Audio playback through headphones and speakers

Anonymous

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.

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Anonymous

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):

R click on your speaker icon, select 'Recording Devices' (if you have the sounds dialog up, it's the 2nd tab 'Recording')
R click in the white space, be sure that BOTH "show disabled devices" AND "show disconnected devices" are checked.
**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.
Click on Properties, go to the tab 'Listen'
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

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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64 additional answers

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.

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

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

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

place a check mark on both speakers and headphones.

Let us know what happens when you play.

Regards,

Amritha-Microsoft Support.

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I am unable to view speakers and headphones icons
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Anonymous

2011-10-25T18:00:07+00:00

OK this is driving me nuts!

My sound 'card' is shown as a VIA High definition audio in device manager - not very helpful.

I also have an NVIDA GTX 950 TI which installed 4 HD audio devices when I fitted it. no idea why or if this is the problem.

My motherboard is an ASUS M4A87TD so this isn't a old system.

I cannot get the headphones and the speakers to work together. I have tried all the methods described above and they just will not do it.

There is something called the VIA HD Audio Deck installed on the system which has a lot of options - some of which are duplicated by the Windows 7 control panel but not all.

One that isn't is buried in the advanced options - I click on the yellow spanner and screwdriver icon at the bottom right of the audio deck to get these.

The option is redirected headphone. When I select this - rather than independent headphone I have the speaker sound coming out of the headphone. However it is at speaker volume (ie very loud). There does not appear to be any way at all of having the sound card send noise to both the speaker and the headphone where you can control the volume independently.

I need this as I use the headphones to monitor recordings that go to an external mixer from the speakers - at line volume - for video editing and commentaries. If I adjust the volume for the headphones then the commentaries are too quiet. Ugh.

Given that XP allowed me to do this so simply its annoying in the extreme that an 'update' is forcing me to jump through hoops and still won't work.

Can anyone please explain how the hex you get this to work???
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Anonymous

2011-11-21T09:40:57+00:00

There is nothing to worry,

we just need to disable front panel jack detection on Connector settings of Realtek HD audio Manager.

Thank you
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