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Audio noob

A solution that will work on anything is to buy a y-splitter and plug it into the front audio port (usually green)

something like this


What kind of onboard sound to you have? There could be other ways to do this too. If you have 4.1 or 5.1 (or more) integrated sound, there might be a "clone mode" or something that will give you the same output on the green jack as the black jack. In that case you could put your speakers on the green one and headphones on the black output.

This would only work if you had 2.1 speakers though and had free audio jacks.

There might be additional options, but without knowing what kind of system you have, it's hard to say.

Have you tried looking around your sound utility program? If you that multi-channel output, there might be an option for assigning one of the jacks for headphone output.
 
Thanks for the help. I don't know anything about audio but my motherboard has the standard six ports of varying colors. I currently have a simple 2 speaker setup on the green plug. The onboard sound I'm using is the realtek '97. I was able to assign the blue port to be an additional speaker jack but the quality was noticeably poorer than the green jack.

Would I notice anything different with a y-splitter, since the same output would have to get pumped through two speakers? Other than that I don't know. Is there some other program I could download and use that would let me output with equal quality on the two ports? This really is new ground for me so I'd appreciate any help at all.
 
Hmmm... that reasigning the blue plug should be of quality similar to the green jack.

Maybe the DAC on that is trash though...

Have you tried making the black output stereo too? Maybe set it up for 4.1 sound then then plug headphones in and see what happens?

A y-splitter like the one I linked to should give you good enough quality that you probably wouldn't notice a difference from the standard green jack single output unless you're really picky.
 
okay... tried the black thing. pretty much the same result as the blue. the quality was much worse plus it screwed up the 3-d audio stuff, which worked real well with the headphones alone and i'd like to keep that.

looks like i'll get a splitter... unless i can duplicate that blue port with equal quality somehow
 
How do the speakers sound when you plug them into the other ports?

A y-splitter is probably your best option if your other jacks are trash for some reason. It's nice and cheap too 🙂
You could even go to a radioshack or something and pick one up for a couple bucks.

EDIT: By the way, why are you listening to speakers and headphones at the same time? 😕
 
well... the speakers sound the same when plugged into the jacks, but the headphones clearly don't. Now that I think about it, it sounds more like a jump from stereo to mono when I switch the headphones than a loss in quality. The sound just sounds more flat, if that makes sense.

to answer your question, i'm not listening to them both simultaneously 😛 I prefer the speakers for most stuff but occasionally I like the phones and sometimes it's necessary not to disturb the rest of the family (i.e., when playing HL2 at 1am)

edit: forgot to ask, are all splitters created equal or do some have better quality?
 
Ok I get it now. My computer speakers usually had a headphone jack in them so I didn't have this problem.
 
Just get one where the wires aren't super thin and you should be alright. If you were doing a run that was like 25 feet or something you'd have to worry about this more, but for just a little headphone jack splitter, a little $2 should be fine... and if it isn't, then you can get a better one then and only have lost $2 🙂
 
k, thanks. just ooc, what do you thing is going on with the switch in headphone quality between the green and blue while the speaker is unchanged?
 
I'm really confused by that problem. Generally I would think that if it's giving the same signal to the blue jack, then it would sound just as good.

I've tried this with the last two soundcards I've had and it worked fine.

I don't think it would cause this kind of level of quality drop, but some soundcards will use DACs (Digital to Analog Converters) that take the digital signal from your computer and change it into a signal that sound products can use. This could contribute to the problem, but I don't think it would account for the effect you're talking about.

Did you try taking the speakers out of the green jack and trying them in the other ones? I can't tell if you just tried the headphones in the blue jack or if the speakers sounded crappy too if you tried them in that jack.
 
Yeah, it's pretty weird. I did try switching the speakers and the sound was the same. Only the headphones changed when the switched.

I actually do have headphones with a fairly long cable, around 5 meters. Do you think it might be that?
 
If the headphones sound fine in 1 jack it shouldn't matter.

So switching the speakers to a different jack wasn't a problem?

What about putting the speakers on the blue jack and headphones on the green one then?
 
Well, didn't notice it before but the onboard sound utility refuses to save the port settings for some reason when the comp is restarted. Guess it'll be the splitter after all...
 
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