Strange behaviour on Wireless headphones Win10 and 11

Jekub · September 2

Both my Sony YY2966's and my Sennheiser HD 4.50's do this so I'm surprised my search results for fixes haven't been lucrative.

When paired with windows my headphones show up as headphones and a headset, most of the time this is fine and they use the headphone input, but if I answer a Teams call it auto switches to the headset input, meaning I can't hear anything that was making noise on my computer before, and once the call ends it doesn't reliably switch back.

My workaround so far has been to manually disconnect the headset device from my laptop which I have to do every time I connect. (Disabling the device doesn't work, it still tries to use it and just means I can't even hear the Teams call)
And I could feasibly use the headset output all the time, but it sounds like complete rubbish.
My best guess as to why this happens is that there's a bandwidth limitation and the headphones couldn't accept a full quality audio stream whilst sending one, but I don't use the microphone on the headset anyway, so I really don't need it to do this.

After updating to Win11 it seems like it only shows up as 1 output with the headset showing as an input, but if the headset input is disabled, I get the same issue as before where after I accept a Teams call anything playing in my headphones goes silent and I can't hear the call.

How can I make it stop?

Thanks

Kilrah · September 2

You need to make sure no app is set to use the mic on the headset, even better disable it in the input audio devices.

Pawer8 · September 3

Seems to me like it's an issue with teams really. Does it happen on the web version of teams too?

Jekub · September 3

14 hours ago, Kilrah said:

You need to make sure no app is set to use the mic on the headset, even better disable it in the input audio devices.

Unfortunately this doesn't work. This sounds made up but with the headset input disabled in Windows I get no sound output from Teams at all. Teams, nor anything else is set to use the headset input device either.

With the input enabled, but manually disconnected, I can answer calls and hear them.