I'm back for another try :)

[seamusdemora]

OK - odd title for a Question, but I've got a few, so please hold on until I explain:

My last post here was (nearly) a year ago regarding how to uninstall... at the time, I had a very simple system (1 single BT speaker), and I found that pipewire was very reliable. That has changed recently! I have bought a pair of BT speakers, and have been trying (unsuccessfully) for a week to play audio through both speakers. So frustrating - esp. when some say, "oh, that's easy" - yet they are unable to provide any details on how. Anyway...

My first question is this: Does bluez-alsa require a prior installation of bluez? I ask because: 1) I need to know if I can uninstall it; and 2) it seems that my failures to get the 2-speaker setup working may have something to do with bluetoothctl... it's difficult to know b/c in "Linux Bluetooth World", everything seems to be interconnected :P

Second question(s): Does bluez-alsa support the "A2DP Profile"? ... AIUI, the "profile" that's needed to support stereo-over-Bluetooth. Is there anything in the speakers themselves that I should check for to make sure the speakers are capable of supporting "A2DP"?

[borine]

I found that pipewire was very reliable

Yes, pipewire is an excellent piece of software, and for the vast majority of linux systems I would recommend it for all audio, including bluetooth. If pipewire does not work on your system for a basic "play music to my bluetooth speakers" requirement, then it is very unlikely that BlueALSA will be able work either.

Does bluez-alsa require a prior installation of bluez?
Does bluez-alsa support the "A2DP Profile"?

The answers to both those questions are on the project home page. If you do not make the effort to read the available documentation then it is not surprising that you have difficulty getting things to work.

Is there anything in the speakers themselves that I should check ...?

Very likely there is. An A2DP profile connection is for sending an audio stream from one source device (e.g. a computer) to one sink device (e.g. a speaker). If you have two independent speakers then bluetooth will see them as two separate sink devices.

Some bluetooth speaker designs have built-in functionality to synchronize with each other and play as a stereo pair. With those designs you connect the source device to one of the speakers and that speaker then takes care of splitting the channels and sending one channel to its partner.

If the speakers do not have that function, then your only option is to make two bluetooth connections, and arrange for the source to split the channels and send one channel to each of the speakers. For that you need to learn either how to use wireplumber for advanced pipewire configuration (out of scope here); or how to write advanced ALSA configurations which can do the same channel splitting and then output to two different BlueALSA devices.

For the BlueALSA approach, there are some notes on using the ALSA multi device to output a single stream to two BlueALSA devices in the wiki. That example sends both channels to both speakers, so you would have to modify it slightly to send just one channel to each speaker. If you decide to try this, I recommend that you start with the example as given just to prove that everything else is working correctly before experimenting with the channel configuration.

[seamusdemora]

it is very unlikely that BlueALSA will be able work either.

Maybe you're right... maybe it won't. Sounds like you don't think it's even worth trying?

Here are outputs from two (2) wpctl status runs:

They both use the same speakers (JBL Flip 5), and the speakers were "configured" exactly the same way in bluetoothctl. You seem quite knowledgeable about pipewire, so maybe you can tell me why in one case, only one speaker is shown, but in the other case, both speakers are shown?? Both are running under the "default" configuration of pipewire and wireplumber.

This first one was made on a Raspberry Pi Zero 2W system running pipewire and wireplumber:

Audio
 ├─ Devices:
 │      56. Built-in Audio                      [alsa]
 │      65. JBL Flip 5                          [bluez5]
 │
 ├─ Sinks:
 │      69. Built-in Audio Stereo               [vol: 0.40]
 │  *   70. JBL Flip 5                          [vol: 0.40]
 │
 ├─ Sink endpoints:
 │
 ├─ Sources:
 │
 ├─ Source endpoints:
 │
 └─ Streams:
        78. mpg123
             72. output_FR       > JBL Flip 5:playback_FR	[active]
             77. output_FL       > JBL Flip 5:playback_FL	[active]

This second one was made on a different Raspberry Pi - also w/ pipewire and wireplumber:

Audio
 ├─ Devices:
 │      40. Built-in Audio                      [alsa]
 │      41. Built-in Audio                      [alsa]
 │      42. JBL Flip 5                          [bluez5]
 │      52. JBL Flip 5                          [bluez5]
 │
 ├─ Sinks:
 │      46. Built-in Audio Stereo               [vol: 0.40]
 │  *   47. JBL Flip 5                          [vol: 0.47]
 │      53. JBL Flip 5                          [vol: 0.40]
 │
 ├─ Sink endpoints:
 │
 ├─ Sources:
 │
 ├─ Source endpoints:
 │
 └─ Streams:
        59. mpg123
             60. output_FR       > JBL Flip 5:playback_FR	[active]
             62. output_FL       > JBL Flip 5:playback_FL	[active]