Sound-out (headphone) and on-board speakers concurrently ?

In most laptops, as soon as you plug into the sound-out (headphone) jack, the on-board speakers are disabled. It would be good to be able to use the on-board speakers and supplement them with a small external woofer or a couple of small external speakers.

I'd like to be able to do this on my Dell XPS 15 laptop. I want this as an option, not a permanent changes. Sometimes I would want the on-board speakers not to disable, such as when connecting tiny travel speakers so I'd want all speakers to play. Sometimes I'd want the default behaviour of on-board speakers being disabled, such as when connecting laptop's sound output to a large home stereo.

If anyone knows how to use sound-out without disabling the on-board speakers, please share.

 

Some laptops can play 2 audio streams concurrently when you specify each stream separately. This has to be done via whatever playback program. In the case where this is not done, the audio chipset defaults to duplicating the 1 audio stream into 2 and hence all audio out channels play the same thing.

You would have to do this via whatever software you use for playback. I know that on my Envy 17, I can do this using a stereo mixer and Windows Media Player.

 

Also some audio jacks can be re-purposed. They can be set either as headphone or line out. On my ZT tower they can even be changed to inputs.

 

That's not what I need to do. I want to play just one stream, but have it go to both the on-board speakers and headphone jack at the same time. My laptop's speakers are pretty good, so I just want to supplement them with some tiny portable speakers. I want all of those speakers, the laptop's built-in on-board speakers and the portable speakers via headphone jack, to play the same audio at the same time.

 

If you use Realtek HD or Conexant SmartAudio audio management software what you want to do should be possible and is as simple as ticking the right checkbox within the software. If you do not have that software install, find out what audio card your system has and download the appropriate software.

EDIT: So apparently the XPS 15 uses Waves MaxxAudio 3, check if you have the software for that. It should have similar settings to the other two programs.

 

What usapatriot says - there should be a software control, which is normally on by default, which mutes the rear output when front panel output is engaged.

 

My Dell XPS 15 does have Waves MaxxAudio, but there is no setting to stop it from disabling the on-board speakers when something is plugged into the headphone port. I've played with many settings, and nothing overrides that behaviour. If I've missed something that would work, I'd love to hear about it.

 

Try making sure you have the latest version of the software installed. If that doesn't work you could try uninstalling that and installing the Realtek HD audio drivers that may work (no guarantee).

|MG| Realtek High Definition Audio for VistaWin 7 2.67 Download

 

Actually, thinking about it - it might not be possible on a laptop since the codec usually drives the speakers directly these days. The codec itself might shut down any other outputs.

 

It's definitely doable on my Lenovo T400...weird.

 

Different software. That capability isnt included in the Waves MaxxAudio software. I hoped that someone might have come up with a hack to do it, but I've been unable to find one via web searching.