Question : Problem: Playback devices in Windows

Hello,

I have two playback devices listed in windows vista
 (as shown in control panel -> Sound -> Playback):

Speakers (audio Jack on the rear of the computer)
and Headphones (audio Jack on the front panel)

Some applications allow you to select the playback device for the sound generated from the specific application. But some applications don't allow you to choose a playback device. So how can I configure windows (both XP and Vista) so I can listen to the sound/music generated by a specific application from headphones, instead from the speakers ?

and is there any way to join the two playback devices ? so I will listen all sounds from both the speakers and the headphones at the same time ?

Thank You,

Harris

Answer : Problem: Playback devices in Windows

As you've noted, many applications don't allow application-specific choice of playback ... they simply use Windows' default audio device.   For those, you simply have to select the output through the audio control panel (with most sound drivers, you can get to this more directly than using Control Panel -- just right-click on the speaker icon in the taskbar and select "Playback Devices").

There's no way to select multiple devices .. so you can't get both speakers and headphones at the same time unless you connect them both to the same audio output (i.e. don't use the front-panel headphone jack).   If you want to do that, you can use a splitter device on the speaker output [http://www.monoprice.com/products/product.asp?c_id=102&cp_id=10218&cs_id=1021802&p_id=667&seq=1&format=2 ]