Question Is it possible to treat rear audio jacks as separate devices?

[Kekoh]

Before I start - I've done a lot of searching and trying to find a solution on my own, but not a lot of people are looking for what I want. I just completed a new build with 2 major differences - no PCIE sound card, and Windows 11 instead of 10. For many years now I have used a sound card for my headset, and onboard for my speakers. It was easy to swap between them by simply clicking the sound/volume button in taskbar and switching output device.

My new build is a lot cleaner and I decided to not reinstall my sound card for visibility reasons. My headset, speakers, and mic are all plugged into onboard audio currently, and output is treated as 1 device.

My question is this - Is it possible to treat the rear audio jacks as completely separate output devices? Currently sound is coming out of both simultaneously - but I would prefer one or the other so I don't have to mute/disable/unplug one of them. Any advice? I'm finding this pretty ironic because with my older setup it was really annoying to get sound playing out of both (and a lot of search results were asking for this setup).

 

[Lutfij]

1| What is your audio output equipment?
2| Make and model of your soundcards? If it's an onboard solution, please mention the make and model of your motherboard.

Have you looked into this?

 

[ex_bubblehead]

Before I start - I've done a lot of searching and trying to find a solution on my own, but not a lot of people are looking for what I want. I just completed a new build with 2 major differences - no PCIE sound card, and Windows 11 instead of 10. For many years now I have used a sound card for my headset, and onboard for my speakers. It was easy to swap between them by simply clicking the sound/volume button in taskbar and switching output device.

My new build is a lot cleaner and I decided to not reinstall my sound card for visibility reasons. My headset, speakers, and mic are all plugged into onboard audio currently, and output is treated as 1 device.

My question is this - Is it possible to treat the rear audio jacks as completely separate output devices? Currently sound is coming out of both simultaneously - but I would prefer one or the other so I don't have to mute/disable/unplug one of them. Any advice? I'm finding this pretty ironic because with my older setup it was really annoying to get sound playing out of both (and a lot of search results were asking for this setup).

What does your motherboard documentation tell you? That is the definitive source for such information.

 

[Kekoh]

What does your motherboard documentation tell you? That is the definitive source for such information.

My mobo is MSI PRO Z790-P WIFI and the manual/documentation has practically no information on the audio jacks other than what to plug into them. It's standard Realtek audio so it can be reprogrammed fairly easily since it prompts what gets plugged in. https://download.msi.com/archive/mnu_exe/mb/PROZ790-P_PROZ790-PWIFI.pdf

1| What is your audio output equipment?
2| Make and model of your soundcards? If it's an onboard solution, please mention the make and model of your motherboard.

Have you looked into this?

MSI PRO Z790-P WIFI using Realtek. Audio output is nothing special. Just a set of 2.1 speakers using analog/aux, and an analog/aux Sennheiser headset that also has a mic aux cable. Everything is AUX, which is part of my problem. I know that USB headsets will automatically separate as different devices.

My sound card is Creative Sound BlasterX AE-5 Plus, but not currently installed. Would prefer to not install this so I can keep a clean case look.

I think the front audio jacks could possibly separate the devices, but I don't want to plug my headset or speakers into the front because it would just look messy with my H9 Flow case.

 

[TerryLaze]

Your GPU has separate sound output through HDMI, if you connect it to a TV or a monitor that has an audio jack, you can get the desktop to play everything over the GPU and have the mobo audio jacks for whatever other thing you want.