The audio out on my computer broke so I can’t use earbuds. So I tried using bluetooth headphones. Obviously they connect to my computer. But when I put the wireless bluetooth headphones for the output and attempted to play, or record, I get a message that says “Error while opening sound device. Please check the recording device settings and project sample rate” I tried looking for similar issues, but they’re all for windows. i have a Mac 10.6.8 HELP!!! 
Did you attempt to set the bluetooth headphones to the recording device? I don’t think that will work.
– Bill
So do you mean have the headphones on both the output and input? I tried that and it won’t work. I only get the message when it is in the output.
I have no experience with bluetooth headphones so I’m flying blind here.
Try this …
With Audacity not running …
Set up your bluetooth headphones in System Preferences (it seems you’ve already done that and can hear other system audio through them)
Go to Applications / Utilities and open Audio MIDI Setup
In the left pane of the Audio Devices window, click on the entry for your headphones
That entry should have a “speaker” icon beside it, indicating that it is the selected output device
If it doesn’t have the speaker icon, click on the “gear” menu at the bottom of the list and select “Use this device for sound output”
Set “Format” to “44100.0 Hz” and “2-ch 16-bit integer”
While you have Audio MIDI Setup open, similarly configure your input device.
Start Audacity and go to Audacity > Preferences
In the Devices section, set the input and output devices to match the choices you made in Audio MIDI Setup
In the Quality section, set the Default Sample Rate and Default Sample Format to match the choices you made in Audio MIDI Setup
OK Preferences, click the Record button and see what happens.
– Bill
Thats weird, there is no Audio MIDI setup on my computer. So there goes the headphones…
Audio MIDI Setup should be in the Utilities folder, which is inside the Applications folder.
Don’t give up yet. Do the headphones work in other applications? Can you listen to YouTube videos?
– Bill
Headphones work on everything except Audacity
Did you find Audio-MIDI Setup and run through the steps in my post?
– Bill
There’s two ways to get there.
Go (top desktop menu bar) > Utilities > Audio MIDI Setup.
Or Go > Applications > (scroll down) Utilities > Audio MIDI Setup.
Koz
HI,
IT would seem that this problem is not limited to bluetooth.
I have used Audacity and other audio tools for decades so I have some experience.
Something has broken recently because… using the current version of OSX and Audacity on a 2011 MBP (10.11.6 and 2.1.3). Logitech USB headphones generally have well behaved firmware but some pert of the system isn’t happy today even though they have worked perfectly in the past.
Audacity was not talking to the headphones in either direction very well. It was working for record and play but I wound up with what sounded like an 8K recording even though it wasn’t set for 8K. Then it completely failed and gave the device error both record and playback.
All the while the headphones worked fine in 4 other audio editors I tried.
When I checked the Audacity prefs and found it NOT set to 16 bit and corrected it to 16 bit, everything started working as it should again. Including changing the Audacity pref to 24 or 32 bit audio.
So something in Audacity is a bit flakey.
ALSO FWIW I connected a Jabra BT headphone to see if it would record and playback. It does but there are minor issues with bandwidth or timing where playback has to catch up at the start of playing. I does seem to record fine but the micing is weak and of course sounds a bit “roomy”. I believe it has to use the telephony profile to record which if I remember right is 8K sample rate and sounds like it.
That is my experience. HTH
pd