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.
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(?)
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.
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.
Not sure how it works on Windows, but based on a bit or research, looks like it might. It is possible to connect a phone to the PC using the “Bluetooth Audio Reciever” app on the Microsoft store. Then the phone audio should play on the PC and should play through the headphones connected to the PC. Again, not 100% sure this is a viable solution on Windows, but considering I lucked into this solution on Linux without any effort, there’s probably a good chance you can achieve something similar on Windows. Might also depend on your computer’s Bluetooth adapter, so ymmv, but may be worth a shot considering the shortcomings of some of the other solutions.
Many headsets will allow you to connect to multiple devices, giving you the audio of whichever one is actively playing at the time. But, I am not aware of any that do it “simultaneously”, which really annoys me.
I want to be able to listen to music or watch a video on my computer, but still get alerts, alarms, and notifications from my phone. To the best of my knowledge, headset manufacturers are not doing this. If you’re listening to one audio source, the other is muted. You can’t listen to the second device until you stop the audio from the first.
I have been thinking about making a pocket-sized audio mixer with multiple Bluetooth audio receivers and a single Bluetooth audio transmitter. You would pair your headset to the device, and pair the device’s receivers to your various Bluetooth audio sources. I’d prefer to just buy one, but I can’t find anything like it in a simple, portable form factor.
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.
