How to get headphones and speakers working at the same time?

Question

I have a Gigabyte P55-UD3 motherboard which comes with a Realtek sound card and audio header for the front panel. My headset is permanently connected to the front panel (mic in, headphones in) and I also have speakers connected at the rear of the computer. What I want to achieve is that both the headphones and the speakers work at the same time.

On my old PC with Realtek, I was able to do this by clicking "Device advanced settings" in the Realtek HD Audio Manager and then clicking "Make front and rear output devices playback two different audio streams simultaneously" and then doing some reassigning of front/rear settings in the Realtek Audio Manager (can't remember the details).

But that doesn't seem to be working now - either the speakers play sounds or the headphones, not both at the same time.

To pose the question differently, Windows plays the sounds on the "default device". I'd like to make both headphones and the speakers kind of like the default devices.

Answer 1

You could always buy a headphone splitter for a few $$ or ££ or €€

Answer 2

I solved the problem with different output to the front panel on my ASUS P5P43TD.

All you need to do is to go to Onboard Devices Configuration in BIOS settings and change Front Panel Type from HD Audio to AC97

After restarting you have now Tab called HD Audio 2nd output in Realtek Audio Manager (but keep Speakers tab as default output).

If you can't see that Tab, go to Device Advanced Settings and change it to Make Front and Rear output devices playback two different audio streams simultaneously. If you choose the other option in Advanced, you will have only one stream but from both outputs - front and rear.

And now you have multiple choice for output in popular applications such as audoi- and video-players, where you can change output to Speakers or to HD Audio 2nd output.

As a result my Foobar2000 (audio) and MPC (video) are playing onto different outputs as I'm typing this post.

For some games you can choose the output too (Black Ops) in game Sound options but in some of them you cannot (MW II) BTW if you don't set anything as Default in Realtek Audio Manager you won't have any sound in MW II and some other games.

Answer 3

It depends on your hardware. Your old machine sounds like it had a card that was capable of multiple output streams. Check out the specs on your Gigabyte board and see if the sound card is capable of this.

Also, do you have the same 'Realtek HD Audio Manager' as you did on your old PC? If you do, check to see if this option is there. If it is not, it's probably hardware incompatibility.