PC Gaming in the Living Room (Sound problems)

[JackSparks]

Hello,

I'm recently coming back to PC gaming after pretty much playing for the last 10 years or so exclusively on consoles. After much prodding my friends got me build a rig and join them for some Borderlands 2.

However my one want is to play on my TV rather than a desktop monitor, but this is proving to be problematic. Especially when it comes to sound. Here's what I'm looking for an easy way to switch between the two scenarios....

Scenario 1 - Playing on TV.

Sound for game comes out through the home theater system. While game chat comes out through my usb headphones. This shouldn't be a problem as my 250 xbox does it automatically, but yet on PC this is a pain to setup.

Scenario 2.

Typical gaming. ALL Sound comes out through headphones.


The computer is hooked up to the TV through HDMI from a EVGA 660ti card. Is there a way to do this? I've been ripping my hair out for the last few days trying to get this to work consistently.

Coming from consoles this kind of thing to me is basic stuff that should just "WORK" out of the box...but not the case. Still rather than give up I'm looking for some help.

Thanks,

Sparks

 

[Sunius]

It's pretty simple. Set default playback device in windows control panel to your home theater system, and in skype/ventrilo/whatever you may be using to communicate settings set it to headphones.

 

[JackSparks]

Sorry, if I'm being obtuse.

Are you saying I need a different program to do voice?

I don't see settings for sound inputs in the game. I have Steam setup use the headset but no such luck. I thought Steam and or the game handled chat.

Thanks for the help,

Sparks.

 

[das_stig]

Click on the sound icon and choose playback devices, there you can define what sound plays back through what device.

 

[trogdor796]

As others mentioned, click on the sound icon in the bottom right of the taskbar in windows 7. This will open up layback devices. From there, you should be able to set a default device and default communication device. The default device is where game sounds will play out of, and communications is where voice chat will come out of. Assuming you are running and hdmi cord from your 660ti to your home theatre receiver, set that to the default device and then set your USB headset to the communication device.

If you want all sounds to come out of your headset, set it to both default device and communication device.