06-11-2013, 03:32 PM
(06-09-2013, 10:26 AM)rundll.exe link Wrote: I just plug both my amplifier, and headphones, and I switch off the amplifier when I'm gaming. So the headphones are always on.
My soundcard has plug-in detection, and can output/input anything to any plug, so I could connect 7 headphones if I wanted, mybe yours has something similar?
I'm not sure you can do that with the Xonar though, as the Analog Output has to be set to either Headphone or Stereo speakers (or 5.1, etc) and Dolby Headphone has to be enabled/disabled as well. It's worth trying to plug the speakers/amp into one of the other sockets and see if you get some option to assign that socket to Stereo out but if not, the easiest way is to use the Front panel header to use the sockets on the front of the case for headphone and the Stereo Out/Headphone socket on the rear for the amp/speakers.
I'm pretty sure you'd still have to switch the Analog Output and Dolby Headphone settings to switch between headphones and speakers whichever method you use and I guess you might have to be careful that when Analog Output is set to Headphones that it doesn't output headphone level signals from both the Front panel header and the rear Stereo Out/Headphone socket, as that could potentially damage the amp/speakers if accidentally switched on.
If it is the case that even with the Analog Output set to Headphone, it still also outputs line-level signal to another socket assigned to Stereo out, then I guess you could leave Dolby Headphone disabled all the time and then you could just switch the amp on when required, as you're doing.
Actually, thinking about it you still have the onboard soundcard that you could use as well, so if you just wanted to use the amp/speakers to play music or movies for example, you could just set the output in the program you're using (Winamp, Media Player Classic, etc) to the onboard soundcard. Obviously the onboard isn't as good quality as the Xonar but if you're only playing compressed MP3 (or movies with highly compressed audio, as opposed to Blu-Ray with high quality audio) then you probably wouldn't notice. You could even use this method to play music on your speakers whilst playing games on your headphones