Why do my connected earbuds show up as two separate output devices?

Question

I own a pair of Soundcore Sprit 2s.

when I connect my earbuds to my laptop I see in my sound settings that my computer is treating them as two devices even though they are really one device (not like AirPods, two speakers connected by a cord/wire).

Here is a picture of my settings page:

One of the devices is called Headset, and the other is called Headphones.

This is really annoying because sometimes when I connect one application (let's say a youtube video) and another (zoom) will be sending their audio to different devices my computer will only play sound out of one device at a time.

so I have to pick between being able to hear my youtube video or my zoom meeting. not to mention the fact that these two devices somehow have very different audio qualities and one or the other often is not controlled by the normal volume controls

Is there any way to fix this so my earbuds are only 1 device?

Answer 1

In most cases (nay, in all cases) I've seen, with all combinations of OSs and headphones, a single set registers once for both functions: i) stereo sound (for music and audio); ii) (mono) voice for use as a headset.

In my own case (Windows 10 + Sony headphones), soon after the set connects I see "Connected: music, voice"

For some reason, your set seems to register these two as two separate devices. That's also the reason the audio quality is much lower when you select the other option. I'm not sure if there's much to be done. Perhaps different Bluetooth drivers could resolve this, but there are no guarantees.