There are times when you may need your computer to allow you to manage the audio. For example, if you are working and need to listen to videos but your son or your partner or your mother wants to listen to music on the computer speakers. In that case, you can play audio from two different sources at the same time in Windows 10 and we are going to explain how you can do it if you need it.
To be able to play audio from two different sources at the same time in Windows 10 you can do it easily without having to install anything else on your computer. Through the headphones you can listen to what happens in the browser, for example, and with the computer or laptop speakers you can listen to Spotify, for example. What can it do for us? Imagine that your child wants to listen to music while you are working with your headphones. Or imagine that one of your children or siblings is giving an English class through the laptop but while you want to have the news on to listen to some information. Or the radio through the computer if you want to listen to an important football game.
Play audio from two sources
You won’t need two computers to play audio from two sources, or connect a mobile phone or anything like that. Just go to the Windows 10 Sound settings to adjust the sound and source of each of the programs.
To do so, follow a few steps on your Windows 10 computer:
- Open the start menu on the Windows computer
- Go to settings or look for it in the magnifying glass icon to access the settings
- Access the Settings section
- Touch on the first section that we will find in the menu: System
- Once here, go to the Sound section to configure the two channels
Once inside this section, you can configure it. Go to the option: Device and volume preferences of the application. Another new window will open from where you will have control of all the applications and will allow you to manage them individually.
If you scroll down you will see that all the open applications that you have on your computer about music appear:
- System sounds
- Google Chrome
- Spotify
- Etc
Next to each of the applications you will see that there is a drop-down menu for input and output. In each one of them you can click to choose where you want it to sound. That is, you choose what you want to sound through each of the sources. What application for the speakers, what program or application for the headphones. If you don’t have anything connected, you will see the speakers. If there are more headphones or speakers, you can choose between all the options to be heard.
Another advantage is that you can choose the exact volume of each application if you want something that is very loud and that sounds above the other. It will be enough to move the slider as you see in the image from 0 to 100 depending on how much volume you want in each of them. It’s easy and you can change it as many times as you need in case you want to upload or download the music compared to Chrome, for example.
Volume mixer
Once you’ve set where you want to hear everything through, you can easily adjust the volume without having to access the Windows control panel and from there to Sound, settings, etc. These steps will take much longer than if you simply opened the volume mixer on your computer.
The Windows volume mixer does not allow you to choose through which different source you listen to each application, but it does allow you to adjust the sound or volume of each of them with a couple of clicks. You can open it from the taskbar:
- Go to the taskbar of your computer
- Go to the lower right corner
- Look for the speaker volume icon
- Right click on the icon
- Open the option “Volume Mixer”
- Adjust the volume of each application you have
Also following the first four steps you will access the sound control if you want to save yourself opening Start and Settings in the previous steps.
Play with two headphones at the same time
This has nothing to do with the above but is just the opposite: here instead of having two audio sources that you want to sound through two specific devices we have a single audio source (which would be the computer in question) that we want it to sound through two different headphones. Imagine, for example, that you are in the university or high school library doing a job with a colleague and you need to listen to a video to document yourself about him. In that case you cannot put the speaker or the sound of the laptop since you are in a place where silence is presupposed. But you can connect two headphones to the same computer. Or, for example, if you are traveling with your partner and you want to see a movie on the train or on the plane. There is usually only oneHeadphone port on laptops but it can be multiplied with some cheap gadgets that we can find on Amazon.
There are jack port multipliers that allow us to connect up to three or four different headphones if you need them. In the previous case, for example, that you want several people to be on the same computer. Or if you have several children who must watch an online class at the same time or a video but you are working and need silence. In that case we simply resort to these jack multipliers that hardly cost six or seven euros and that we can find in many models.
The one from Amazon Basics is one of the most complete: for less than 10 euros it allows us five headphones and is available in all the colors you want. In pink, in blue, in red … It’s cheap and it’s effective. You don’t necessarily need all the ports at once. Just use one or two or whatever you need.
Another more basic option is a multiplier for two headphones. Small, compact and easily transportable if you normally want to share with one person.
