Fixed Bluetooth Sound & Controller issues. You'll never guess what it is.

[KemetrySW]

So for some reason the sound in the game would work perfectly fine with my bluetooth headset right up until the point a loading icon would appear in the bottom right of the screen while in the starting menus. My bluetooth headset would say "connected" during this busy icon and all sound on my computer would cease. It didn't matter if I restarted my headset, or if I turned it off completely, the sound would remain off in all applications until I exited Gears 5.

I installed fxsound. Didn't fix it. I tried changing my sample rate to 48000 hz, which my headset doesn't even support, and it still didn't work. I finally changed the sample rate in fxsound to 48000 hz and that still didn't work.

So what worked? So I knew that the excuse as to why a lot of bluetooth headsets didn't work in Gears 5 was a lie, because the sound worked just fine in the game, right up until that busy icon would pop up on the bottom right. I knew that this was some kind of sever connection that was happening directly to MS, so I figured "let me turn off my internet and reload the game." Guess what happened when the server connection icon popped up? It didn't cut out the sound and loaded just fine.

So not only was the sound fixed disabling the internet, but the extremely laggy input using PS4 controller stopped as well. So the server connection was interrupting with all bluetooth devices you used to play Gears 5. The only reason I can see this happening is if MS was trying to log your bluetooth data on their servers, which is completely unnecessary.

So after you get past that first attempt to initiate their server, you can turn back on your internet and everything works just fine. I even exited the campaign, went back to the menu and reloaded. Bluetooth devices did not bug out again. But if you exit the game entirely, play again with the internet turned on, it will try to initiate that MS server and mess up your BT devices. So rather than get rid of this server initiation that screws up your bluetooth devices, MS Coalitions official response is that this very common bug is "user error", and would rather you jump through a bunch of hoops that may or may not fix the issues.

I tried removing Gears 5 from the exceptions list on Windows Firewall and that didn't fix it unfortunately. It might be another exception that isn't titled "Gears 5" that needs to be removed, so if anyone figures it out, or how to ban any application connected to Gears 5 from accessing the internet, please let us know.

So as of right now, the only work around that I've found is to disconnect your internet, start your game, and leave the internet disconnected until you get to the "Campaign, Multiplayer, Bootcamp, Extras" screen. Once you get to that screen you can enable your internet and your bluetooth devices will be fine until you quit and restart the game again.

Hope that helps. And if you are asking yourself; "isn't this is a hassle every time we want to play Gears 5?"......

Yes, it is....

Why doesn't MSGS change whatever that server authentication is that causes this conflict with bluetooth devices?

Your guess is as good as mine.

[Chidi the Corgi]

It works for me. Thank you a lot!

[MisterCrow]

I've had this issue before with Battlefield 1. Same solution works for Gears 5:

https://www.irishbloke.net/?p=1907

This way you don't have to disable / re-enable your internet connection every time you play the game :)