take the xpadneo rabbithole.

pw-top shows no errors (all shows 0)
btmon shows bursts of data when moving mouse or thumbstick. with headset audio its a flood of data

Without success:
I tried running pw-metadata -n settings 0 clock.force-quantum 1024 to up the pipewire buffer size
I ran sudo iw dev wlp3s0 set power_save off in case it was power managed.

I did force reloads after each change with sudo modprobe -r btusb && sudo modprobe btusb

in /etc/bluetooth/main.conf I tried these settings:

FastConnectable=false
MinConnectionInterval=32
MaxConnectionInterval=64
ControllerMode=bredr <- bricks the bluetooth hardware

And in input.conf:
UserspaceHID=true

Audio server:
PulseAudio (on PipeWire 1.0.5)

inxi -Axxxz gives:

Audio:
  Device-1: Intel Cannon Lake PCH cAVS vendor: CLEVO/KAPOK
    driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel bus-ID: 00:1f.3 chip-ID: 8086:a348
    class-ID: 0403
  Device-2: NVIDIA GP107GL High Definition Audio driver: snd_hda_intel
    v: kernel pcie: speed: 8 GT/s lanes: 8 bus-ID: 01:00.1 chip-ID: 10de:0fb9
    class-ID: 0403
  API: ALSA v: k6.8.0-90-generic status: kernel-api
  Server-1: JACK v: 1.9.21 status: off
  Server-2: PipeWire v: 1.0.5 status: active with: 1: pipewire-pulse
    status: active 2: wireplumber status: active
  Server-3: PulseAudio v: 16.1 status: off (using pipewire-pulse)

[safe flume]

Also followed along with this youtube without success:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SA5GAPKQOBk

something interesting happens when I do:
systemctl --user restart pipewire pipewire-pulse wireplumber

It fixes the crackling (until restart or reconnect). But then my mouse starts lagging behind severely, like dragging it through water. So its quite convincingly a bluetooth bandwidth problem. This is a big problem since this update to 22.3

[safe flume]

well I had claude do some digging. It believes there was a bluetooth audio regression that is related.

• https://github.com/bluez/bluez/issues/865
• https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=427391
• https://acassis.wordpress.com/2024/05/08/bluetooth-audio-choking-cutting-on-ubuntu-22-04/

just leaving a paper trail here.
apparently solved in 6.9.6. Im on 6.8.
Ill try upgrading to 6.14 since that one is supported until february and 6.11 is EOL. no other kernels for mint recommended, especially not with nvidia drivers apparently.

[safe flume]

had to remove xone package before able to install 6.14. But audio crackle persists in 6.14.