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.
Best Answer
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!