New
#1
switching between speakers and headphones
My old computer only had one audio output, so I wired it to a toggle switch under my desk so in the up position the audio was connected to my speakers and in the down position the audio was connected to my headphones. The drawback was that if I moved the switch to within easy reach my knee would bang into it every now and then.
My new computer (with an Asus P8Z68-Vpro MBD) has two headphone jacks (front and rear) as well as separate jacks for the speakers, so I'm hoping I can hook it up without using this switch. I don't want to be plugging and unplugging into headphone jacks all the time however. I would like to use one of the keys on my keyboard ideally. I have the Microsoft Wireless Comfort 5000, so there are volume up/down buttons and a mute button. The mute seems to mute both headphones and speakers however, where as I would really only want it to mute the speakers. (Actually I can get only speakers or headphones to work, but not both. Although this is not really a problem since I only need one or the other to work like it did with my old switch).
There is also a button on the keyboard with a picture of a headphone would seem to make perfect sense for purpose. (The default set up by the keyboard driver is to start the media player when you hit that button, but I assume I could use it to start whatever program or batch file I wanted to).
I explored the Realtek HD Audio Manager a bit, but I didn't see an obvious way to do what I want. I tried googling the topic but I found only confused and/or confusing descriptions of the whole mess. Am I trying to do something unusual here? I mean, I do live with other people and I can't very well pipe my audio into my speakers all the time. Sometimes there are even sleeping people in the house. I would think many people are in the same boat, no?
If you tell me the only way is to hook up my old toggle switch the way I did before, I will do that ... but I will still be incredulous if all this sophisticated looking audio software and hardware can't already do this with the click of a button.
Thanks in advance for any advice you can offer.
~Paul