Plugging headphones into volume control vs. plugging them into sound card directly

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Participant

Participant

Caporegime
Joined
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Warwickshire
Hi

I'm getting some headphones shortly and there's a convenient jack on the volume control (which sits on my desktop).

Is there any degradation of sound or loss of power suffered by plugging headphones into the volume control as opposed to directly into the sound card?

Speakers are Creative 5.1 (£35 set) and sound card is X-Fi Xtreme Music.

Thanks.
 
Yep you will likely find that the headphones don't go as loud and that they sound a bit worse, the sound card will probably believe it's outputting to speakers but you're using headphones really so I'm not sure how that will work exactly either. Probably won't really matter for a stereo source though.

This is why I love my Xonar, can switch between front panel headphone socket and rear socket for my 5.1 speakers via the control panel, saves so much hassle. :p
 
Damn so every time I want to go from headphones to speakers I will need to get down and reach behind to rearrange cables? I wonder if there's a solution via the front panel on my PC case.
 
this is why the Game Theatre XP was the best sound card ever :(

c-media chip, and an awesome external box
 
With creative in Creative Audio Console you can set it to speakers and headphones.

Also you can by a spliter cable so you plug your headphones and speakers intoa cable which plugs into sound card i use that and leave it on 5.1 works well.
 
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Erm it might actually sound better as the headphone amplifier in the Creative system is probably better than the line-out on the soundcard!
 
gurusan said:
Erm it might actually sound better as the headphone amplifier in the Creative system is probably better than the line-out on the soundcard!
Click to expand...

Surely that is counter acted by the fact the speakers are using one of the sound card jacks the headphones would be going in to begin with? :p

(unless I'm being stupid here)
 
I've just found this screen on the Creative Console that looks promising:

xfieb6.jpg


...although it only mentions it in Entertainment Mode so not sure whether it works in Game Mode or not.
 
I use these to connect my speaker and my headphone together. can even use the headphone and speakers simultaneously.got it from zalman distributor here when they are on sale.You just basically connect the output of your soundcard to this headphone amp and you get two outputs, you can use the other one for the speaker and the other for your headphones.

 
Robbie G said:
I've just found this screen on the Creative Console that looks promising:

xfieb6.jpg


...although it only mentions it in Entertainment Mode so not sure whether it works in Game Mode or not.
Click to expand...
Yes, in game mode you can click "Settings" at the bottom.
You can also manually set it to use Headphone whenever you want. I don't think you will lose much quality if any at all.
 
A further question on this topic. I have a Fatal1ty gaming headset which has a USB connection. I have just ordered an X-FI Titanium card (which doesn't have a USB connection.

So is the card driving the sound the USB headsets will pick up?
 
Reburner said:
So is the card driving the sound the USB headsets will pick up?
Click to expand...

I'm not sure that that sentence makes much sense but I think you're asking if your sound card will pick up the headset...as far as I know, USB headsets are independent of the system sound card as they have their own processing built in. It'll probably just auto detect and you'll have to control it with the headset's own driver software.
 
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