Sound question

[Firestrider]

My roommate was wondering about a simple problem. He wants to have sound from a game to come out his headphones, and the sound from say music to come out his speakers. He has a XFi music discrete sound card, Sennheiser headphones, and onboard sound. Is there any way to do this?

[Firestrider]

any help?

[Old Thrashbarg]

It's pretty easy to do, there are a couple ways of going about it:

First, you could hook up the case's front panel jacks to the X-Fi card, and it'll direct output to the front headphone jack when you plug 'em in. Unplug the headphones, and sound is directed to the rear outputs.

Alternately, you could have both the X-Fi and the onboard sound enabled, set the X-Fi as the default device (since AFAIK not all games allow you to change which audio device to use), and then use the settings in the music/media player programs to set output to the onboard sound. (The location of the setting varies, but every media software I've seen has a setting somewhere allowing you to choose the output device.)

[wingman99]

It's pretty easy to do, there are a couple ways of going about it:

First, you could hook up the case's front panel jacks to the X-Fi card, and it'll direct output to the front headphone jack when you plug 'em in. Unplug the headphones, and sound is directed to the rear outputs.Where on the X-Fi card is the conection for case front panel jacks

[Firestrider]

Is the onboard sound disabled when using a discrete sound card, like in graphics?

[wingman99]

Is the onboard sound disabled when using a discrete sound card, like in graphics?No it still works during gaming, you have to turn it off

[Old Thrashbarg]

Where on the X-Fi card is the conection for case front panel jacks

Dunno. It may not even have 'em, I just assumed it would since even the crappiest soundcards include such things nowadays.

No it still works during gaming, you have to turn it off

I wouldn't think you'd have to turn it off, you just have to have it set up so it doesn't get used in the game. Usually that would be achieved simply by setting the X-Fi as the default audio device, although there could be badly designed games that output sound to all devices... I just haven't encountered any in my limited gaming.