Audio Question - "Communications Headphones"

So I just noticed this, but when I click on the volume control in Windows, there seems to be 2 volume controls, one controlling the Speakers/Headphones, which works fine. But the other one (as shown below), controls something else called "Communications Headphones" that doesn't seem to affect anything. I tried all of the audio jacks and I couldn't find what it controls.

Pic#1:


Pic#2:


Can anyone enlighten me on what that does?

 

I simply went into device manager and disabled the "communications headphones" and now I can use TeamSpeak.

 

It seems like a separate audio channel for communications purposes. For example, you can have your games go through your normal speakers but Skype through a headset. If you don't have a headset plugged in, communications sounds still come through the speaker but their audio will be independent of your normal speaker level.

Its useless to you if you use USB headsets though. I'll play around with it and see how to get it to work as advertised.

 

Well the only thing it really seems to do if I set it as an output device in Ventrilo or Skype is that it gives me an independent volume control. Not too useful. Maybe I could do more if the IDT control panel was working. Dell seems to have patched it out.

 

I couldn't get TeamSpeak 3 to make any sound at all until I disabled it. It was like it was directing it to an output that nothing was attached to. I tried an analog headset in both of the headphone jacks and got nothing. I presumed it was because I wasn't using a USB headset.

 

Yeah I'm thinking this is a feature that Dell inadvertently patched out with an audio driver update. I'm trying to restore my IDT Audio control panel to see if I can get anything happening.

One interesting thing to note. If you plug in headphones or speakers the communications device does indeed play audio. Its completely separate from and doesn't have access to the R3's built in speakers, which is what I think its supposed to do.

 

Hehe there's no option even on the older driver with the working control panel.

It partially works: If you plug in headphones to the audio jack closest to you, audio through "communications headphones" will play on the headphones. The problem is that normal speaker output also goes through the headphones which is not what we want. We want to be able to separate voice chat from the rest of the system sounds.

 

My conclusion is to just disable the device its not offering any useful functionality. If it were a completely separate audio channel it would be very useful but there seems to be no way to separate it from the "speakers / headphones" channel.