X-Fi Titanium HD - Headphone/Speaker simultaneous?

[DefBringer]

With the X-Fi Titanium HD card from Creative, can I plug in my headphones into the *AMPLIFIED* rear jack as well as keep my Klipsch Promedia 2.1's plugged in at the same time? Will the sound come out of both? Or can I use Creative software to switch from one playback device to the other?

If this is not possible, are people using some sort of splitter to keep both plugged in? Does this introduce noise, reduce quality, etc?

 

[Porter_]

unfortunately there is a hardware switch that disables the RCA output to speakers if headphones are plugged into the headphone jack. there is no software feature to switch outputs either. there's a long thread on the Creative forums discussing this: http://forums.creative.com/t5/Sound-Blaster/X-Fi-Titanium-HD-choose-headphones-or-speakers-from-Windows/td-p/562754

from that thread, stated by KokChoy-CL (who appears to be a Creative employee, or perhaps just a knowledgeable admin):

The board (X-Fi Titanium HD) has been designed to give better performance thus exclusive outputs are used as compared to the Titanium. A driver update for both headphones and speakers to work simultaneously is unlikely because this is a hardware design.

The card is built this way to achieve better audio quality as compared to the Titanium model. The function to choose between headphones or speakers was not deliberately omitted but rather for the purpose of better audio quality. Unfortunately, no software update could be done to change this.

 

[DefBringer]

unfortunately there is a hardware switch that disables the RCA output to speakers if headphones are plugged into the headphone jack. there is no software feature to switch outputs either. there's a long thread on the Creative forums discussing this: http://forums.creative.com/t5/Sound-Blaster/X-Fi-Titanium-HD-choose-headphones-or-speakers-from-Windows/td-p/562754

from that thread, stated by KokChoy-CL (who appears to be a Creative employee, or perhaps just a knowledgeable admin):

Porter, thanks a lot for your response and link.

I am really disappointed in KokChoy's response as I cannot justify buying a sound card that is going to require me to get on hands and knees to unplug my headphones each time I want to use my speakers. I'm quite shocked this actually made it past Creative's engineers.

 

[yossarian]

Based on the user manual I found online, it looks like those speakers have their own headphone jack. Why don't you use that instead?

 

[WRXChris]

Based on the user manual I found online, it looks like those speakers have their own headphone jack. Why don't you use that instead?

I would assume that he wants to take advantage of the headphone amplifier that is built into the sound card and is only accessible through the card's headphone port.