AudioRelay 0.27.5

AudioRelay turns an Android phone into a microphone or a spare set of speakers for your Windows PC, over Wi-Fi or a USB cable.

It answers two everyday problems: a desktop tower with no microphone at all, and a PC whose sound you would rather hear through the headphones already paired to your phone.

The Windows app is free, and you can download AudioRelay 0.27.5 for Windows 10 and newer.

What AudioRelay Actually Does - in Plain Terms

You install a small server app on the PC, install the AudioRelay app on the phone, then pick your PC from the list the app shows. Streaming starts from there, and everything runs across your own local network.

Audio can travel in either direction, and that is really two separate features wearing one name. The phone can send its microphone to the PC, or it can receive whatever the PC is playing.

Using Your Phone as a PC Microphone

Most desktop towers ship without a microphone, and the ones built into cheap webcams are usually worse than the one in a five-year-old phone. AudioRelay closes that gap without you buying anything.

It is most useful for voice calls, voice chat and rough recording work where convenience matters more than a studio chain. If you are capturing something you intend to keep, run the input into Audacity and trim it there rather than recording straight to a call.

Streamers and screen recorders can point the same input at OBS Studio as an audio source.

For quick tutorial clips, ShareX and Camtasia Studio both record system and microphone audio alongside the screen.

If you want to layer or mix what comes in, KRISTAL Audio Engine is a light multitrack option that will not overwhelm a first-timer.

Sending PC Sound to Your Phone

The other direction is the one people discover by accident and then keep. Your phone becomes a wireless receiver, so whatever the PC is playing comes out of the headphones or earbuds already paired to it.

That covers watching something on a PC across the room, listening at night without waking anyone, and using a phone as a second listening point while the PC drives the main speakers. It works with whatever you already play through, whether that is VLC media player for video or foobar2000 for music.

The closest thing already on this site is AudioPlaybackConnector, which does the reverse - it lets a paired phone play its audio through the PC's speakers, over Bluetooth. If you want both directions and lower delay than Bluetooth gives you, AudioRelay is the one to try.

Wi-Fi or USB - Which One to Pick

Wi-Fi is the default and the one most people will use, because there is nothing to plug in and the phone finds the PC on its own. Delay depends on your network, and a congested 2.4 GHz band is the usual culprit when audio starts stuttering.

USB is the steadier option, and it works through USB tethering rather than any special driver. You connect the cable, switch tethering on in the phone's settings, wait for Windows to finish setting up the connection, then pick the new entry that appears in AudioRelay.

The developer puts mean latency at around 10 ms or less under good conditions, which is well inside what Bluetooth manages. Treat that as a best case rather than a promise, because your network decides the rest.

What It Costs, and What Premium Adds

The desktop app is free, with no trial, no watermark and no upgrade prompt waiting at the end. On the Android side the app is free too, but it carries ads and it sells a Premium purchase.

Premium unlocks connecting more than one device at a time, and a Custom buffer setting for people who want to hand-tune the delay. One phone streaming to one PC, which is what most readers want, works on the free tier.

The Android Side of It

The phone app needs Android 5.0 Lollipop or newer, so almost any phone still in service qualifies. It has passed a million installs on Google Play, which is a reasonable sign the project is not about to vanish.

If you are tuning phone audio generally, Bluetooth Codec Changer forces LDAC, aptX or LC3 instead of letting the phone settle on SBC. For recording on the phone itself rather than relaying to a PC, Dolby On handles noise reduction on the way in.

More of these live in the Android apps section.

Windows Audio Tools Worth Pairing With It

AudioRelay moves sound between devices and does nothing to the sound itself, so the tools below cover the parts it deliberately leaves alone.

• Equalizer APO shapes everything leaving your PC, which means it shapes what reaches the phone too.
• FxSound is the simpler option if a full parametric equalizer is more than you want to learn.
• SoundSwitch flips between playback and recording devices with a hotkey, which is handy once the phone is one of them.
• Audio Switcher does the same job from the tray if you prefer clicking to key combinations.
• Voly gives you quicker access to the Windows volume mixer when several apps are fighting over output.
• Dolby Access is the one to check if your headphones support Atmos and you want it set up properly.

The rest sit in the Audio Utilities category, and anything you record can be converted with our browser-based audio converter without installing a thing.

Who Should Look Elsewhere

Look at the phone in your hand. If it is an iPhone or an iPad, stop here - there is no iOS app, and the developer's documentation covers Android, Windows, Linux and macOS only.

Musicians monitoring a live instrument should also pass. Ten milliseconds is excellent for a network relay and still enough to put you off your timing, so a wired interface remains the right answer for tracking.

Anyone who only wants phone audio coming out of the PC speakers, and nothing in the other direction, will find AudioPlaybackConnector a smaller and simpler install.

Quick questions

Download AudioRelay 0.27.5 and see how it handles your network, or tell us how you got on if you have used it before.