Using 2 sound cards at once for different streams

I'm running two sound cards - my system's onboard Realtek sound and an M-Audio Delta 66. Is there any way to use both at once, for instance to play a radio stream through the M-Audio card while everything else goes through the onboard card?

With Windows XP I would set my default playback device to the M-Audio card, then start playing an audio stream like an online radio station. Then I would go back to the control panel and set the default playback device to the onboard sound. The radio would continue playing through the M-Audio card (connected to my A/V receiver) as long as I didn't stop the stream, but then everything else would subsequently play through the onboard audio connected to desktop speakers.

This worked great but I was essentially taking advantage of a bug in WinXP that kept the first stream locked to the sound card in use until I stopped the stream, instead of immediately redirecting it to the newly selected playback device.

Now in Win7 any changes made to the playback device settings take place immediately, so if I'm streaming something through the M-Audio and then go to the control panel and change the audio output device to the onboard card, the stream immediately gets redirected to my new selection, it doesn't stay locked to the original cound card in use. So I'm hoping there may be some way to manually patch one stream to the first card and everything else to the second, so I can continue to listen to streaming audio through my A/V system and everything else through my desktop speakers.

Thanks for any suggestions.

A lot of software (especially audio related) should include a configuration setting where you can choose its output.

Doing so will cause the program to always play sound through that output, regardless of the systems chosen setting. Check to see if the software you're using includes such a feature.

Xale, you're right, I can go to the Options menu in most of my media players and select the audio output device. So I guess the real issue is how to set my browser to do the same, since some of the streaming radio stations I listen to are designed to only play in a browser window. Is there any way to set a browser window to playback to a specific audio device?

Brianzion, that's the Sound Playback control panel window. You can set up a default device for audio playback, and a separate default output for a communications device like a Skype headset. But I don't think that helps because I can't define a browser window to be a "communications device" to force its output to go to the alternate sound card, can I?

Hi, I apologize for reviving an old post, but I was having the same issue and I wanted to tell you how I solved it. Unfortunately there's no way that I know of to this natively in windows.... but... If you download VMWare Player (free program), you can install an OS on it (such as Windows XP). Then, once you've done that, there is an option in the virtual machine settings to direct it to a different sound card. That means that everything that happens in that virtual machine, whether it be the browser, or whatever, will play through that second sound card. Hope this helps!