Bluetooth Headphones and Chrome

[Xibor]

I sometimes use a Bluetooth earpiece when playing and it works fine. It lets me hear sounds/events while moving around so I know if something happened. Plus I like not having a cord to worry about.

To save power on the earpiece I turn it off if I'm going to be away for a while. But when I reconnect I don't get any sound until I refresh the game. Not really a big deal except when I'm on my mobile connection and it takes a lot of data to reload the game.

Is this a Chrome issue specifically, something the way Settlers plays sounds, or something else? Any input is appreciated.

[NicciNZ]

have you tried turning sound off in game and back on rather than refreshing?

[SnowBlizz]

In Windows 10 it can be finicky to switch audio sources I've noticed. It tries to be smart about it.

Basically, when you shut of the Bluetooth it discounts this audiodevice and switches to something else which is available (or at least viewed as active).

Turning it on again however does not change the setting of the game who has now picked another source and is quite happy using that, whether you hear anything or not.

You shouldn't need to refresh game, you can change audio output device from the sound/mixer icon. However, I noticed that some things doesn't do so well swithcing things around, and might not respect your changes, but it's worth a try.

I have had these issues with putting sound through HDMI to my tv while connecting/disconencitng headphones in the fornt panel of the coputer. My worst experience was a game that would plum crash if you un/hooked the audio device while it was in a certian state, while loading up IIRC.

So if on Win10 check what audio output is the active and default one. With luck you can just switch it and get sound to the right output again.

[BB_Saqui]

But when I reconnect I don't get any sound until I refresh the game. Not really a big deal except when I'm on my mobile connection and it takes a lot of data to reload the game.

When this happens, and you're unable to hear the game sounds anymore, are you able to still hear other sounds from other applications and/or Windows itself?

[Xibor]

Thanks for the inputs.
I have tried turning the game sound off and back on, but it doesn't help.
I do still have system sounds through the reconnected headphones but not game sounds.
I just tried switching to speakers then back to the headphone but that didn't work.

I did notice that if I turn off the headphones and then turn them back on soon, all is ok. But if I leave them off for approx. 5 minutes then turning them back on causes the problem and I have to refresh.

If I didn't have system sounds I would suspect the headphones, but since I still do it's something Chrome/Settlers it appears.

***
Well, now it's just annoying. I had the headphone off for a good 30 minutes. Turned it back on, connected through the Bluetooth connections on the laptop, and poof - the sound is back in the game. I had just returned from an adventure map... that sometimes kind of acts like a refresh but isn't a complete one.

If there are any additional ideas I'd appreciate them but for now let me try to get a pattern that is consistent before I can offer anything further. Cheers.
***
Exact same sequence as above, had to refresh to get sound back. Going to an adventure island didn't do it.
*groan*
The worst nightmare for debugging - inconsistent results
***
I noticed that as soon as I disconnect the earpiece that Chrome vanishes from the volume mixer. I can't hear game sounds through the regular speakers either. Refreshing the game (or killing/restarting Chrome of course) gets the Chrome application back into the volume mixer and I can hear the sounds again (both earpiece and speakers).
So it's something about Chrome being dropped from the volume mixer that is doing it.

The 'Allow applications to take exclusive control of this device" option is ticked. To experiment I unchecked it. This made Chrome disappear from the mixer again and I had to tick the option again and refresh the game. Clearly something with Chrome and Windows and the volume mixer.

BUT maybe I found a work-around...

Before I turned off the earpiece I changed the sound output to the system speakers. Then turned off the earpiece. This let Chrome stay in the mixer. When I reconnected the earpiece I could change the sound output (still on speakers) back to the earpiece and all is well. Since it seems inconsistent when the system decides to drop Chrome out of the mixer only time will tell if this will work going forward - but I can see a little (however annoying) sense that while using a device and then the device "vanishes" that the system thinks the application has no sound output anymore instead of automatically switching to another available device.

I hope all this helps anyone who might run into the same problem.

[SnowBlizz]

It's a general problem in Windows 10 with the audio devices near as I can tell. Because as I tried explaining above I have similar problems with headphones and HDMI out.
Something with just having the device drop off the face of the earth doens't sit well with Windows and interacting with software.

It should keep working if you manually change the device becasue then the game knows to shift it's output appropriately and there's no "sound into black hole issue".

[Xibor]

yup - confirmed now. Method is:
Change to speakers.
Disconnect Bluetooth.
(when ready again).
Connect Bluetooth
Change to headphones

Seems to work every time. Thanks everyone for your input.

[BB_Saqui]

Glad to hear it all worked out in the end - yay for troubleshooting!