Getting my audio to work

[Fallso]

Ok, I have vista(lol).

I have an Asus P5B mobo with onboard sound which I'm using now and basically I want to be able to have my music etc out of my speakers and skype come out of my headset.

I assume it's possible to do this, but I can't even get the speakers to put out sound plugged into the rear speaker jack (black one) atm, anybody have ideas?

[Norellicus]

In my experience, if any of your desired sound output programs uses DirectSound, you won't be able to do what you're trying to do, since DirectSound seizes control of the entire sound module to do its dirty work.

[Fallso]

Well I use WMP, so I assume it uses direct sound?

I just got it to play out my speakers at last, windows wasn't accepting that I had 4 speakers but I fixed that.

Still, any way to "split" the sounds so certain ones come out of speakers and some only out of my headset?

[Norellicus]

In theory, you should be able to define separate outputs in each app that would then split the sounds.

But it may also gimp something along the way too, depending; the sound processor can only process so many sounds at once, and once it reaches that limit it will start cutting off certain sounds to make room for the new ones as they're called. Especially for an onboard system which is historically not as robust as a 3rd party card, if someone starts talking on Skype it may cut off the ingame sounds (either completely or just certain ones). It may be too subtle to notice if it happens at all, depending on how many sound channels you're using at the time.

I don't use WMP, so I'm not familiar with how to set outputs, but if you can find it and set it to some output other than the one you specify in Skype, then you're golden.

DirectSound may allow multiple outputs these days too, I don't know. I have a desktop (games) and laptop (voip/music) that I use separately so I never have to even think about this problem, heh.

[Fallso]

Neither skype or WMP have any output options that I can see, I was thinking along the lines of a 3rd party program to do it because of that.

[Norellicus]

Oh; no clue then, lol.

Sorry

[Day]

I've been looking to do this as well. I think we need some kind of 3rd party program like you said, I'll let you know if I find something.

[Fallso]

Le bmup, anybody have any fresh ideas? I've been searching and I even asked Skype tech support but no dice yet.