My goal is for my friend to be able to turn on his headphones and connect much like the 8bitdo is allowing me to with the controller.

Then you need to pair & trust the headphones BT first (via bluetoothctl), just like the gamepad was paired with the RetroPie Bluetooth script.

'm confused if the above lines are related to the adapter, why would it be referred to as retropie?

It's the 'local' BT adapter and the name is taken from the hostname of the system, that's why it shows as 'retropie'. Controller is also a mis-nomer, it refers to the BT local device, not the gamepad you have connected.

Please don't double post or bump your post in a short time. I've merged your 2 identical posts.
You'll get more chances for an answer if you'd follow the https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/3/read-this-first advice and add some info about your setup.

Ok, so the stutter goes away if I set baud rate of Bluetooth to 460800:
Run sudo nano /boot/config.txt and then append the following

# Enable autoprobing of Bluetooth driver dtparam=krnbt=on # Increase Bluetooth baud rate dtparam=krnbt_baudrate=460800

The idea was taken from here: https://github.com/Arkq/bluez-alsa/issues/205

Now only the playback delay left.

@TheBossT said in Retropie 4.4 HDMI Problem: Garbled Sound When Playing ANY Console/Emulator:

Also if anyone can maybe give some alternatives to bluetooth audio as the lag ain't great, that will be greatly appreticated!

There aren't many solutions out there and it seems this solution not only breaks other audio outputs but also is unusable due to the lag. I'm almost certain the Pi dosen't have enough horsepower to emulate games and stream bluetooth audio, as per the tutorial above I have completely removed it and I recommend that you should too. Let me know how you get on and if you find an alternative that doesn't stutter.

Alright, thank you for your help!

Hi.
I followed this tutorial's steps and managed to get my BT speaker working.
The problem was that after reboot, the speaker failed to connect.
After searching the web for a while, I ran across this: https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/334386/how-to-set-up-automatic-connection-of-bluetooth-headset
Please see the proposed solution.
Best regards, Luís

okay thanks that was new to me. so i guess there is not THE one and only way to get it working
but instead there are many ways and i have to figure out which one fits best ?!

@noctcrawler Try choosing the 1st option.

@mitu What I mean't was instead of using a connected monitor, use Wifi/bluetooth android phone screen inorder to play retropie without wires.

@DoctorDuck
I believe I had to create the file (so it loads automatically on boot). I haven't played with it in a long time. You should be able to run bluetoothctl to trust, pair and connect via SSH. From there it should work, you might have to restart emulation station. You can copy a wav file to the pi and run it via SSH as well to test. I think it is just "aplay yourfile.wav". You would have to pair this each time, which is why that .asoundrc file is important.

Are you trying to use it for music or games?
Games won't be useful. I was able to get it to working on 4.4, but no matter what always a 1 second delay. This is due to the codec and limitation of raspberry pi bluetooth chip. It doesn't support AptX (just A2DP), AptX is needed for realtime audio. You can get a bluetooth adapter that supports APTX and plugs into the audio jack then get a speaker/headphones that supports AptX as well to make it work if you really want to.

@BuZz
That would be awsome.
Anyway, thanks for the fast replies.