Is there an efficient way to switch between 2.1 speakers and a headset with mic?

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17 May 2016
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Hey all,

As the title suggests I want an easy way to switch between a 2.1 speaker set and my headphone with mic without unplugging anything. I am currently unable to use my front panel mic input and would prefer not also. What I'm looking for is a way to take all my audio from the onboard sound card (Supreme FX 2015) and feed it through to some sort of switch, whereby I can plug in my headphones and speakers and switch between them without any need to plug and unplug devices. Bear in mind I would also need to plug my mic in too. I also have a 2nd pair of headphones without a mic that I would also like to have plugged in too. Is anyone aware of such a bit of kit existing?

Many thanks to anyone that reads this or comments.
 
Yeah I was looking at those. My concern however is that the speakers plug into the left and right on-board outputs, while the headphones plug into one of these channels and the mic output. These devices seem to only be viable when you are using the same outputs for each device. Does that makes sense?
 
To explain, I have a headset with microphone that has two leads, a microphone jack (pink) that connects to my on-board soundcard via the rear panel and another for the headphone drivers (a green jack which plugs into the port which is I believe is normally the speaker out, again on the rear panel). My 2.1 speakers have 2 jacks, a green and a black one, which plug into the black and green port on the on-board sound respectively. So as you can see when I need to plug in my headphones in I have to unplug a green jack and plug in the other.

The problem I see with the splitter described is that I actually need 3 outputs, one for the microphone and then the other 2 for the speakers and headphones themselves. My understanding is that for a switch it will only allow you to switch when the output is the same for all devices. So for example I could run multiple 2.1 setups on a hardware based switch.

The software solution won't work, because as outlined for some reason my front panel doesn't work for mic input and there is a hum on headphones and as explained above I cannot run all the devices from the back panel. Also I don't want wires draping all over the front of my desk. I was hoping there would be a hardware solution, but I'm not knowledgeable enough about how these devices work. I'm sort of fumbling around in the dark at the moment.
 
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