Dual Audio Output problems . . .

[Racer_J]

Ok, this should be easy to figure out but, I'm tired of failing at it so I am seeking some assistance.

The old rig & setup:

The last motherboard I had was an Asus A8N-SLi. I used the SPDIF onboard audio (ALC850) and connected it to my Onkyo HTR520. In addition to this, I would hook my headphones to one of the speaker ports that was also on the onboard audio. Both of these connections were on the back of the motherboard where the I/O plate is. Audio played through both the Onkyo HTR520 and the headphones simultaneously. If I needed to use my headphones, I just plugged them in and I got sound. If I wanted to have 5.1 surround sound, I turned the Onkyo HTR520 on and I had sound. If I wanted to have the same audio playback through both the headphones and the Onkyo HTR520 simultaneously I could. It worked without any hassle at all and there was never a front audio I/O connected. In case it matters (and I have a hunch it does) I was on XP Pro 32 at the time and, the SPDIF was set as the default audio..

That brings me to my current problem. I am trying to use the same audio setup as before but, on a new system.


The new rig & setup:

I am now using a Biostar TA990FXE with W7 Pro 64 and, I have the SPDIF onboard audio (ALC892) connected to my Onkyo HTR520. In addition to this, I hook my headphones to one of the speaker ports that is also on the onboard audio. Both of these connections are on the back of the motherboard where the I/O plate is.


The Problem:

I can only get sound out of the headphones or out of the Onkyo HTR520. I can not get the same audio playback out of both of them simultaneously. I have looked through Google, did a quick look-about here, and dug through both the Realtek software as well as W7 Pro 64 and I am just stumped. It either has to be a setting, a difference between XP Pro 32 vs W7 Pro 64, or a difference between the ALC850 (A8N-SLi) vs the ALC892 (TA990FXE).


What I have tried:

I have hooked the headphones to every last 3.5mm jack on the motherboard except the mic in. This has not resolved my problem.

I have looked through the W7 Pro 64 sound settings and the Realtek settings and made various changes. This has not resolved my problem.

I went into the Device Manager and disabled the generic HD Audio device. This resulted in removing the Realtek HD from the Device Manager and no sound after a reboot. This has not resolved my problem and I had to enable the generic HD Audio device.

I have tried reinstalling the Realtek driver on the CD that came with the TA990FXE. This has not resolved my problem.


What I have not tried:

The driver is up to date according to the Biostar site. There is a newer generic driver from Realtek that I have downloaded but, I have not installed it yet. I don't feel this is a driver issue otherwise it would be all over Google. To be fair though, this is probably not something a lot of people try to accomplish.

I have not tried using HDMI audio as the Onkyo HTR520 does not have any HDMI connections on it and thus it is not an option.

I have not tried using the headphones plugged into an HD front audio panel because I do not have one. I have an AC97 front audio panel from a random PC lying about but, the TA990FXE can only use a HD front audio panel. I don't think this would solve the problem though as it will either mute the rear onboard audio or, it would play back a separate audio stream simultaneously with the rear onboard audio. That's assuming I am understand their wording correctly. I take it to mean I could output the audio from a game through the rear onboard audio to the Onkyo HTR520 and then I could output the audio from something like Vent/Raidcall/Skype to the HD front audio panel to a headset/mic. If I am incorrect about this please let me know because, at some point I will need to find a way to playback game audio through only the SPDIF while audio from something like Vent/Raidcall/Skype is playing though only a headset/mic. (e.g. I will only hear WoW through the SPDIF audio and I will only hear Vent through the headphones but, both of these need to occur simultaneously.)


What I am looking for:

I want to be able to either plug a set of headphones in or leave them plugged in to the rear onboard audio and be able to get sound from both the headphones and the Onkyo HTR520 through the rear onboard audio simultaneously. (e.g. If I am listening to a song through the SPDIF, I want to be able to hear the same playback through the headphones simultaneously). This was accomplished without any effort at all on my old rig and I am desperately seeking a way to make it happen on this new rig.


For clarification:

If I am receiving audio into the headphones connected to the rear onboard audio and I unplug them, the audio will start transmitting through the SPDIF and playing out of the Onkyo HTR520. If I have audio playing through the Onkyo HTR520 via the SPDIF and I plug in the headphones to the rear onboard audio, the audio will start playing through the headphones. I want to have the same audio playing through both the SPDIF and an analog connection on the rear onboard audio simultaneously without adding any other hardware.


Is this possible or am I batshit crazy? BTW, feel free to take a shot/drink every time you see the word simultaneously in this post. You'll be drunk off your ass in no time flat.

 

[Mabu]

It sounds like there's an auto-detect feature that's enabled in the driver settings, in which all other outputs get muted when it detects a cable connected to the headphone output. It's all very likely that your old mobo didn't have this auto-detect feature, or it was disabled at some point in time.

Question for you though - do you actually want to hear output from both headphones and speakers at the same time? Personally, that would drive me insane, and most others would probably agree. I also think it's part (or maybe the entire) reason why newer sounds cards/mobos have this auto-detect feature. In my own setup, I have audio going from my sound card to a receiver - when I want to use the headphones, I simply plug them into the headphone port of the receiver, not the sound card. Best of both worlds for me, and absolutely no hassle.

 

[SirMaster]

Pretty sure I have a solution for you. Stand by until after work tonight and i'll let you know about it.

 

[Racer_J]

It sounds like there's an auto-detect feature that's enabled in the driver settings, in which all other outputs get muted when it detects a cable connected to the headphone output. It's all very likely that your old mobo didn't have this auto-detect feature, or it was disabled at some point in time.

That makes sense as it's definitely auto-detecting when something gets plugged in. I had to disable the auto-sensor popup box as it was causing a delay in switching but, that's not any big deal as it's always going to be the same input/output devices. Plus, I can just enable the popup should I ever need ot plug something else in.

Question for you though - do you actually want to hear output from both headphones and speakers at the same time? Personally, that would drive me insane, and most others would probably agree.

Yes I do but, I will admit it's not a feature I need or will use 24/7/365. It is however a feature I am very accustomed to having. My headphones have a volume control built into them so, it wasn't just a big deal to leave them plugged in all the time as I could use that control or mute them in the audio panel as a last resort. I can totally see how identical audio playback from dual sources would drive most people insane though. It's really no different than the "foldback" some musicians use or the way some sound engineers work even though I was using far less equipment to pull it off. I am neither a musician or a sound engineer but, I've had and used this feature since 2006 so it's a little jarring to just suddenly up and loose it.

Pretty sure I have a solution for you. Stand by until after work tonight and i'll let you know about it.

Cool, I look forward to hearing back from you later on then.

 

[crapito]

generally speaking, sound cards only play sound through one output at a time. there are exceptions, of course, and they involve higher-end aftermarket sound cards, not onboard sound...

since you've tried most ins and outs of your onboard sound to no avail, i'd recommend looking for a cheap aftermarket sound card for use as a separate headphone output and using your motherboard's sound for your receiver output.

 

[Racer_J]

since you've tried most ins and outs of your onboard sound to no avail, i'd recommend looking for a cheap aftermarket sound card for use as a separate headphone output and using your motherboard's sound for your receiver output.

This will be a last resort as I'm not entirely convinced that it will playback the same audio that is being played on another device. I prefer to run as little hardware and drivers as possible and, I would hate to have to add something just because a feature got yanked out of an OS.


That having been said, (after some extensive digging) Windows 7 apparently killed the ability to output the same audio playback through digital and analog connections simultaneously. From what I read, Vista crippled it and I know from past experience with XP that it could do it. However, I can't even get Windows 7 to playback the same audio simultaneously through two different analog devices. Why this was removed is beyond me.

To further complicate my issue, I borrowed a HD audio cable and a HD front audio panel from another PC. I was unable to have the same audio output play through the SPDIF and the Front HD audio simultaneously but, this wasn't a shock at this point since it's still technically onboard audio. I do want to point out that the HD audio cable I used wasn't a actually a HD audio cable despite the fact it had a "HD Audio" tampograph on it. Pin 4 in it was blank which is supposed to have a wire with a resister on it and serves as a 'presence trigger". The purpose of pin 4 (which my motherboard and the HD front audio panel I was using both have) is as follows:

source

Active low signal that signals BIOS that an Intel® HD Audio dongle is connected to the analog header. PRESENCE# = 0 when an Intel® HD Audio dongle is connected.

I assume the BIOS saw the HD front audio panel despite the fact that wire was missing because, Windows 7 sure as hell saw it. The irony of the missing wire is that both the HD audio cable and the HD front audio panel are out of a semi recent Intel rig. I suppose there is a chance that the missing wire might have kept the HD front audio panel from working to it's full extent but, I've never messed with one till now. It's also worth reiterating that I am unable to hear the same audio playback regardless of what combination of devices I am using. (e.g. Digital & Analog or Analog & Analog).


However, I am able to hear the audio playback from three different programs to three different devices simultaneously. (e.g. MPC HCE through earbuds connected to a rear speaker port on the rear I/O, Vent through the headphones connected to the HD front audio panel, and WMP through the SPDIF port on the rear I/O port) At least this feature wasn't stripped out of the OS lol.

 

[Racer_J]

Just wanted to do a quick update on this as I just stumbled across Microsoft directly commenting on the issue of not being able to have the same audio on multiple devices anymore. It looks like I'm not the only one that noticed this feature got stripped lol.

I see, you want any sound that's played to go to all outputs on your system simultaneously... a kind of "broadcast mode."

There are a couple of approaches that would allow this.

One would be to write an app that used WASAPI loopback capture:

• app would listen in on everything that was playing on the default device

• app would play this audio to all the non-default devices

• app would listen for "default device has changed" notifications and switch accordingly

A different approach would be to use Virtual Audio Cable:

• Create a virtual audio output, set it as the default device

• Create virtual cables from this virtual audio output to all the real audio outputs

In the old days of Windows this wasn't necessary because audio drivers would expose only a single output (which would cover internal speakers, headphone jacks, S/PDIF etc.) and then do all the stream routing themselves. In Vista we made the decision to expose individual audio devices as distinct outputs; one side effect of this is that we lost the "automatic" broadcast mode.


source (MSDN apparently doesn't have a way to directly link to a particular post so, you'll need to scroll down to the near the bottom)

This revelation is a rather disheartening but, it is what it is. Maurits [MSFT] also posted that he found a VB6 wrapper for directshow and, one of the users is going to play around with it. VB6/coding/loopbacks/etc. are well beyond my knowledge-base though. I guess I'll keep an eye on that thread for any major developments. I'll also look around for plugins to MPC HCE but, I doubt I will find one as they do not exist for WMP or WMC. I did read that Winamp has/had a plugin at one point so I will look into that as well. I had no idea Winamp was even still around.

BTW, I do not consider using "Virtual Audio Cable" to be a viable option as you have to manually start multiple instances of it and, there are complaints about not being able to get the multiple audio streams in sync with one another.

 

[Racer_J]

Just another quick update. Winamp and Dietmar's Output Stacker plugin = WIN. Initially I had the audio playing in Winamp coming out of both the Onkyo HT-R520 via SPIDF on the rear I/O and the headphones via a speaker port on the rear I/O. However they were terribly out of sync with one another. It was anywhere from a full syllable to a word so it was irritating as hell. After I did some digging, I found out from this thread that the sync issues were being caused by how the multi-out dll file for the plugin was coded. This is resolved by altering the buffer settings for the output plugins that Dietmar's Output Stacker plugin controls. There was a lot of trial and error involved as altering the buffers can lead to total audio loss in Winamp. Once I dropped the "out_ds.dll" buffer down to 400 and its fading down to 0, both the SPDIF and the headphones were in perfect harmony.

Now if I could just get my other audio programs to do this so I'm not locked into using Winamp lol. Progress is progress though. If anyone has any ideas about how to extend this to other programs like MPC HME, WMP, WMC, Zune, iTUNEs, etc. I'm all ears as I consider this a temporary workaround.

In case anyone is interested in trying this out, you can get the plugin for Winamp here. You'll need to take the .dll file and place it into Winamp's plugin folder. Once you get the plugin installed:

open Winamp and navigate to the preferences
Scroll down until you see "Plugins"
Click on "Output"
Doubleclick on the one named "Dietmar's Output Stacker v0.8 (x86) [out_stacker.dll]"

Click the "Add" button
Navigate to Winamp's plugin folder
Doubleclick on the file named "out_ds.dll"

Click the "Add" button
Navigate to Winamp's plugin folder
Doubleclick on the file named "out_wave.dll"

Doubleclick on "out_ds.dll"
On the "Device" tab, set your main output device
Click on the "Buffering" tab
Set the "Buffer Length" slider bar to "400".
Click the "Fading" tab
Set the "Default Fade Length" to "0"
Click the "Apply" button
Click the "OK" button.

Doubleclick on "out_wave.dll"
Select your secondary output device
Click the "OK" button

Click the "Done" button.

Click the "Close" button on the "Preferences" window
Shutdown and restart Winamp.

You should now have the same audio playback through both output devices simultaneously without any sync issues.