Realtek HD Audio speakers and headphones with separate volume

-
So what's this article about? Well..

I recently updated my audio driver from the default built in Windows 8.1 device driver to use the Realtek audio driver and it also installed the Realtek HD Audio Manager.  It's a nice bit of software that allows you configure all things audio.

However, as soon as I installed it I noticed that, when I plugged my headphones in, the volume was deafening.  This was because the volume slider in the system tray was being shared between headphones and speakers.  Previously when I plugged the headphones in, it muted the speakers and switched over to my headphones at around 15% volume.

Now when I plug my headphones it it's at 100% still, which is what the speakers were at, needless to say it's a bit of a shock every time.

I found out however that there is a solution. If you start the Realtek HD Audio Manager, there's usually an icon in the system tray, you can go to "Device advanced settings" in the top right corner and choose "Make front and rear output devices playback two different audio streams simultaneously".

Now plug your headphones in and you get a second tab appear in the tool, one which is the "Speakers" and in my case "HD Audio 2nd output" which was my headphones.  I set the headphones as the default device by clicking the "Set Default Device" button just to the right of the volume slider in the tool.  This means that when I unplug the headphones the system falls back to the only other device, the speakers, and remembers what volume it was on, i.e. 100%.

Then when you plug the headphones in again, it recognises them and switches over to them being the default device and importantly remembers the volume setting that was last used. No more deafness!

Comments

  1. MarcoTuesday, 13 January 2015 at 15:27:00 UTC

    Cool, if it worked in all the cases.
    Unfortunately on my Fujitsu LifeBook e-Series it doesn't.
    Even if I do what you suggest, the new headphones tab that you describe does not appear. Actually the window blink but nothing happens. :(

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Daniel AbbattTuesday, 13 January 2015 at 16:03:00 UTC

      Grr how frustrating. Sometimes I think about dropping back to the stock drivers without all the management software, but it's not ideal...

      Delete
    2. Daniel AbbattThursday, 26 February 2015 at 14:37:00 UTC

      I had to do this again today after an OS reinstall, and I found I had to quit the Realtek HD Audio Manager after setting the advanced settings and start it again, then plug the headphones in. The second tab didn't appear if the app was still open.

      Delete
  2. Tom S.Saturday, 26 September 2015 at 12:41:00 UTC

    This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Windows 7 - Cisco VPN Client

-
I recently started using Windows 7 and so decided to push it to the limit and run all the software I was previously running under Vista. The only serious problem I had with incompatibility was a known issue with Daemon Tools in that it simply isn't compatible with Windows 7, so I used the free version of Virtual CloneDrive by ElaborateBytes instead. My next stumbling block was to get the Cisco VPN client working. Oddly enough I had no problems getting this to work on build 6956, but on moving to 7000 I kept getting a dreaded blue screen everytime I tried to start Windows. Luckily the system repair managed to get round this and take me back to the system point just before I'd installed the VPN client. After hunting round the web for a while I found a simple combination of things that seemed to result in a reliable way of getting the VPN client to install and work properly. The VPN client version is v5.0.04.0300. First I changed the properties of the Setup application so that it...
Read more

Enabling SNMP on an ASUS RT-N66U

-
Recently I wanted to monitor an ASUS RT-N66U, a brilliant router with many feature, one of which did NOT appear to be SNMP. After some rooting around on the Internet (pun intended?), I discovered that it is actually quite easy to set up. For this you will need a small USB stick, I used an old tiny 4GB thumb drive. Ensure it's partitioned and formatted to ext2. If you're using Windows then EaseUS Partition Master can help, there's a free version for home use.  Otherwise the Gnome Partition Editor , otherwise known as GParted, will work. Just pop the USB drive into the back of the router and go to the "USB application" page in the UI, it's one of the options under "General" on the left hand index. At the bottom of that page is the "Download Master" which you can then choose to install onto your USB. What this does is into install a package manager, along with various packages for the Download Master, but this gives you the abilit...
Read more

Making Microsoft Dataverse OData queries using Postman

-
Once you have registered your application and have your ClientId and ClientSecret you can use these to authenticate using oauth2 client credentials workflow. Environment Create an appropriate Postman environment with the following variables: url - https://<yourcompanyname>.crm4.dynamics.com clientid - <your clientid> clientsecret - <your clientsecret> version - 9.1 webapiurl - {{url}}/api/data/v{{version}} tenantid - <guid> authurl - https://login.microsoftonline.com/{{tenantid}}/oauth2/v2.0/token Collection Authorization Setup Authorization for your Postman Collection so all the calls within will inherit it and use the token. Set the Type to "OAuth 2.0" Add auth data to "Request Headers" Configure New Token Token Name - "MyToken" Grant Type - "Client Credentials" Access Token URL -  "{{authurl}}" Client ID - "{{clientid}}" Client Secret - "{{clientsecret}}" Scope - "{{url}}/.default...
Read more