Speakers and headphones play audio from different sources

[blundaruss]

Hi

I suspect I know the answer to this one but can I get my speakers to play game audio and my headphones play music from the same soundcard? I like to listen to music while gameing but would like to be able to independantly turn it up or down depending on what I am listening to in-game.

I suspect I need two soundcards to acheive this but is there a software solution where I can mute the game from the headphones and mute the music from the speakers? I can get the realtek hd audio manager to play the same stream through both output devices at the same time but it looks like it treats both devices as one so it plays exactly the same stream through both.

 

[Mick-1965]

Why not listen to both music and game audio through either just your head phones or speakers.
Assuming you've got a Multimedia capable keyboard with volume control.
Use a music player like foobar with an independent volume control, use foobar's prefs to assign the windows multimedia keyboard volume control to control its own volume.
This way you can turn the music up and down from within game without altering the games volume.

 

[EsaT]

I suspect I need two soundcards to acheive this but is there a software solution where I can mute the game from the headphones and mute the music from the speakers? I can get the realtek hd audio manager to play the same stream through both output devices at the same time but it looks like it treats both devices as one so it plays exactly the same stream through both.

If two sources play signal to same output device those signals are mixed together by Windows audio stack before reaching sound card/its drivers.

Use a music player like foobar with an independent volume control, use foobar's prefs to assign the windows volume control to control its own volume.
This way you can turn the music up and down from within game without altering the games volume.

Volume control of Windows is master control.
It affects volume of any signal going through Windows audio stack.
Unless there's something which can disable Windows itself from using it.

But NirCmd could be used for controlling volume of individual apliciations with changeappvolume command assuming music player doesn't ahve option for hot keys for controlling its volume.
http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/nircmd2.html

 

[Marsman]

You should be able to set up a second stream with Realtek, which effectively makes it 2 separate audio devices. I assume all Realtek codecs can do this, so there should be an option. I know mine can, but I've disabled mine, so I can't check how to do it. I'm also on Windows 7, not 10, but I don't think that should make any difference.

 

[Mick-1965]

Volume control of Windows is master control.
It affects volume of any signal going through Windows audio stack.
Unless there's something which can disable Windows itself from using it.

l

Sorry typo should have read "Multimedia keyboard volume control" not Windows
In the prefs of foobar you can set it to use the Multimedia keyboard volume control to control its own volume.
This is how I have it set. While foobar is running the physical volume control will adjust just the music

 

[DataVampire]

I use voicemeter bannanna and i bought the optional cords.
i play music through media monkey.

It all goes though voicemeter but i have independent volumes i do this for streaming. i have my mic on one channel discord on another channel and windows sound ie game sound on another and finally music on another, yes they are all through my headphones but everything has its own volume..

Another way of doing this is with onboard sound and a dedicated sound card .plug speakers into one and headphones into the other have your media player setup to send audio out to the one sound card and then have your game sounds get sent to the other.

Also there is this nvidia sound no idea what this does.

Hope this makes sense you just need to make sure your media player you can change the sound out put to one and the gaming sound to the other.