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Multiple Sound Cards

I am not honestly sure, I remember seeing some where a bit ago that it can be done, but I would say on a typical desktop, the answer would be no. I would think you would have many problems with Resources by trying to use two sound cards. Conflicts galore. And to be quite frank, there is absolutely no reason to use 2 sound cards.
 
I have the output going to the computer speakers and a home stereo. To accomplish this I have to use a splitter on the output of the sound card. I'd like to be able to turn off the sound to the computer speakers without unplugging them and without impacting the sound to the stereo.
 
You can run 2 sound cards at once, but only one of them will output at a time, you'll have to switch them back and forth. There are some programs that let let you select which output device to use by default, such as winamp.
 
Originally posted by: stevty2889
You can run 2 sound cards at once, but only one of them will output at a time, you'll have to switch them back and forth. There are some programs that let let you select which output device to use by default, such as winamp.
Click to expand...

I think your right, I knew there was a way, but I couldn't remember the catch.
 
Yes, you can use as many sound cards as you want.

In Control Panel > Sounds and Audio Devices > Audio, you can select what your default sound device is. This is where everything goes unless you specify otherwise. For example, on my system I can select "SB Live Wave Device" or "nVidia nForce Audio" since I have a sound card and onboard audio.

If you just want to listen to music on your home stereo, that's really easy. You can just add a PCI card and hook that up to your stereo. Leave your onboard audio as the default sound device, then specify the PCI card for the sound device in your music software. For example, WinAmp's output preferences let you select which sound device to play to.

If you want to play games and have the sound come through the stereo, that's a little trickier since you can't specify the sound device for most games. If you have decent onboard sound, you can just plug all the speakers into your computer and set it to 4-speaker (clone) output to use the stereo and the computer, then change it back to 2-speaker output to turn off the computer speakers (or just turn the speakers down in the mixer).

There are also several ways you could patch your onboard sound together with a PCI card depending on what you're trying to do. You can set the PCI card as your primary sound device, then use a splitter to run the output of the PCI card to your stereo and to the input of your onboard sound. Then you can hook your computer speakers up to the onboard output and just use your onboard sound mixer to turn off your computer speakers.

Obviously you could come up with the best way yourself depending on what you want.
 
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