Enabling High-Fidelity Bluetooth Audio (LDAC) on Linux with PipeWire

Your pricey headphones sound like trash on Linux—here’s the real fix

I gave up trying to make my Sony WH-1000XM4s sound decent on Ubuntu. They were fighting me every step: boomy bass, hissing cymbals, and Zoom calls that sounded like I’d stuck my head in a washing machine.

Turns out I’d just never told Linux to use “the good codec.”

Most distros ship with only SBC—the equivalent of streaming music through a ham-radio. Sony’s blue **LDAC** driver (990 kbps) can move three times the data, but it’s hidden behind a three-minute config patch. I cribbed this from speaker-test-junkies on the Arch forums; works on Fedora, Debian, anything running PipeWire ≥0.3.65.

The five-minute blueprint

1 – Make sure PipeWire is actually driving your audio

Open a terminal and type:

pipewire --version

If you get a version number, move on. If you get “command not found,” install:

• Ubuntu/Debian:
  sudo apt install pipewire pipewire-pulse wireplumber
• Fedora:
  sudo dnf install pipewire pipewire-pulseaudio wireplumber
• Arch:
  sudo pacman -S pipewire pipewire-pulse wireplumber

Reboot (do it—kills any leftover Pulse demons).

2 – Grab LDAC brains

# Ubuntu/Debian
sudo apt install libldacbt-enc2 libldacbt-abr2

# Arch (AUR)
yay -S libldac

# Fedora
sudo dnf install libldac

3 – Tell PipeWire LDAC comes first

mkdir -p ~/.config/pipewire/pipewire.conf.d/

nano ~/.config/pipewire/pipewire.conf.d/bluez-monitor.conf

Paste this baby:

monitor.bluez.rules = [
  {
    matches = [ { "device.name" = "~bluez_card.*" } ]
    actions = {
      update-props = {
        bluez5.codecs = [ ldac aptx_hd aptx aac sbc ]
        bluez5.ldac-quality = "hq"
        bluez5.auto-connect = "[hfp_hf hsp_hs a2dp_sink]"
      }
    }
  }
]

Quick translation:

• ldac-quality = hq – 990 kbps heaven
• sq = 660 kbps (balanced battery)
• mq = 330 kbps (meh, SBC-level)

Save, close.

4 – Restart the audio stack

systemctl --user restart pipewire pipewire-pulse wireplumber
sudo systemctl restart bluetooth

Wait thirty quiet seconds.

5 – Pick LDAC in PulseAudio Volume Control

1. Open pavucontrol.
2. Click the Configuration tab.
3. Select your headphones → pick the profile ending in **LDAC**.

First time I did this I played Debussy and literally said “Whoa” out loud.

Bonus hacks from one audiophile to another

• Latency king—add bluez5.ldac-adaptive-bitrate = true inside the config to auto-drop bitrate when Wi-Fi gets noisy.
• Mic and music don’t mix—the moment a call starts PipeWire dumbs down the stream to HFP/HSP; that’s Bluetooth, not Linux.
• Battery worry—dropping from hq to sq bought my Sony’s roughly one extra Lou Reed album.
• Old dongle blues—had a 2014 laptop with a fossil adapter, upgraded to a $15 ASUS USB-BT500, LDAC showed up on the next reboot.

Out of curiosity I streamed the same FLAC file on my phone (LDAC forced) and the laptop on SBC—couldn’t even tell you which channel had the better bass until I turned on `bluez-monitor.conf`. Night-and-day doesn’t even cover it.

That’s it. Five minutes, two small files, goodbye to mushy mids. Your music—and your ears—can finally stop fighting Linux.

Still stuck? Quick fire-drill checks

• pactl list | grep -A10 bluez_card | grep -E "(codec|ldac)"
  Should spit out ldac. Nothing? You typoed the config.
• For random dropouts: switch to sq in bluez-monitor.conf.
• For zero sound at all: journalctl -u wireplumber will scream what went wrong.

Reboot after changes and press play. You’re welcome.