If you have no way of playing sound from your computer here’s how to use an Android smartphone or tablet as PC speakers. Also see: Best smartphones 2015 and Best Android phones 2015. Whether you want to make use of an old device or your existing one has amazing speakers, you can play audio from your PC or laptop through your Android smartphone or tablet. Whether its from Spotify, iTunes, Windows Media Player somewhere else. It’s fairly easy to set up, doesn’t require any cables and you don’t even need the latest version of Android for it to work. There are a few apps which bring this functionality including Airfoil Speakers and WiFi Speaker but we’re going to focus on SoundWire. The app is free but you can pay £2.50 for the full version if you want. “The free version of the application identifies itself by voice every 45 minutes and displays ads. There is a 10 minute compression trial in the free version. The full version enables unlimited Opus audio compression, can handle multiple clients (up to 10 connections), and has no ads or voice identification. It also has a special Pro Mode to set and display buffer latency precisely in milliseconds,” explains GeorgieLabs.
How to use Android phone or tablet as PC speakers
Step One Download and install SoundWire on your PC (Windows, Linux or Raspberry Pi) from here and Android device from here (full version is here).
Step Two Run both the app and the desktop server and they should automatically connect. For Wi-Fi, the two need to be on the same network. Step Three Within the SoundWire Server on you PC and select the audio source. For Windows 7/8 the ‘default multimedia device’ should be fine while XP users should select ‘stereo mix’, ‘wave out mix’ or ‘what u hear’. Linux users should follow the instructions in the README file.
Step Four Start playing the music or audio you want to hear from your Android device’s speakers. Your computer can be muted and you can adjust the volume level with the master control within the SoundWire Server. Tech Advisor’s Reviews Editor, Chris has been reviewing all kinds of tech for over 10 years and specialises in audio. He also covers a range of topics including home entertainment, phones, laptops, tablets and more.
