A2DP is the technology that allows connecting high quality audio bluetooth devices to your system.

Packages

To connect your headphones, you need a working host device, and the following packages:

apt-get install pulseaudio pulseaudio-module-bluetooth bluez-audio pavucontrol bluez-firmware bluez-tools

It is also highgly recommended to install a graphical pairing tool. bluetooth-agent is already included with gnome, but you can also use blueman.

Don't forget to restart bluetooth service and pulseaudio:

service bluetooth restart
killall pulseaudio

Pairing

Pair your device as usual and give it the "trust" attribute.

Configuring

Using pavucontrol, it is really easy to setup a2dp for your device, and map connections to it. Your paired headphones should appear as an option to output audio.

Don't forget to put it in high quality mode (a2dp) in the configuration tab. This is necessary for some devices that have mixed mode.

If you prefer to use the command line, just do:

bt-audio -c 00:02:3C:38:AC:B9

Where 00:02:3C:38:AC:B9 is the address of your paired device.

Compatible devices

Any A2DP device should work out of the box.

If you still didn't bought one, the Creative WP-300 works very well and has a very very nice sound.

Troubleshooting

Bluetooth headset is connected, but ALSA/PulseAudio fails to pick up the connected device or there's no device to pick.

Add this to /etc/bluetooth/audio.conf

Enable=Socket

This is how you can get Sony SBH50 and SBH52 working.