@tirtawn: I am at pr1.1 afaik.
@bandora: Power settings is an interesting idea - I'll try this out tomorrow. Right now I'm in a zombie state.
@McChicken: Yes, I gathered that BT has issues from all the threads here as well as the huge BT buglist.
However, in my tests of BT with two different headsets - a Plantronics Voyager and a Motorola headset, I found that media player works very well with the A2DP capable Motorola headset. Plantronics is mono and I've known it to have crackling sounds with other phones, but it worked and it worked well ... until I try to make or receive a phone call.

Haven't had the muffled sound thing happen to me - otoh, I've not been able to carry out a conversation long enough to find out.