Bluetooth/wireless headset or earbuds with hard-mute button?

December 25, 2021 3:56 PM

Is there a Bluetooth headset with a physical mute button that cuts off the audio from the source rather than sending a software command to the connected device?

My current WFH headset is a USB dongle with a headphone port into which any standard pair of headphones can be jacked -- I currently use an old pair of iPhone headphones. The dongle has a mute button that cuts of the mic input from the dongle itself -- it doesn't send a mute command to Windows or meeting software, it just kills the audio coming down the line from the dongle. The effect of this is that I can mute myself without Teams or Zoom showing me as muted and without Windows thinking my input is muted -- by extension, this means that my mute is not dependent on being on an active call, and I can remain muted regardless of what any software is doing.

I'd really like to transition to a wireless solution so I can move further away from my desk, but every Bluetooth headset / headphones with microphone I can find don't have mute buttons that actually silence the audio from the microphone, they just send a mute command that is actioned by Windows or Teams/Zoom. This doesn't suit me because my employers VOIP dialer automatically un-mutes the microphone at the start of every call and I want the option to remain silent even when some piece of software decides to start listening.

Any recommendations of a Bluetooth or other wireless solution would be appreciated. To be clear: I want a mute button that can move around the house with me and silence audio from me without the computer I'm using realizing that I'm muted. I want to send silence, not send a software command.

posted by chudmonkey to Computers & Internet (6 answers total)

My SteelSeries Arctic 7 wireless headset has a physical mute button like this; the mute button just cuts the audio rather than sending a command to Windows or whatever, and I can toggle the system mute setting independently of the hardware mute button. It isn't bluetooth, so you will at least have a dongle to deal with.
posted by Aleyn at 4:37 PM on December 25, 2021 [1 favorite]

Was gonna recommend my SteelSeries Arctis 9 as it has this (as does the 7 too, I just found out!) but can also connect via Bluetooth.

Weight and battery life and sound are all great, but it's kind of persnickety in "pairing with windows via usb dongle" department, which is annoying. Can always get it to work but often requires reconnecting the dongle/headphones or restarting Windows. Using the dongle with ps5 works great. Bluetooth with my phone works great. Turning on and syncing is a little slow in all cases.

This is all sort of ancillary information but I wanted to try and get it out there in case you picked a pair up. I'm generally happy with mine but I wish I'd more fully known what to expect.
posted by rhooke at 5:00 PM on December 25, 2021

I bought a bunch of Poly Voyager 4200 series for my dept. It's Teams and Zoom certified (whatever that means) and has a mute button, works via dongle, Bluetooth or via USB wired connection and has about 12 hours talk time. I will say that you have to change any settings in an app, and since I couldn't install the app on my work computer I had to put it on my phone. But that also means I can use the headset with my phone too via Bluetooth. I haven't had to change any settings since I got it.
It has good range, sound isolation and noise suppression so you might not hear the doorbell but then again, neither will anyone else. I can go about 30-45 feet with walls in the way using the dongle. I think there's a setting that will allow more distance (wifi connect?) but that had weird sound distortion so I turned it off. I don't really need to go outside or whatnot while on calls.
posted by fiercekitten at 5:38 PM on December 25, 2021

Whoops, also coming in with a SteelSeries Arctis rec (Pro here, which is massive overkill for me 95% of the time). Works great on Mac, super convenient to have it switch over to speakers when the headset is off/disconnected without changing devices in the OS.
posted by supercres at 8:47 PM on December 25, 2021

This audio passthrough should work the same. While it's designed for the dual-shock, it should work on your USB audio dongle.

To make this wireless, you need a Bluetooth transmitted on the PC end (it may already have one), then a Bluetooth receiver that takes regular earphones. Add the audio passthrough and you have remote mute.
posted by kschang at 10:24 PM on December 25, 2021 [1 favorite]

Echoing the Steelseries Arctis 7 or 9--couldn't have gotten through the WFH transition without that chunky physical mute button. The USB receiver performance and audio quality has been completely reliable.
posted by michaelh at 10:49 PM on December 25, 2021