I’ve bought my fourth pair of headphones today. Not because my old ones broke, but because I was fed up switching back and forth between my FireTV and my smartphone.
And much like the missing absolute volume limit missing in any parental control panel, it’s not a technical issue. It’s simply that nobody is including it in their product even if it seems so very, very obvious.
Now, Bluetooth is a strange protocol with many, many features. Among them is Multipoint audio which is a feature that is meant to solve this exact issue. But like any protocol change it needs to be supported by the devices and as usual, it’s a bit overly complicated.
Multipoint audio lets you connect to two output devices simultaneously and you’ll only hear the dominant one at any gives time.
Thing is, unless you’re at home with a PC and a TV between you want to switch back and forth you’ll rarely have both devices in range and besides… Since the headphones now have to connect to both devices simultaneously, you’re limited by the chipset in use by the headphones. Right now that usually means two devices.
I don’t know about you, but I’ve got a smartphone, a tablet, a PC, a TV, a Steamdeck and about a dozen other devices which I don’t use quite as frequently.
Connecting to two isn’t going to solve anything for me at least.
Besides, I don’t need my headphones to connect to all four. In case of my TV it’s even very much undesirable, because that will turn on the TV.
But, having multiple headphones works beautifully, so why can’t I get have one set of headphones which pretends to be multiple devices? Implementation would be very simple, it would just have to announce a different ID, depending on the profile chosen.
You would pair each outputting device with one profile, possibly name the profiles then switch back and forth via button or any other method available on the headphones (for example voice input, gestures or even a scan method cycling through all profiles, seeing which one gets a connecting within a second or two).
Since today all devices search for known Bluetooth devices continuously, choosing the correct profile would be all it takes to initiate the connection.
If anybody working at Sony (or another headphone manufacturer, but I’ve been a Sony fanboy ever since I got My First Sony) is reading is: You’d make s paying customer very very happy ( /me is waving his wallet ) 😉