How to stream audio from PC to Android device

By Kevin ArrowsUpdated on April 28, 2023

Kevin is a certified Network Engineer

If you’ve ever been in a situation where you wanted to stream PC audio to your Android device, this guide is for you. Maybe you want to watch a movie on your computer’s screen while using your headphones plugged into your Android phone, or have a local music playlist on your computer streaming to your phone around the house. It’s pretty much all possible after following this guide.

Requirements:

Soundwire app for Android

Soundwire desktop server for Windows PC

The first step is to install the Soundwire app on your Android device, and then install the desktop server on your Windows PC. Launch both of them together, and enable WiFi on your Android device.

On the desktop server, you’ll see “Server Address”, which is your PC’s local IPv4 address. In the Android app, you’ll need to enter that same address and press the coils to connect.

You’ll also see on the desktop server “Input Select”. It is best to leave it on “Default multimedia device”, as this will stream whatever is playing through your computer’s primary “speakers” to your device.

You can also adjust the sound effects through your PC’s sound drivers, such as in Realtek HD Audio Manager.

Now start playing some audio on your PC, and you’ll see green bars in the audio output level on the desktop server, and hopefully sound from your PC being played through your Android device.

Of course, this will use your local WiFi for streaming. You could also theoretically use your device’s data connection, but I recommend against it if you don’t have an unlimited data plan.

If you’re striving to be as data-conscious as possible, you can connect your Android device to your PC via USB and enable USB tethering in the Hotspot and Tethering settings. You must keep the WiFi turned on, but this will stream the audio over the USB connection instead of the WiFi.

If you’re watching a movie and the sound is a bit out of sync, try lowering the audio buffer latency in the Soundwire app on your Android device. Supposedly a lower buffer latency worsens the audio quality, but I hardly noticed a difference dropping it from the default 128k to 32k playing through my phone’s speakers.

By Kevin ArrowsUpdated on April 28, 2023

Kevin is a certified Network Engineer

Comments

David Gualdron May 2, 2019

Awesome. It sorks. Thanks

m0lDaViA Jul 30, 2019

really bad. lags af

Shane Warren Author Jul 31, 2019

Make sure that the internet connection between them is fast or use a USB cable to connect the PC and Mobile then select USB Tethering. After that, Turn on Wifi and repeat the same process and it will stream it better

Halfey Halphstein Sep 10, 2019

Windows is still not ready for wifi audio. Maybe it’s a feature reserved for Windows 20 or Fall 2040 Creators Update.

Seby Feb 16, 2020

I only have headset and can’t connect it to the laptop so i browsed and found this and it worked perfectly fine, thanks for the advice!

Fabio Penotti Apr 27, 2020

Simply awesome. Worked very nicely, right away, on my Windows 10 PC and Samsung Galaxy Android smartphone. Kudos to the developer. Thank you very much indeed.

Testman Jun 12, 2020

Perfect, work!!! 2020

Kryptonian Sep 14, 2020

I see comment here dated from “a year ago” but the article has a date on top showing February 2020. Was this article updated? Anyway, this really worked for me, thank you so very much. Windows 10 Pro and Samsung Galaxy Note 9 phone. I noticed upon launching the Soundwire app on the phone that it suggests I ensure audio is set at 41hKz because the default is 48kHz. But I don’t know where to do this. I have my wired headphones jacked into my cell phone and I can confirm that through my headphones I can launch YouTube on my desktop laptop, play a video, keep the volume completely turned down on the laptop (Windows 10) while still hearing the audio casted through my cell phone’s wired headphones (I’m using the typical AKG wired headset which is awesome). Additionally, I can also launch the same video on my mobile YouTube app and still hear everything just fine as well. I noticed that the song I played from the mobile YouTube app had way better bass and the same song being streamed from the laptop had zero bass. Is there a way for me to address this?Thanks so much!

Muhammad Zubyan Author Sep 14, 2020

Yes, This article was updated. Glad to know that it helped you. The mobile speakers are configured that way through android so they have more bass than your laptop so for addressing this issue you have to configure your laptop’s speakers through a media player or an equalizer, If you don’t know what that is please let me know which software media player you are using on your laptop so I can help you accordingly. Your welcome!

You rock! Thank you so much! As for the laptop, I was simply using my Chrome browser to play YouTube songs through the browser rather than an independent media player. When I plug my headphones directly into the laptop’s 3.5mm jack, the same song through the YouTube player through Chrome sounds amazing – equal to how the same song sounds in my mobile YouTube player on Android. It’s only when I cast the stream through Soundwire from the laptop does the song seem to lose bass afterwards. In summary, jacking directly into the laptop – the song sounds amazing. Jacking directly into the cell phone and playing from mobile YouTube….the song sounds amazing. Jacking into my cell phone but hearing the same song being casted from the laptop over the Wi-Fi connection – then the bass drops.I apologize if I was not more descriptive on this earlier.When I installed the Soundwire application on my Windows 10 and launched it, it gave me a tip about switching my media control from 48kHz to 41kHz. I initially thought that this was done through the Soundwire app but I quickly realized this was not the case. I can confirm from having to look at the Soundwire app that indeed the stream is coming through at 48kHz. Since Soundwire immediately had suggested to drop it down to 41kHz, I’m curious if that is all I need to accomplish in order to hear a difference.Thanks for your greatness, bud.

Okay, I just dropped it to 41kHz in the sound properties of the speaker….I will test it out shortly.

Cool…I just tested it and though it sounds a bit different. I’m really, really enjoying this and appreciating this. Definitely a must-buy in the Android Store, for sure. Thank you!!

Trakzer Aug 12, 2023

man… my pc was able to not only uninstall the speaker jack driver as the hdmi audio driver on it’s own, and in the same week… this is my last hope for having audio on it

Muhammad Zubyan Author Aug 12, 2023

What do you mean? Can you please explain the whole situation in detail. I might be able to help you because it’s possible to simply install the drivers again.

hah, i wish it were that easy man, i resetted it a dozen times, installed all the audio drivers i could find, but at least this app worked for me, so there’s that.

Requirements:

Comments

× Cancel reply