I recently bought a pair of Bose SoundLink around-ear wireless headphones II. After a number of hours troubleshooting what I call “monitor effect”. Basically I could hear my headset mic through the headphone speakers when no other sounds were playing on the computer. I would also hear the “dead air static” that you hear when you increase the gain on a microphone.
When I’m at my desk I have my headphones on much of the day. I use them for phone calls, Skype, Internet sound and some music. That monitor sound just wouldn’t do.
What we ended up finding, just by a slim recollection that the tech remembered was that the Windows 10 “Hey Cortana” feature may be causing this. Sure enough, I turned that feature off and the issue was gone.
This can be done by clicking the round Cortana icon next to the Windows icon in your bottom task bar.
Then start typing “Cortana Settings”.
Choose “Cortana & Search Settings”
Turn off “Hey Cortana”
Of course you loose the “Hey Cortana” feature, but I’ve never used it past the initial setup to get the weather. I use my “Okay Google” feature on my phone much more often and I’ll just stick with that.
To further the story, I ended up returning the Bose headphones. They just kept failing with the Bluetooth setup between switching apps on the computer, which I couldn’t have.
I then bought the Logitech G933 Artemis Spectrum Wireless headphones which work absolutely fantastic. This was based upon the recommendation of a “Guru” at Nebraska Furniture Mart. They don’t have the rich sound that the Bose did, but at about 1/2 the price I can deal with it. The complaints I have are:
- that they are not as comfortable as the Bose, but much more breathable
- the mic boom is hard to find with your hands w/o looking at it visually
- the setting that puts the headphones to sleep after x minutes seems to be stuck at 5 minutes
I turned back on “Hey Cortana” with the Logitech headphones, but see the same issue. So it’s not specific headphone related. Logitech even uses their own radio transmitter instead of Bluetooth.
I’m happy with the Logitech headphones, and I’m keeping them.I also use their Wave keyboard and M510 mouse. You can say I’m a fan.
Chris Tierney 