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Okay, so I have this bluetooth headset (it's a Skullcandy Hesh 2 Wireless). I want to use it with my PC which is running Windows 8.1. I can pair it just fine. After pairing it adds three devices under the "Sound" setting window: Hesh 2 Wireless Stereo (corresponding to the Audio Sink service) and Hesh 2 Wireless Hands-Free (one for audio out, the other for audio in). This is where I run into my problem.

The stereo output is awesome for listening to songs, in game sounds and music, watching movies, etc. What I want is the capability to do all of those things while using the built in mic to talk to my friends over Skype or Steam. I cannot find a way to do that. Whenever the mic is active any sound output to the Stereo part just stops. From what I can tell, Windows suspends the stereo part and lets the hands-free part do its thing until I stop talking.

What I'm wondering is: Is this even possible? The headset has a 3.5mm wire as well for those times when the battery is low. Using that wire everything works flawlessly.

Jariullah Safi
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2 Answers2

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Your headset needs to support aptX (https://www.aptx.com/products). This is a limitation of the bluetooth A2DP profile. Without aptX, it will not be able to receive hifi stereo sound one way while sending microphone audio the other way.

And no, contrary to some information floating around in various forums you cannot make this work via playing with Windows mixer settings or downloading some application. This is why most gaming headsets that do support two-way audio in stereo quality don't use bluetooth but a proprietary wireless protocol with their own little USB dongle.

EDIT: User "Horn OK Please" below is correct that aptX alone unfortunately is no guarantee of this working! You can get aptX headsets that nonetheless suffer from the same limitation!

Toumal
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1

Bluetooth LE Audio supports stereo speakers with mono mic. However I have not yet found a consumer headset and laptop/phone which actually have the necessary hardware and software to enable it.

Windows 11 version 22H2 (KB5026446) Bluetooth LE Audio adds software support, but special hardware is needed as well.

Basic audio profile configuration 8(i): The PC is connected to a single audio device that supports stereo render streams and mono capture streams.

Bluetooth designers intend this as a supported use case for LE Audio, describing use with hearing aids which seems like it would even support stereo mic with stereo audio, not just mono mic

... moves beyond anything that the Advanced Audio Distribution Profile (A2DP) or HFP can do. Here the phone sends a separate left and right audio stream to left and right hearing aids and then adds the complexity of optional return streams from each of the hearing aid microphones.

Micah Lindström
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