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
    2011-04-19T10:23:57+00:00

    It sounds like you have two problems. The first is that of drivers. this can be a bit fun depending on the age of your pc. I tried to put win7 on an old pc I got for free from my aunty, it failed because there were no drivers for it. (it is now running happily with windows XP). I also have a laptop that is about a year old, if you can find some win vista drivers then normally you can install them on windows 7.

    At this point I am presuming that you have a desk top. To get speakers and headphones to work I suggest a splitter such as this one;

    http://www.maplin.co.uk/mini-headphone-splitter-stereo-1221

    You then just switch of the speakers at their switch.

    Alternately if you want to be really swish you can get an old mixer of eBay for around £40 and then you can select what output you want to use and at what volume. although this might be a bit excessive you then can build speakers and so on until you feel the noise. :) I personally have around 150 wots wired into my laptop that makes anything sound good.

    Good luck and have fun.

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  2. Anonymous
    2011-04-13T14:51:57+00:00

    Nothing happened..

    Plz help me..

    I hv headphones in in the fron jack & speakers in back jacks...

    How can I make both default..or playing at same time..??

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  3. Anonymous
    2011-04-09T10:53:29+00:00

    You're a champion Paul - it works like a dream. Many thanks.

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