I frequently wear a pair of Bluetooth headphones paired to a computer. If I want to listen to something on my phone I have to re-pair the device to my phone.
Is it possible, through software or hardware, to have both my phone and computer connected in such a way that I can get audio output from either device to my headset simultaneously.
You need headphones with multipoint functionality. If your current pair can’t connect to multiple sources at once already then you may need to buy new ones that can.
Yes, but you need “multipoint” headphones that are designed to do that. Low end headphones tend not to have that feature. Medium to high end often do, but make sure before you buy.
Appreciated.
Searching on Amazon for “noise canceling multipoint headphones” is kind of a crap shoot.
Some other searching is leading me to find there are multiple types of multipoint - simple, advanced and triple. The description for simple kind of hints at that not being what I want and advanced would be preferred at minimum.
This seems to be leading to “Microsoft Surface Headphones 2” as the best entry point(?)
Depends how much you want to spend.
I wouldn’t start the search with Amazon, take a gander at Head-fi.org forums.
Almost all proper headphones should support it, but it’s worth verifying before purchase.
So you’re better off shortlisting headphones you like, then narrowing by multipoint support, rather than only buying based on multipoint.
I use Sennheiser BT-4.50, and they support multipoint. (Frequently available on their outlet store for good prices). I’m almost certain any of the recent Sony XM range will too.
Just as an fyi, If you’re looking for fully wireless earbuds they’re even harder to find with multipoint BT. This is due to the fact that they’re already using it to connect to both the other bud and to the device, and at least at the time the bluetooth boards that were in production were pretty much only supporting 2 simultaneous connections. I believe more have been coming out, but when I checked a couple years ago Jabra was one of the few companies making them. Elite 75ts were what I got at the time. I really liked them, but a trip through the washing/drying machines took them out of service and I replaced them with something without the capability as I no longer needed it.
This might be possible if you can configure your computer as a bluetooth audio sink, link a second device to it, mix the audio, and then connect your headphones to the computer. Never tried or looked into doing this though. It will need some third party software to pull off if you are using Windows, or some manual configuration if you are using Linux.
It won’t be convenient, but it can be done.
Others saying you need a multi-point feature but I thought it was just all devices with blue tooth 5.
I’ve had several headphones that do this but implementation seems buggy in all of them. I’m forever turning everything off and on, re-pairing, et cetera.
I don’t have quite the same issues, but I am fairly regularly running into issues where software on the other device is asking to play audio, and stealing focus. Make sure to mute unpredictable sources of sound (like Windows sounds or phone notifications).
Bluetooth devices and/or software implementations of audio are incredibly buggy.
Examples:
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Saying “OK Google” does this, and sometimes detects other sounds. I have to try to never say Google if I’m on Discord for example.
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Google Photos: the memories have audio, and will steal focus even if the audio is off.
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Spotify will sometimes get in a mode where it will constantly lose focus, even though nothing else appears to be demanding audio. When this is happening playback in other apps on my phone will continue to work as expected. This only appears to occur when my computer is on and connected to the headset via Bluetooth.
Other Bluetooth issues:
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Old games may not reliably play audio over Bluetooth. Fallout New Vegas would regularly get into a state where sound effects & voice wouldn’t play, but the radio might continue. Plugging in speakers and using those for New Vegas worked, but introduced other buggy behavior.
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Calls may request exclusive access to the Bluetooth device. Like if you’re on Discord, game audio may fail to play, rather than just playing in a degraded quality, or some other more graceful failover. This may be fixed, I’ve had it work at least once with other headphones, but haven’t tested it further. I just have an external microphone now, and have disabled the “headset” functionality in Windows.
Multi-point may solve your issue, but be aware that what you’re asking for may introduce a bunch of new problems. I still use Bluetooth headphones frequently, and in the way OP seems to want, but there are still significant growing pains, and I’m not sure I can recommend it.
