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.

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

0 comments

Answer accepted by question author

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

0 comments

Answer accepted by question author

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

0 comments

64 additional answers

Anonymous

2013-06-03T23:38:55+00:00

Thanks everyone. We are good now. I had turned off the main board driver and put an add-in card. It's support was nominal as well because it was not current. It was very popular but was of the XP time... I got a new add-in card that was built well after 7 shipped and it gives me dual support. Thanks for your patient replies.

Ken
Was this answer helpful?

0 comments No comments
Anonymous

2013-06-03T23:23:00+00:00

It will be a combined thing relating to the Windows driver AND the software you are using, Sometimes the software client will have a device area where you can choose which device to play or record OR simply the Default device. IF you choose the default you must go into the WINDOWS driver to do this. There are so many combinations possible YOU MUST LEARN the ROPES yourself because ALL people are not using the same combinations of OS and Software's. ONLY the mixer will allow you to combine sounds from the Windows driver and not all versions of Windows allow that. It is my personal belief that Microsoft makes a terrible error by not just selling their top of the line Operating system and forget all the OEM stuff which essentially has no support from Microsoft itself. they seem to be create a dependency on them to resolve issues like organized crime creates drug or other vice dependencies on everyone for their own social security independent of government controls. I think it is liked WHAT A TANGLED WEB WE WEAVE WHEN ... fill in the blanks. It boils down to you got to learn your OS and Hardware or you will always have such problems. There is not yet a user friendly anything in the Computer world unless computer savvy people run it.
Was this answer helpful?

0 comments No comments
Anonymous

2013-05-28T17:49:09+00:00

please help me!

i don't have any sound anymore!

and i don't get the steps i need some more explination :(
Was this answer helpful?

0 comments No comments