Windows – Switch between wireless headset and speaker on Windows 10

This is really strange world. Recently new skype 2.1 beta came out and I rushed to install it and see how it works. Now my headphones works beautifully although I'm not sure why :) Nothing except skype has changed but my stereo sound magically got fixed too.

My setup is: PulseAudio 0.9.15, bluez 4.41, Skype 2.1 beta (from official site for Ubuntu 8.10 32bit) and blueman 1.10. Skype works entirely through PulseAudio, in fact it can't work any other way.

After pairing my headphones I have one new device in PulseAudio. In configuration tab for this device I can choose the profile, either mono (and then I can use it as audio sink or source) or stereo (only sink is visible). In mono mode it works with skype, in stereo it sounds good. And I don't have to restart anything :) Although there's a twist, stereo sink is much much more quiet than mono sink, when I disconnect from skype and change my headphones to stereo at first I thought my sound got missing but it just was too quiet to hear anything.

If you're going to use blueman with pulseaudion 0.9.15 like I do, make sure you have PulseAudio plugin for it turned off (Bluetooth applet right-click -> about -> Plugins). If it is turned on as some sites on the internet suggests, it creates additional device in PulseAudio so you have two of them instead of just one and those devices could not work together anyway.

Also make sure you have pulseaudio-module-bluetooth installed, in 0.9.14 it was statically linked into PulseAudio but in 0.9.15 it is additional package.

Another trick is that Skype is not listed in Recoding tab in PulseAudio Volume control, but if you look in right down corner there's a combobox, select 'Streams' there and voilà, Skype is there and you can move that stream to your bluetooth headset.

So it works, I'm happy :) Have to move everything to Linux now :)

These are the steps that helped me in a similar situation:

1. Remove all device drivers that you already tried installing to fix this issue
2. Reboot
3. Install the Broadcom Driver 6.2.1.500
4. Pair the headset device with the computer
5. In the device manager, check whether there is a single "Bluetooth Periphal Device" listed with missing driver, if so, continue with the next steps
6. Right click on the device, select "Update Driver Software...", then "Browse my computer [...]", followed by "Let me pick from a list [...]"
7. In the list of hardware types, choose "Ports (COM & LPT)" (!)
8. In the following window, select manufacturer "Microsoft" and model "Standard Serial over Bluetooth link", then click "Next"
9. A driver update warning will probably pop up, click "Yes"

This is in short the list of steps described by Andy Dendifer in the Windows Forum. Look there for a much more detailed explanation, it's a humorful read.