Earlier this year I wrote about how I’d figured out that it was easier to pull photos from my iPad into Dropbox than to push them from the iPad into Dropbox. I’ve found a similar non-reversible path, except this time a little bit further outside the virtual domain.

I’ve been wanting to play music from my Windows computer on an external speaker, particularly for the purpose of playing along on bass. Bluetooth doesn’t seem to work with the device I’ve got and connecting with a mini jack lead has a lot of background noise, whether going directly from the computer or using the headphone out on my audio interface. It’s not entirely surprising – passive headphones aren’t going to boost the signal any more so probably need a hotter feed – but it is annoying.

This afternoon I stumbled on a better solution – listening to the music and playing bass via the audio interface and into headphones. I can mix the balance of the two sounds easily and I don’t get the noise. I’ve got used to rehearsing with headphones over the last few weeks with the band for Legally Blonde and it doesn’t matter if I keep looping round a small section (or getting things wrong) as all that anyone else can hear is the unamplified sound of the bass.

I’d still like to get an ‘over the air’ solution figured out for listening to music run from the computer but, for practise, this is going to be a great solution.