Bluetooth query

[Giggler]

I’ve got a wireless sound bar connected to my telly that I can send content to, for example from my phone.

However, I can’t send the signal from the sound bar to my wireless headphones. If I want to watch TV through the headphones, it would have to be with the TV’s volume.

Has anyone got any experience of Bluetooth transmitters? Would they work in the way I’m hoping, to let me listen to the full-blooded sound bar sound through my headphones?

[ad hoc]

Can't you just send the phone signal straight to your headphones?

[Giggler]

But I want to watch the telly.

[Snake Plissken]

Sounds like you are getting confused with what is controlling what. Your telly is the transmitter, not the soundbar.

[Giggler]

But the sound’s got more beef when it comes through the soundbar. When the soundbar’s turned off the sound is much weedier.

[Snake Plissken]

But that's a function of the hardware in the soundbar, is it not?

[Ginger Yellow]

But the sound’s got more beef when it comes through the soundbar. When the soundbar’s turned off the sound is much weedier.

If you're listening via wireless headphones, the soundbar won't make any difference. The limiting factor will be the Bluetooth connection, and then the headphones themselves, and then maybe the telly. But really it's the Bluetooth. It's very low bandwidth.

But also, as Snake says, it's entirely possible the soundbar doesn't even have a Bluetooth transmitter, only a receiver.

[Sam]

What GY and Snake said. But my reading of Snake's hardware comment was that the speakers you listen through (whether that's the soundbar, headphones, TV speakers or whatever) are only going to kick out the sound that they are physically capable of kicking out. I've got a really meaty set of surround sound speakers with a nice subwoofer that sound fantastic (and, if I fancy being a total arsehole to our neighbours on the floors above and below, are extremely loud), but if I were to plug my headphones into the output socket at the back of the subwoofer and listen through those, it would sound as if I was listening through headphones. Because I would be. Pumping the sound through a £5,000 hifi amp and plugging in a pair of earphones you took off the last long-haul flight you were on isn't going to make those earphones sound like they cost £5,000.

[Ginger Yellow]

That's definitely true, but conceivably with wired headphones plugged into an amp/receiver you'd get the benefit of some audio processing in the amp. But Bluetooth isn't even going to get that because the wireless connection will degrade the signal and won't carry any of the channel info (well, other than stereo).

[Giggler]

Cheers everyone. I'm a daft bugger.