First impressions of the Plantronics Pulsar 590A Bluetooth stereo headphone

Bought my shiny, new Plantronics Pulsar 590A some hours ago, and, apart from finishing my latest Web browser-related article, I've jumped at it right away.

My initial impressions (after some hours of playing with the device):

It definitely lacks in the highs - even lower-end wired headphones like the cheapo Pana RP-HT6 are far better in this respect.

With my WM5 (2.01) HP iPAQ hx4700 + WMP10, it works just great. Both A2DP works flwlessly (without skips or any kind of distortion) and remote controlling WMP10.

The CPU usage (and, therefore, the battery consumption) is really decent: device.exe consumes between 9 and 11% CPU and Windows Media Player between 6 and 8 (playing 60...80 kbps WMA files).

Unfortunately, the iPAQ Audio applet requires a wired headphone to be physically plugged into the device to work; and, even then, it only has effect on the headphone utput, not on that of A2DP. That is, in order to be able to use any kind of equalizer, you'll need to use a third-party player.

With my WM5 (A12) Dell Axim x51v, with the original (MS) AKU2 and, therefore, A2DP-compliant BT stack, it doesn't work at all. While there are only system sounds (for example, GUI navigation clicks) transferred, there are no problems; as soon as you start playing some music in WMP10, however, there will only be transfer for some half second. Then, the headphone just mutes; it's only after 10-15 seconds that system sounds (or the restarted music play) starts to be trasnferred to the device. That is, if you own a Dell Axim x51-series device, you may want to wait a bit until I find a solution to this problem (or finish scrutinizing all the related AximSite threads) before getting the headphone.

I'll keep you posted on all the intricacies of A2DP, possible hacks and the like with all my Pocket PC's - stay tuned :)

UPDATE (10/14/2006): First, I’ve published an overview of the remote controlling (AVRCP) compatibility of the Pulsar here. It’s a must for anyone that wants to know what media player applications can be remote controlled by the headset.

I also recommend my discussion with PPCT forum member manywhere here on the possible reasons for wildly different compatibility reports on the headset.

I've also made some two thorough tests with two software-based A2DP add-ons:

BlueMusic

I’ve also made some serious tests with the brand new BlueMusic (current, tested version: 1.0.200) by Teksoft. I’ve tested it on both my HTC Wizard (2.26 + AKU3.2RC1 extensions by KTamas/bepe) and Dell Axim x51v (AKU2 A12 ROM with the original BT stack – not the Widcomm hack!). I’ve done the former to see whether I can achieve considerably better sound quality than with the currently available HTC Wizard A2DP hack described here.

Unfortunately, it seems it’s not working at all with the Pulsar.

The Dell wouldn’t enable the “Set as Hands-free” menu item at all. Selecting “Set as Wireless Stereo” uses the original and, with the Plusar (or, at least, the hardware/ firmware revision of my unit, A06 / SB – see the above-linked PPCT thread for more info), useless built-in AKU2 A2DP support.

The HTC Wizard, while it (as is the case without installing BlueMusic at all) lets for selecting the Pulsar as a handsfree device, re-routing the sound of all applications didn’t work either. When I re-routed the sound via BlueMusic, only the sound of real phone calls got through (in both directions), not the sound of, say, Pocket Player or WMP.

That is, BlueMusic doesn’t seem to be compatible with the Pulsar (again, at least the A06 / SB hardware / firmware version!).

Note that BlueMusic is stated to be compatible (and working great in, according to PPCT forum member newst, stereo) with the Moto HT820 stereo headphone. That is, the incompatibility with the Pulsar headset is another Bluetooth compatibility issue that still plagues the A2DP (and AVRCP) scene – just like the WM5 HP iPAQ hx4700’s incompatibility with the HT820 (while it’s working just great with the Pulsar).

A quick overview of the Palm OS solution

In order to test the headphones with other, software-only solutions (and, for example, to compare their quality to the currently available HTC Wizard A2DP hack), I’ve tested Softick Audio Gateway 1.06 on my Palm OS-based, 3-year-old (!) Palm (palmOne) Tungsten T3. It worked flawlessly (no problems at all). Pocket Tunes (screenshot here) 3.1.8 (I’ve also tested some older – about a year old - versions – for example 3.1.1; they also worked OK with), the best Palm OS multimedia player, had no problems with AVRCP at all: the Pulsar was able to control all the controllable features (next / previous, pause/resume).

I’ve also played with the different Bluetooth music transfer speeds offered by Softick Audio Gateway (screenshot here): 180, 230 and 304 kbps. The former turned out to be pretty bad with considerable distortion, particularly in the highs (I’ve been told the earlier HP headphones also use a transfer speed of around 180 kbps. Dunno if this also means they are of bad quality); the latter two offered far better sound quality than the HTC Wizard hack.