My phone only lets me select one wireless earbud to play audio through

[Android Central Question]

I got a pair of wireless earbuds. The brand's not important, but what is important is that they act like two seperate media devices. When I first connected them up, my phone played through both just fine. I disconnected them for reasons, and about an hour later reconnected them. Now my phone refuses to play through both. On my slide down bar, there is a button called audio path, and it only lets me select one of the devices. Selecting the other turns off the first. How do I get my expensive *** phone to work properly?!

 

[chanchan05]

Actually the brand is kind of important. Most wireless earbuds only connects to one main earbud and the earbuds connect to each other. You don't connect the phone to both earbuds. This is the first time I've heard of an wireless earbuds where you have to connect to both. So it's more likely you were mistaken in how to use the buds.
OR if the buds really were supposed to work that way (which means they can't be used for any device not using bluetooth 5.0 since that's the only one that can do multiple audio streams through BT simultaneously), then the brand of the buds would be important so we can check if they're supposed to really work that way.

 

[hallux]

We actually had a similar discussion a couple months ago, found it on the last page of my "participated" topics. https://forums.androidcentral.com/google-pixel-2-pixel-2-xl/942090-pairing-2-earbuds.html

It seems some buds can fall out of sync and may require re-pairing as a pair of buds, knowing the brand of the buds would ABSOLUTELY be crucial in order to see if we can help locate the manual as I tried to do in the linked thread.

If you need additional help or have more questions or details to share, please join the site so you can reply in this thread. See this link for instructions on how to join Android Central.

 

[Marcus Longo]

They're JP-V40041W True Wireless Earphones User Manual V40041-FIVE QSG Elite Electronics (D.G.) Co.Ltd.

Here's a link to the manual:
https://fccid.io/2AHN5JP-V40041W/User-Manual/User-manual-4090813

 

[chanchan05]

Okay, checked the manual. Based on its very limited documentation, It seems that you only need to connect one bud, and the other acts as the slave. The phone streams to one bud, and the bud syncs with each other, just like every other truly wireless earbud out there (Airpods, Galaxy Buds, etc). If one bud isn't working you just reconnect it to the master bud. You can however choose which bud acts as master, so that's cool.

 

[Marcus Longo]

Okay, but how? I've connected one up, but the other refuses to sync. How do I connect it to the master bud?

 

[chanchan05]

Okay, but how? I've connected one up, but the other refuses to sync. How do I connect it to the master bud?

The manual says there that if one bud is not working, just press the button on it again. Now I've encountered buds that do this differently. One type needs to have both buds in pairing mode and let them pair to each other before you connect to the master bud. The other type you have to connect the master bud to the phone before you try to connect the other. You'll have to do trial and error on this.

 

[Henry Huang3]

Marcus, not sure if you have fixed this or not. If not, you just need to unpair the two buds, and then set both to pairing mode. You phone will just discover one device to pair, which will lead to connecting to both buds.