Blue Tooth Headsets + computers?

Bendery It Like Beckham

Long story short, my little brother completely annihilated my stereo headphones/microphone combo and now i need a new Mic. I have a blue tooth headset and bluetooth capabilities on my computer, so I decided to just pair the things up and have a new microphone. Much to my dismay I can't seem to get it to work how I want.

I want the bluetooth headset to pick up only Ventrilo, not diablo 2 and my music. Is there any way to designate what sound goes where? The only solution I have come up with is starting my music + whatever other program i want to run, then connecting my headset, but that's a little evasive. My googlefu is terrible at this point in time, so I ask you, the fine people of Moe's Tech Tavern, got any ideas?

Mr_Rose

I think you've probably got it set up as an audio sink rather than as a proper headset (different Bt connection profiles). This should be relatively easy to sort out as long as you have a decent Bt stack (i.e. not the default microsoft one) - you just need to find out whether you can change the profile on the fly or whether you are going to have to re-pair them.

ecco the dolphin

1.) Plug in your headset.

2.) Go to Control Panel -> Sound and Audio Devices -> Audio. Make sure that your sound card is selected under "Sound Playback", e.g. "Realtek AC97 Audio". There's a chance that your Bluetooth software will have tried to be clever, and set the default playback device to the Bluetooth headset. There might be an option in your Bluetooth stack to disable this behaviour. If this works, you might want to check later.

Anyway, since what you want is for your programmes to come out your sound card instead of your Bluetooth headset, you'll need to make sure that your sound card is selected here.

3.) Now, Vent is going to be the exception to the rule. In Vent, look for something in the Setup about "Output Device". Instead of using "Default wave mapper", explicitly choose, say, "Bluetooth Device" (your drivers may give a different name, but changes are it'll say "Bluetooth something-or-rather"). This should tell Vent to send all its sound output to the Bluetooth headset.

Dratatoo

Wow, this topic pops up - after I bought a headset and had some troubles with it. I got the Platronics 590e Pulsar.

Not related:

Something I noticed, you can't use the BT Stereo output feature/profile and the microphone at the same time. You can attempt to use it (by selecting the devices as output / input), but most likely the stereo output will be muted. I don't know if this applies to other headsets. But most microphones transmit the voice mono anyways, so this isn't a problem for me. I had to select the mono sound output profile in TS / Skype etc while using the mic.

Related :P :

You can also select (at least in Vista > Control panel > Sound) the BT sound devices and select the option that applications can gain control over it. This most likely means that other applications won't be able to direct their sound output to the headset, while app XY is still active. Secondly you can select the output device in most voice communication apps anyway.

Edit: I still think BT is a pain in the ass on Windows. MS BT stack sucks ass, so you most likely you have to install the Broadcom(?) stack to get audio devices to work properly. Depending on your BT HW and the periphery you want to connect the results vary. Funny because BT is supposed the "universal" thing for wireless communication/devices. I don't wonder why most companies decided to use their own proprietary wireless solutions instead of jumping aboard the BT train. (I am looking at you Logitech)