Audio playback through headphones and speakers

Anonymous
2009-10-25T00:30:33+00:00

Headphones or speakers in windows 7, Can't have both?

Looked over the other questions, nothing seemed close.

My machine was dual boot, XP and Vista ultimate, now XP and Windows 7. In both XP and Vista I could have the speakers and the headphones plugged in together, both playerd noise, and I could use one or the other by plugging them into the front and back audio jacks.

This enables me to play games during day with speakers, and then at night with head phones, and no reaching round under my desk to remove cables.

Now I am using windows 7 and amongst the many other problems I have with it, I can't play with speakers or headphone until I have gone through a silly lot of clicking to disable one or choose the other as default. Why has this been changed in windows 7 after Vista, it seems an utterly pointless logic. I can turn my speakers off with the power button and get the headphones working. Now I am either or. So my brand new IR head phones are wasted. Please someone tell me there is a work around?

It's little meddling silliness like this that make me want to remain in XP.

Much thanks in anticipation someone has figured a work around.

Windows for home | Previous Windows versions | Music, photos, and video

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Anonymous
2010-05-18T17:05:27+00:00

I've got both my Jabra GN9350 and my laptop speakers playing audio at the same time. :)

Here's the trick (and it's been verified on 3 other Win 7 systems):

  1. R click on your speaker icon, select 'Recording Devices' (if you have the sounds dialog up, it's the 2nd tab 'Recording')
  2. R click in the white space, be sure that BOTH "show disabled devices" AND "show disconnected devices" are checked.
  3. **Now this step is going to take a little bit of thought for each computer being used: on my laptop (HP Elitebook) I get a device "Stereo Mix", ENABLE this device.
  4. Click on Properties, go to the tab 'Listen'
  5. Check the box "Listen to this device", also change the drop-down box below "Playback through this device" to be your second audio device

-- To verify that you've done this correctly, go back to the Sound dialog tab Playback, you should now see both of your audio devices showing the little green graphs moving.

Here are the specific settings that I have on my laptop, maybe this will help with your settings:

Speakers- GN9350 (Default Communications Device)

Speakers- SoundMAX Integrated Digital HD Audio (Default Device)

Stereo Mix- 'Listen' feature points this  device to my GN9350 headset.

Paul

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Anonymous
2009-12-02T19:11:46+00:00

Right. Your hardware has not found a driver that works in Win 7. You will have to keep checking for updates for that to use the device in Win 7 the way you want it.

Rating posts helps other usersMark L. Ferguson MS-MVP

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  1. Anonymous
    2011-09-10T04:53:03+00:00

    Hi alistair M,

    Thank you for visiting Windows Vista Forums.

    Check to see if your headphones are set to be used as the default *Communication* device instead of the default device, or if both devices are set to default. If so, make the headphones default, so that Windows will use them only when they are plugged in.

     

     

    Check with  volume settings.

     

     

    1. Right click on the speaker icon in taskbar and select volume control options.

     

    1. put a check mark on "All devices currently playing sound".

     

    1. Make sure you have "The default communication device unchecked".

     

    1. place a check mark on both speakers and headphones.

     

    Let us know what happens when you play.

    Regards,

    Amritha-Microsoft Support.

    Visit our Microsoft Answers Feedback Forum and let us know what you think.

    I am unable to view speakers and headphones icons

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  2. Anonymous
    2011-08-27T05:25:14+00:00

    This mixer method worked for me with a disappointing caveat or two: one of my outputs is digital (with 5.1 surround sometimes), I have to make it my "alternate" output with headphones/jack as default, and there is a distinct lag between the two.

    Here's the full situation. I have three outputs: S/PDIF optical, HDMI, and headphone jack (which shows up as 'speakers'). The HDMI goes to my TV for video only. The optical goes to my stereo receiver (sometimes with 5.1 movies). I also want to run the same audio to two speakers in my kitchen.

    In the solution here, I can technically do that. If I set the output jack as default and the optical as secondary through the mixer, I do get the sound through both, but the optical loses 5.1 and sounds bad in comparison, and the delay between them makes it unusable.

    If I reverse the defaults, the optical works but the output jack gets only nasty feedback noise via the mixer. (Direct sounds tests work fine.) It looks to me like my only solution is to get an optical splitter into a stereo receiver, unless somebody can think of another solution.

    Thanks for the great advice though. It saved me much time finding out I can't do what I thought.

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  3. Anonymous
    2011-08-22T23:14:57+00:00

    Thanks for the advice paul, worked great after playing around with it for about 30 mins.

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