- Force your audio output to switch to headphones, speakers, or any other output, including USB and Bluetooth devices. The microphone can also be switched, and on most devices the speaker can be completely muted if you so desire. Additional features: Widgets, Quick-setting tiles, and notification shortcuts. Auto-Switch: Detect when headphones are inserted or removed, and switch to any audio.
- How can I output the audio through the normal phone speaker while plugging my headphones? I'd searched a lot, but seems to find nothing except this answer and it didn't work on Nexus 6 nor Note 3. Actually I need to use my headphone as mic pnly and the normal phone speaker to output sound.
- If you do the steps that JayEff suggested and the hardware checks out good, then right click on the sound icon and choose playback devices. You should see both laptop speakers and headphones, high light headphone and click on Make Default. It should toggle back to speakers as default when you remove the headphones. Was this answer helpful?
Click on the Recording tab and right click the empty space and select ‘Show disabled devices’. Right click on the option ‘Stereo Mix’ and enable this device. Click again and select Properties. Select the Listen tab. Place a check mark in the box ‘Listen to this device’.
Have your laptop speakers suddenly stopped working or do your smartphone speakers sound better than your computer? Do you have a desktop with no speakers? Well here’s how you can easily stream audio from your computer wirelessly to your Android smartphone. Using this tweak, you can easily enjoy the convenience of wireless audio on your wired headphones using a smartphone and without spending a penny. Wireless headphones are costly and often do not sound as good as their wired counterparts. Moreover, it’s a pain in the ass to charge wireless headphones daily. So, to enjoy wireless audio on my wired headphones (at least from a desktop/laptop) here’s the setup that I use.
Using this setup, I stream audio from my laptop to my Android smartphone. Why do I just not connect my headphones to my laptop? Of course, my laptop has an earphone jack (if you were wondering that it doesn’t), but my couch is a bit far from the table I work on, and my headphone cords aren’t long enough. So to enjoy occasional movies and stuff, I tend to lay down on my couch with my laptop on the table (I don’t like it on my couch) and enjoy whatever I am watching.
What do You Need?
- A desktop/laptop computer (of course)
- An Android smartphone
- 5 minutes of your time
Stream PC Sound to Android Smartphone with WiFi Audio
In the first method, we will use the WiFi Audio application for Android. It’s available for free on the Google Play Store. There’s a paid version as well with ads. However, I don’t recommend buying it, because there’s no need. Once you’ve turned on WiFi Audio, you only have to go inside the app to turn it off. No settings, nothing.
Update: Sadly the developer deleted the free version from the Play Store, and there’s just the paid version available. The paid version costs $2 and can be downloaded here. Upon searching online, I could find an APK of the earlier free version. You can download it from APKsFull – apksfull.com/wifi-audio-wireless-speaker-com-vnd-wifiaudio/
Set up WiFi Audio on your Android device:
1. Download WiFi Audio to your smartphone and install it.
2. Open the app.
3. Close any ads that appear. Hit the back button to do so.
4. Notice an option titled “WiFi Audio Status” which is set to Off? Turn it on.
5. You will see a notification in your notifications panel which says ‘WiFi Audio Started with an IP address’. If you don’t, check if you are connected to a WiFi network.
Setup WiFi Audio on your computer:
1. Visit this link to download the appropriate client for your device. Currently, there are clients available for 32 bit and 64 bit Linux, Windows XP, Windows 7 and Windows 8. Upon testing, the client also worked on Windows 10.
2. Upon downloading, simply run the application. It’s a standalone application so you do not need to install it on your computer. Just open the application whenever you want to run it.
3. Upon opening the application, type the IP address that you see on the Android application (remember we saw an IP address in the notifications panel? Yes, that!)
4. And then click on ‘Start’ button to start streaming audio. That’s it.
As can be read, the tool will start sending audio data to the IP address that you specified.
You can alternatively follow the below video tutorial:
(coming soon)
Some Helpful Tips:
- This is the simplest setup I could find. Both the applications don’t have anything to set up making them easy to use.
- If you have weak signal, audio might stutter. So make sure you are close to your router and avoid moving.
- Avoid downloading stuff when WiFi audio is on if you experience voice breaks or lags.
- There’s no way to change the sound quality. You have to adjust with the app defaults. I find it to be decent enough.
- To experience better audio quality, avoid streaming audio to your smartphone’s speakers. Instead, connect headphones to your smartphone and listen tover them.
Stream Audio Using SoundWire
SoundWire is another application you can use to route your PC audio to your Android device. It works on the same mechanism as WiFi Audio, the app we discussed earlier. Like WiFi Audio, SoundWire has two applications – one of which needs to be installed on your computer and the other on your Android. Here’s how to do it.
On your Windows/Linux computer:
1. Download the SoundWire server application from their official website. There’s a different version available for Windows XP, Linux and a common one for Windows 7, Windows 8 & Windows 10. In addition to that, there’s an application compatible with Raspberry Pi as well (if you feel like setting up a full-featured audio station).
2. After installing it onto your PC, before opening SoundWire turn on your audio source (like playing a movie on VLC or playing some songs).
3. Double click the SoundWire icon on the desktop to open it.
4. It will start streaming audio to the IP address you can see on the application. In my case, it is 192.168.2.1.
5. From the option titled ‘Input Select’, choose your audio source. You have the following options – Speaker (what you listen on your computer speakers) or Microphone (what you speak on your microphone). You can also choose the default option for using the default multimedia device.
Unlike WiFi Audio, SoundWire does offer some options using which you can change the audio source to a microphone or your speakers, you can reduce the master volume, you can record audio to file and save it. It also provides an option to minimize SoundWire to your system tray or task bar. You can also mute your sound entirely. SoundWire is an upgrade over WiFi Audio.
On Android:
1. Open the Google Play Store -> Search for ‘SoundWire‘ -> Install it.
2. Upon successful installation, launch the application.
3. Click on the ‘SoundWire’ icon to connect to a SoundWire Server automatically. If you run multiple SoundWire servers on your WiFi network, you can alternatively type the IP address in the provided field and then tap the SoundWire icon.
Each server that you connect to is saved. So, the next time you launch the app, you can simply pick a server by clicking on the downward pointing icon.
SoundWire Android app offers some configuration options. For instance, you can change the name that’s shown on the SoundWire server-side app when connected to it or you could change the audio buffer size (to increase or reduce the sound quality). If on your Android smartphone breaks, you can enable audio compression.
Further, SoundWire also provides options to:
- Connect on start
- Auto-reconnect to the server if connectivity is lost for some reason
- Auto-reconnect when settings are changed
- Ability to connect to a hostname instead of an IP address (just in case you have a domain name server set up on your network; most of us don’t)
- Disable notification sounds if connection is lost
- Change the Android primary audio path
- Prevent device from sleeping if SoundWire is in use
- Dim screen to prevent your device from sleeping when SoundWire is running. Its is recommended that you enable this option only if you experience choppy audio
- You can also use a custom server port number if you wish to. But, make sure that you change your server port on your computer too. The port number on the SoundWire Android app and SoundWire Server should match to successfully establish a connection between them
SoundWire also offers a paid version without advertisements which retails for $3.99 and can be bought here.
Any tips on using SoundWire? The same tips that I shared for WiFi Audio also apply to SoundWire so I won’t repeat them again.
How To Play Sound Through Both Speakers And Headphones Android Wireless
Which one of them do I recommend?
Well, I believe in the KISS principle which means keeping everything simple and thus prefer to use WiFi Audio, which comes with just two start buttons and it pretty much does its job. You can try both of them and find which one do you like more. If you’re of a special kind and would like to configure the application to your taste, you’d prefer using SoundWire more than WiFi Audio.
How To Play Sound Through Speakers And Headphones At The Same Time Android
Are these the only applications that facilitate wireless streaming of audio? Definitely not. But, these are the two tools that I found to be working. Out of the various tools that I tried these worked and were also rated fairly by the community. That’s the only reason I’ve mentioned them. If you know any other tools that work, do let us know and we’ll happily include them here.
“You can’t listen to music through two separate destinations.”
“It doesn’t work with Windows.”
These are the replies I have been receiving for the past five to six years. I’m sure I have searched for this topic around a dozen times, but each time it’s the same response. Consider that you are listening to a song using headphones on your laptop. Your sibling wants to listen in as well, but prefers to use the speaker. Can a clash be avoided? How is it possible to listen to music through more than one option at the same time? Why hasn’t Microsoft thought about this aspect?
Guess what! This has been made possible now. Windows can output sound to two sources at the same time, in most of the cases. What’s best is, the installation of additional programs is not necessary for this to work.
Here’s a step by step instruction on how to use both headphones and speakers at the same time.
Method 1:
- Connect the headphones to the computer. Make sure the speakers are connected as well.
- From the taskbar, right-click the volume icon. Then select Sound from the options, the sound dialog box opens. If you are not able to find the voice icon, use the Windows search box at the bottom left. Type sound and select Sound from the fly-up menu.
- In the Playback tab, right-click the speaker and ‘Set as default device’. Do you find the default device as greyed out or missing? If so, then the speaker might be the default device in your system. You can skip this step if it’s down earlier.
- Click on the Recording tab and right click the empty space and select ‘Show disabled devices’.
- Right click on the option ‘Stereo Mix’ and enable this device. Click again and select Properties.
- Select the Listen tab. Place a check mark in the box ‘Listen to this device’. Choose the headphone you want to playback through from the drop-down menu.
- Click on the Apply option. That’s all!
To verify, play the music. The sound should come from both the speakers and headphones. Also, the green bars by both devices should be visible. If the sound is not coming from both, check if the speaker is set as a default device and not a communication device.
![Both Both](/uploads/1/1/8/6/118683086/620751403.jpg)
Method 2:
Do a quick re-installation of the IDT audio driver. If there is a misconfiguration of the settings in the driver, this can rectify it.
- Select the Device Manager. For this, choose the Windows + R key. Type devmgmt.msc in the Run box, click Ok. Or type devmgmt.msc in the Windows search box.
- Open the ‘Sound, video & game controllers’ option.
- Right click on Realtek IDT High Definition Audio and choose the context menu.
- Click install.
- Select OK.
Once you restart your PC, Windows will re-assemble the driver from the files. The driver’s configuration will also be back to the default options.
Method 3:
Download and install a fresh copy of the IDT audio driver. This can be obtained from the support page of the device. Have the files in the audio driver gone corrupt? Then, doing this will fix it. Plus, it will rectify any misconfiguration same as the above step. Make sure to choose the operating system in the menu before downloading the audio driver.
Method 4:
Does the problem still persist even after doing the above steps?
Then shift from IDT audio driver to Windows native audio driver option.
How To Play Sound Through Both Speakers And Headphones Android Headphones
- Select the Device Manager.
- Open ‘Sound, video & game controllers’.
- Right-click and select the option ‘IDT High Definition – Audio Codec’.
- Choose ‘Update Driver Software’ from the list. Select ‘Browse my computer for driver software’ option.
- Select the option ‘Pick from a list of drivers on my computer’.
- Place a check on the box ‘Show compatible hardware’ if not checked.
- After this, choose ‘High Definition Audio’ and click ‘Next’.
- In the Update Driver Warning box, select ‘Yes’ and install the driver.
- Restart the laptop if prompted.
If not prompted, there is no need to restart the PC.
Method 5:
Check if you have muted the ‘line-in mic’, then the headphones also will be muted. Fix it by removing the mute from the line-in mic.
- Right click on the icon ‘speakers’.
- Choose the ‘Recording Devices’ option.
- Right, click on the ‘Microphone or Line In’ and click ‘enable’.
Wasn’t these steps simple! Go ahead and enjoy listening to music through speakers and headphones.