To be clear I know what multipoint is and it’s not what I am looking for. I don’t want to toggle between two audio sources. I want to combine several various audio sources into one set of headphones. I searched online for this and a lot of people were asking why someone would want to do this. It’s so I can do things like play Elden Ring on my Steam Deck and listen to a podcast on my phone. Zoomer stuff.
One way I’m pretty sure I can do this is with Bluetooth audio receivers, a X in 1 out audio mixer, a USB hub and power source, and a Bluetooth audio transmitter.
I am not sure if using the same cheap audio receivers would cause issues or what kind of latency that would produce. Given how many people use Bluetooth headphones these days and the existence of Bluetooth DACs I thought something would exist (even if it was limited to a niche Tindie product). Ideally something that makes the pairing process easier than using screenless audio receivers and is a bit more portable.
I would appreciate any tips or suggestions to simplify this setup.
Do your headphones have a 3.5mm jack? If so, you could use a bt receiver on that, make sure the receiver has multipoint.
A more difficult, but more likely to work properly, option is to get an audio interface with two inputs. Input your deck and phone into it and put a bt transmitter on the output or headphone jack. Keep in mind line-ins are usually in summed mono to you won’t get directional sound.
But just to make sure I covered the obvious: could you not just play the podcast through your Deck while playing? I’m not familiar with SteamOS but Steam BPM has this option.
I don’t think either of those is simplifying the setup much. It sounds like it would just be eliminating one of the receivers or transmitters.
The Steam Deck and phone combination was just for an example. I would be setting this up with probably five devices. SteamOS is more or less another Linux distro so I could do something like play in desktop mode and use something like gPodder to play podcasts or input the audio files into Steam or if I wanted to watch a video use VLC’s always in front option for something kind of like picture in picture mode but it’s a lot of individual software solutions for something that could be done a bit more smooth with some kind of hardware mixer.