Headphones work or USB speakers work but only if I change to default

[19diamond]

Until recently I was able to unplug my headphones from the front input and my USB speakers would activate. So whenever I wanted to hear my USB satellite speakers that are plugged into a USB port on the back of my HP desktop, I would simply unplug my headphones.

Now, I have to manually go into the speaker panel and select whichever one I want in order for sound to be heard.

If sound is playing through the USB speakers and I set the headphone to default, if I close my Firefox browser and then re-open it, sound will be playing through the headset. Likewise the same in reverse.

I don't know what happened to force me to use the speaker panel to change which one I wanted. Before plugging in the headphones would just override the USB speakers and cancel them.

Any ideas what I may have done?

 

[fireberd]

How does the sound work, if you do not use Firefox. Boot the PC but do not open Firefox. What device is set as default? (should be the USB device). Play a sound file on the PC with a media player (e.g. Windows Media Player) and confirm you are getting sound through the USB device. Then plug in the headphones and see if it automatically switches.

If it isn't working properly, without Firefox, then uninstall/reinstall the sound devices starting with the USB device (Uninstall in the Device Manager, but DO NOT uninstall any drivers, then restart the PC and let Windows reinstall the device).

If it works OK, without Firefox but still does not work correctly with Firefox that makes Firefox or whatever sound add on is being used in Firefox the suspect.

 

[19diamond]

Thanks for the reply.

It appears that something in Firefox is causing it. I get sound when I'm using Windows Media Player but not on web content such as YouTube.

I tried IE and Google Chrome and on those browsers the speakers will play and when I plug in the headphones it will switch and cancel the speakers just as it should. It works on the player and with web audio.

Apparently one of the last updates in Firefox messed something up and that's why it had worked before and not now. Firefox is my browser I always use. Hopefully it will be corrected in the next update.

I can switch to either by changing the default in the speaker panel playback devices but it sure is frustrating to do that.